- Congress approval needed, but the Republicans are probably not opposed.
- Critics argue that the name change is expensive and useless.
- Move would put Trump’s cachet on the biggest organization of Govt.
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive decree on Friday to rename the Ministry of Defense of the “Ministry of War,” said a White House official on Thursday, a decision that would put Trump’s stamp on the greatest organization of the government.
The ordinance would authorize the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Ministry of Defense and subordinate officials to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War”, “War Department” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence and public communications, according to an information sheet on the White House.
This decision would ask Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions necessary for permanent fame.
Since its entry into office in January, Trump wanted to rename a range of places and institutions, including the Gulf of Mexico, and to restore the original names of the military bases which were modified after the demonstrations of racial justice.
The names of the department are rare and require an approval from the congress, but Trump’s republican colleagues hold thin majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the leaders of the Party Congress have shown little appetite to oppose one of Trump’s initiatives.
The American Department of Defense was called the War Department until 1949, when the Congress consolidated the Army, the Navy and the Air Force following the Second World War. The name was chosen in part to point out that in the nuclear era, the United States has focused on wars prevention, according to historians.
The modification of the name will be expensive and will require update panels and paper letters used not only by Pentagon officials in Washington, DC, but also military facilities around the world.
An effort by former president Joe Biden to rename nine bases that have honored the Confederation and the Confederate leaders should cost the army $ 39 million. This effort was reversed by HegSeth earlier this year.
The Government Team of the Reduction of the Government of the Trump Administration, known as the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government, sought to make Pentagon discounts in order to save money.
“Why not put this money to support the families of the military or to employ diplomats who help to prevent conflicts from starting in the first place?” said Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran and a member of the Senate armed services committee.
“Because Trump prefers to use our soldiers to score political points only to strengthen our national security and support our courageous soldiers and their families-that’s why,” she said Reuters.
Long in manufacturing
Critics said that the planned name change is not only expensive, but unnecessary distraction for the Pentagon.
Hegseth said that changing the name is “not only words – it is warrior ethics”.
This year, one of the allies closest to the Trump congress, the republican president of the American committee of representatives of the House of Representatives, James Comer, presented a bill which will allow a president to reorganize and more easily rename the agencies.
“We are just going to do it. I’m sure the congress will take place if we need this … Defense is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we also want to be offensive if we have to be,” said Trump last month.
Trump also mentioned the possibility of a name change in June, when he suggested that the name was initially modified to be “politically correct”.
But for some in the Trump administration, the effort goes back much further.
During the first term of Trump, the current director of the FBI, Kash Patel, who was briefly at the Pentagon, experienced a disconnection on his emails who said: “The chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense and the Department of War”.
“I consider it a tribute to the history and heritage of the Ministry of Defense,” said Patel Reuters in 2021.
