WASHINGTON — President Trump suggested Monday that he could change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War — the name by which it was known for more than 150 years.
“We’re just going to do it. I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that,” Trump said. “‘Defense’ is too defensive. We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too if we have to be.”
“As Department of War, we won everything,” he added, referring to World Wars I and II. “And I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”
The War Department was known as such from 1789 to 1947, when the departments of the Army and Air Force were split by an act of Congress to form the National Military Executive with the already-existing Navy Department.
The National Military Executive was renamed the Department of Defense two years later, in 1949.
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