As the BBC reports:
US President Donald Trump is directing that the Department of Defense be known as the Department of War.
He will sign an executive order on Friday for the defence department to use the new name as a secondary title and for Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to be known as Secretary of War.
It's been the Defence Department since 1948.
Now, it is to be about war.
You could say Trump is being honest as to his intentions.
At the same time, I strongly suspect most people would rather it be a Department of Peace. But that would not suit the egos of the Trump team.
No wonder I call this the Age of Aggression. That is exactly what it is.
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This is the age of neoliberal redefinitionism. So many words such as affordable, genocide, homeless and poverty don’t have the meanings that they had in earlier ages. Even minimum in the context of minimum wages doesn’t have the meaning of yesteryear and don’t get me started on the living wage when you can’t live on it.
Maybe he is angling for the Nobel War Prize, since he has been singularly unsuccessful (and rightly so) in getting nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Maybe our Defence Ministry should be called the Ministry for War too, as that’s what it has effectively been for many years.
It’s incredible that someone who wants to change the name of the Department of Defence to the Department of War could seriously hope to get the Nobel Peace Prize
Ref “The Age of Aggression” – the images from Bejing of assorted dictators strutting around was not encouraging. All of them have various territorial ambitions. (& the USA? the ability to bully any & all).
Agreed
to give some context
Pre-1964 we had the War Office (for the Army) Admiralty (Navy) and Air Ministry (RAF)
then they became the Ministry of Defence. Churchill formed a Ministry of Defence in 1940 but the other departments remained in being. The idea was to better co-ordinate the three services.
Boots on the ground have often had to deal with political failings-Northern Ireland, Iraq, and in the former Yougoslavia .
They may as well go ahead and to this across Europe too. Just this morning we have a great trumpeting around the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ grandly stating that they will send multinational troops in Ukraine once a ceasefire is agreed. Anyone who has paid attention to any Russian statements since June of last year will know that this ‘commitment’ categorically rules out any such ceasefire being agreeable to them.
So we have an extension of an horrendous, catastrophic, unwinnable war championed by a coalition of ‘willing’ leaders – none of whose families members seem to have been willing to sign up themselves – and whose militaries are all suffering some “recruitment crisis” or other. I put that phrase in quotes because I happen to think it’s rather a good thing that “our” armed forces are having trouble convincing our citizens to sign up right now. I think Trump’s renaming will only serve to make those “crises” worse.
The sight of that military parade in Peking in front of Xi’s authoritarian guests was pretty chilling, and it has clearly had an effect on Trump, so he is stepping up the rhetoric, but it is almost certainly just that, rhetoric and bluster. The idea that Trump would be prepared to actually take on properly armed professionals is for the birds. The only people he is preparing his armed forces to shoot at are unarmed civilians at home. That way he can be pretty sure of winning. Not good news for Taiwan.
If you reflect on the shambles that was the mango baby’s birthday parade vs the precision of those Chinese military at the Xi parade, you could safely assume Xi was gaslighting Trump beautifully. Really reminding him he is not part of the big boys’ gang. Too weak. I’d imagine the baby will be apoplectic. This is tin hat time and we (the proles) are the bystanders yet those most affected.
The old saying, “you couldn’t make it up” springs to mind.
US Defense Department website still talks about serving the greater good of the country. I don’t know what that has to do with war. Do they serve war now?
Yes. They and the UK serve war in Palestine on behalf of Israel.
The parades in China to me just signified Western decline, which the more you read about it, was inevitable.
All those post war institutions have either been failed because they have ben exploited by those who signed up to them or ignored. Things are coming apart – and as we know, at first, slowly and then rapidly. The West has shot itself in the foot through dodgy ideology and not understanding what good refereeing is. It was also imbued with a sense of ‘hubris’ – it felt it had won and was ‘right’.
Trump’s latest transgression is proof yet again that modern Liberalism is hyper-individualised and lacks any self awareness at all (because he is suffering from pleonexia). We must never however forget though about how structurally weak some of the states that attended are.
As for China – I think that they are very clever. I think that they are the exception here. But they still might blow it. And if they do, it will because the West is so weak.
I think that there being no competition anymore for political ideas about what makes a good society might mean that forms like we see in Russia, North Korea and even China might just double down on their worst behaviours (the new Russia is just an honest version of the West done Russian style). I hope not. I hope that China’s history prevails (The Guanzi) – because I do not think that they have a natural tendency for aggression.
It is sad for those of us here to be born at a time to witness this. We are victims of history like many of victims and benefactors from history before us. This blog and others like it will become like life-rafts (alongside the real rafts needed because of global warming). We must grin and bear it, because I can’t see any real changes in our lifetime. We just have to keep talking and hopefully have the answers ready when, like all cycles of human history, this one comes to the end and change is possible (although the ending of the Anthropocene is also upon us?).
Very thought provoking PSR. Thanks for that entry.
Anybody else watching the Gaza Tribunal?
The first session of today’s evidence is particularly chilling about UK’s complicity in genocide.
Matt Kennard was showing UK participation in flights over Gaza, 47% compared with Israel’s 20%, but got will not disclose any information.
A lawyer, Forz Khan, says that there will be film of the killing of volunteers, showing Starmer’s complicity. If found guilty he could be sentenced to 30 years to life.
An ex FO civil servant saying that they were asked to alter reports to omit challenging information. FO asked to have conversations in person and not write anything down, particularly to do with arms sales policy.
No wonder Starmer wants reform to take over.
Where I was growing up there were many no-go areas with “WD Property – Keep Out!” notices on the fences.
I still think of the MoD as the War Department.
What is Trump’s administration up to? Is this a more honest title – yes. He is certainly remodelling the military institutions, which he could staff en masse with his own loyalists – a sinister play, perhaps.
All this is strange as many police departments have renamed themselves as ‘Peace Forces’ manned with ‘Peace Officers’.
I always thought countries changing their “war” departments to “defence” departments was propaganda, so can’t really complain.
George Washington signed the bill in 1789 that established the U.S. War Department so it had 159 years under that name, though that was a bill passed by Congress, Trump is changing it back without it going through Congress
Language is yet again being used as a cudgel to reshape reality. We are meant to forget that the armed services, and government itself, exist to “provide for the common defence” of its citizens.
To be fair, however:
1. It’s a more honest name for what it is. (Only by the greatest stretch of the imagination could you call propping up poppy-growing warlords in Afghanistan defense work.)
2. The Department of War is not a novelty; as I understand it, it was the official name for Army leadership prior to WWII.
What a bunch of blustering testosterone laden fools Trumps’ government is!
As I recall John Profumo was Minister for War in the McMillan Cabinet at the time of the Christine Keeler scandal. Changing it to defence makes it a softer image. Economical with the truth? In the case of the USA it will certainly reveal the reality. No other nation on earth has been permanently involved in conflicts since it became a sovereign nation in 1776. The USA has installed over 700 military bases around the globe. Untold numbers of foreign countries have been invaded . Governments have been overthrown and replaced by regimes acceptable to the American empire. People have been savagely murdered. In this century war crimes have been committed in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Presently, Palestine is being subjected to the most loathsome genocide in human history. Alas ,our own country has participated and supported these war crimes. Several British leaders are war criminals several times over. It is appropriate to change the name to war. It tells the vile truth. At the age of 85 I now wonder if my country has been on the wrong side .