On Sept. 5, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order (EO) 14347, “Restoring the United States Department of War,” signifying his intent to rename the Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth to the “Department of War.” Only Congress has the power to officially change cabinet departments’ names, but Trump’s tactics aim to normalize it if Congress warms up to it.
According to the White House Fact Sheet, the EO explicitly permits using the “Department of War” moniker for “official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts and non-statutory documents within the executive branch.”
It also urges the executive branch to “recognize and accommodate these secondary titles.” The fact sheet cites that it indicates the military’s “unmatched power and readiness to protect national interests.” It remarks that the Department of War, established in 1790, was unparalleled from the War of 1812 through the World Wars.
The EO doesn’t mention President Truman changing the name to the Department of Defense in 1947 as part of an effort to shift the military’s focus toward defending democracies around the world from authoritarianism and the threat of communism.
In the White House press conference to sign the EO, Trump somewhat jokingly referred to Hegseth as the “Secretary of War,” and asked him to say a few words before signing. Hegseth stated, “it’s not just about renaming. It’s about restoring… the warrior ethos” that was lost since 1949, citing outcomes in the Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, War on Terror and others. It marks a new beginning for Trump’s peace through strength agenda.
The President’s actions aren’t met with smiles everywhere. Jack Detsch writes in a Politico article that the change forces the department to spend significant time and money creating new letterheads, insignias, seals, embroidered clothing and more. The name could give off the wrong impression that Americans are warmongers rather than conflict mediators.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette political science professor Jason Maloy reasoned that the “military apparatus has been, now is and will continue to be the most destructive organized force on the planet. The name of the executive department overseeing it doesn’t affect that reality one way or the other.”
The United States has over one million active personnel across at least 300 domestic and 750 foreign military bases and alliances with 80 countries. The United States has cultivated its reach for decades to set a tone of formidable omnipotence.
This is Trump’s 200th EO, surpassing his predecessors this early in the presidency and reflecting his persistence in diminishing the federal bureaucracy. With every new president comes a new set of policies that impact Americans and the world.
In February, the Department of Defense adopted new guidelines banning individuals in the military with a “current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are also disqualified for military service.”
In June, Trump claimed his negotiation style and tariffs have ended seven wars, although American influence is debatable.
Some resolutions are clearly attributed to Trump, like Thailand and Cambodia or Israel and Iran. Others, such as India and Pakistan, Armenia against Azerbaijan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo versus Rwanda, extend back to the 1990s. Although Trump has convinced the parties in each conflict to sign agreements, regional tensions remain high.
Everyone is testing the meaning of “peace” or how serious Trump is about tariff threats.
Trump has mostly ignored the conflict between Kosovo and Serbia since they signed a peace agreement in 2020, although the continuing feuds have now garnered his attention again. The feud between Ethiopia and Egypt has never broken out into armed conflict, although Trump has tried to claim his involvement in protecting peace.
The leaders of Israel, Cambodia, Thailand and Pakistan have even nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he’s been eyeing for the last decade.
Trump said, “They won’t give me a Nobel Peace Prize, because they only give it to liberals,” while discussing involvement in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. His most credible claim to the award is the Abraham Accords from his first term, which convinced multiple countries in the Middle East to formally recognize Israel’s sovereignty in exchange for economic and security cooperation.
Trump has called for a new age of American Imperialism by suggesting annexation of Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and the Gaza Strip, renaming Mount Denali and the Gulf of Mexico.
Domestically, Trump is enforcing the rule of law by deploying the national guard to high-crime cities and utilizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents to a great extent to arrest and deport those residing in the U.S. illegally.
He demanded in May that all NATO member nations devote 5% of their GDP on their military and related infrastructure, or else they’re not worth defending, even threatening to force nations out or that the U.S. leave. The new 5% target by 2035 was agreed to in late June.
Why is Trump doing all this in the first place? Professor Maloy thinks it’s part of a grander strategy. Since China currently controls the international clean energy industry, “instead of trying to catch up and innovate, the U.S. should play its strongest hand, which is dirty energy, and do as much as possible to stop other countries from going clean, because the clean economy currently relies more on China.”
Ensuring American dominance on all fronts is the forefront of the Trump administration. His lightning speed of executive actions preludes the 2026 midterm elections on the horizon. If current polling and history hold true, the Republicans are doomed to lose control of Congress, setting the stage for a more difficult second half of Trump’s term.