NYT Analysis: Trump's 'Department of War' Signals a Return to a Pre-Truman Era

President Donald Trump and his defense secretary say they want to return to an era when America won wars, writes The New York Times. When President Harry S. Truman signed the law in August 1949 that created the U.S.

Department of Defense, based on the former Department of War, major events were just a few weeks away. Joseph Stalin was to prove 16 days later that the USSR could create a nuclear weapon, and Mao Zedong was to proclaim the People's Republic of China less than two months later.

In September 2025, Washington decided to return the former name to the Pentagon: the Department of War instead of the Department of Defense. The new name reflected the transition to an era of deterrence, when war between superpowers could lead to the destruction of the entire planet. For decades, it seemed impossible to avoid a nuclear clash or a direct conflict between the US and the USSR.

That is why many historians consider the main achievement of the Cold War to be that it largely remained "cold," despite the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the arms race.

It is in this context that Trump's plans to sign a decree returning the former name "Department of War" to the Pentagon go beyond a simple symbolic gesture.

For those who have been following the revolutionary changes in the US national security system over the past seven months, this announcement was no surprise.

"In some ways, this is quite logical: this administration is simply taking us back to an era before Truman's time," noted Douglas Lute, a career army officer who held important positions in the National Security Councils of the Bush and Obama administrations and was the US ambassador to NATO. "The processes, institutions, and norms that were created after World War II have been dismantled," the expert concluded.