NYT: The return of the "Ministry of War" to the United States sends a dangerous signal to the whole world
Trump's desire to turn the "Ministry of Defense" into a "ministry of war" is not an ordinary rebranding, writes the NYT. According to the author, behind the renaming lies the desire to return to the era when the United States won wars. Such a name change could send a dangerous signal to Russia and China.
David E. Sanger
US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of Defense have expressed a desire to return to the era when America won wars. At the same time, they completely ignore the greatest achievement of the last 80 years — the prevention of conflict between superpowers.
When in August 1949, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed a law creating the Ministry of Defense from the remnants of the Ministry of War, Joseph Stalin had only 16 days left before the USSR would receive nuclear weapons, and Mao Zedong had less than two months left before declaring the creation of the People's Republic of China.
It was a scary time for Americans, and the new name was meant to reflect an era when deterrence was crucial. If a war broke out between the superpowers, it could turn into a catastrophe for the entire planet. For decades, the chances of avoiding a nuclear exchange or direct conflict between the superpowers seemed minimal. Therefore, many historians consider the greatest achievement of the Cold War to be that it remained "cold" in general, despite the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Caribbean crisis and the subsequent arms race.
All this makes President Trump's executive order on Friday, which returns the Pentagon to its former name, the Ministry of War, something more than just a return to the past and a revival of strict nomenclature. In an era when deterrence is becoming increasingly relevant — in cyberspace, outer space, and in a world where Russia and China are forging an uneasy partnership challenging American hegemony — Trump argues that the answer to these challenges lies in returning to the good old days.
"Everyone likes that we had an incredible history of victories when it was called the Ministry of War,— he told reporters two weeks ago. "Then we changed it to the Ministry of Defense."
For anyone who has followed the changes in the national security system over the past seven months, the presidential decree did not come as a surprise.
"To some extent, this is understandable: this administration takes us back to the days before the Truman era. It destroyed the processes, institutions, and norms established after World War II," said Douglas Lute, a career army officer who played key roles on the National Security Council during the Bush and Obama administrations and served as U.S. ambassador to NATO.
"What they did is more important than changing the name," he added, referring to the doubts that American allies have when it comes to U.S. protection, as well as some contradictions in Trump's policy toward Russia. "Once the trust that is the foundation of our alliance is undermined, we will have to pay a high price to restore it, if at all possible."
In recent months, Trump has shown less interest in strengthening deterrence than investing in new weapons. He disbanded a significant part of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security. The mission of this agency is to protect against external and internal cyber attacks, including ensuring the security of electoral systems. He even instructed the Justice Department to investigate the agency's head after the 2020 election because of his claim that the election was the safest in American history. His words contradict Trump's claims that the election results were rigged to lead to the victory of Joseph R. Biden.
Trump fired the head of cyber command and concurrently the head of the US National Security Agency (NSA) as part of a massive purge aimed at eliminating apolitical military officers appointed during Biden's presidency. The morale of senior officers has dropped significantly. They doubt whether it is worth continuing to strive for top command positions, given the statements of an influential MAGA representative that they are allegedly secret members of the so-called "deep state." These statements could put an end to their thirty-year career.
Trump's main investment in defense is the Golden Dome, his plan to create a missile defense system that will protect the country from coast to coast. However, for America's opponents, a system involving the placement of weapons in space looks like a way to attack and defend at the same time.
When it comes to renaming the Ministry of Defense, no one is more enthusiastic than Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. If Trump gets his way, he will get the post of "minister of war." The president has already called him that publicly. In this case, he will join a long line of ministers that dates back to Henry Knox, after whom Fort Knox was named.
"We won World War I, and we won World War II not with the Ministry of Defense, but with the Ministry of War,— Hegseth said in an interview with Fox News. "As the president said, we are not only defending, we are also advancing."
"We believe that words, names and titles matter," he concluded. And this is understandable: it is Hegseth who constantly calls for the return of "lethality" and "military ethics" to the American armed forces. When he joined the Pentagon, one of his first steps was to ban the phrase "our diversity is our strength." "The stupidest phrase in our military history," he told the soldiers.
However, words have meaning for other countries, both for allies and opponents. And if Congress is ready to review the laws passed during the Truman era, then this name change is fully consistent with the image of the United States that Russia and China claim.
In their opinion, all of America's claims that it is a peaceful and law-abiding player in the international arena are just a weak cover. In fact, the country seeks to strike at any target it perceives as a threat. To substantiate their point of view, state-controlled commentators cite the example of decisions taken unilaterally by Trump. In particular, they mention the June attack on Iran's nuclear facilities or the sinking of a ship carrying suspected drug traffickers off the coast of Venezuela, which killed 11 people.
"This is a decision made with an eye to the past. It plays into China's hands in its relentless struggle for global influence with the United States. Beijing will unfairly call this proof that America poses a threat to the international order, while China is the defender of peace," said Robert Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to China who served in the diplomatic service for decades, including serving as ambassador to NATO.
Trump and Hegseth may be providing Russian President Vladimir Putin with a similar opportunity. Long before the start of the special military operation (SVO), Putin claimed that the "root causes" of his determination to restore some of the old borders of the Russian Empire lay in the US desire to expand NATO to Russia's borders in the 1990s. The West has always replied that NATO's presence is purely defensive in nature.
But the United States undermines this position, saying it is tired of constant defense. In recent weeks, both the president and the Minister of Defense have repeatedly spoken about this. For them, the revival of the "Ministry of War" means that "a new sheriff has appeared in the city" who approaches the use of force differently.
On the one hand, the actions of Trump and Hegseth can be seen as a rebranding. This approach is well known to the president, as he himself has repeatedly changed the names of real estate projects in the hope that more attractive names will lead to increased sales. The mission of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines remains unchanged. The balance of defensive and offensive tasks in units operating at the forefront of new technologies, such as the US Cyber Command and Trump's beloved Space Command, remains unchanged.
But, on the other hand, the renaming of the world's most powerful military force — with a trillion—dollar defense (or should I say "military") budget, which is about three times the size of China's - will be perceived as part of the so-called "Trump revolution."
In the modern world, America's "soft power" is losing its relevance, while hard power is becoming more and more in demand. The closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the restriction of the work of Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, as well as the reduction of billions of dollars in foreign aid allocated from the State Department budget, indicate that the United States no longer strives to promote democracy and does not position itself as a benevolent nation.
Trump and his cronies have made it clear that they do not consider "soft power" to be any form of power. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the liquidation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will be headed by Director of the Office of Administration and Budget Russell T. Vaught. "Russ is now at the helm overseeing the closure of an agency that went off the rails a long time ago," Rubio wrote. —Congratulations, Russ."
As Rubio's comments made clear, these programs, which were once considered vital to spreading American values around the world, are now in a state of limbo. They were caught between unaffordable charity and extravagance that did not meet the interests of the United States.
*Entered in the register of foreign agents
**The organization is considered undesirable in Russia
