6 ms·

> Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is. No, it was not. Tom Nichols, professor emiritus of national-security affa

> Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is. No, it was not. Tom Nichols, professor emiritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College: > It is almost impossible to overstate the inanity of this move. The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.” > These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks[1] when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies. > In 1949, after two years that included a massive reorganization of the U.S. military (and the establishment of an air force), Truman christened the new United States Department of Defense, which consolidated elements of the previous War and Navy Departments. […] * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/defense-war-cringe-department/684112/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive... The Department of War had a different function for a different geopolitical outlook that no longer matched reality in the post-WW2 world.

edgyquant 6d ago
Defense was an Orwellian spin on the greatest warfighting organization in the history of the world. This quote does nothing to change anything but is some weird appeal to authority when no authority is needed
tolerance 6d ago
I don't think that quote helps your case or detracts from the parent. Tangentially—and perhaps counterintuitively—it can be taken as an argument in favor of the name change. The statement also does little to address the ethical concerns at the root of the relationship between industries and the military.
- AngryData 6d ago
  They noted it but I think the important part was before then the Department of War only really existed when congress declared war. Once the war was over 95% of those people went home and back into civilian life. So even if a President wanted to start a war they had limited resources to do so unless Congress declared war and re-expanded or formed a Department of War.
  - tolerance 6d ago
    Right. But somewhere in between then and now the powers of the President expanded so that "the actual exercise of military force" in the name of defense ("preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies") involved fighting in wars.
SllX 6d ago
I answered in response to a different comment about the level of patience I have with men that think changing one word in the title of the bureaucracy in charge of war somehow meaningfully changes the reality or meaning of war (spoiler: none). I wanted to address this though: > The Department of War had a different function for a different geopolitical outlook that no longer matched reality in the post-WW2 world. The reality of the post-WW2 world is that those who were most responsible for bringing big messy & complex wars to the world were no longer able to litter their own little subcontinent hanging off the western edge of Asia with as much ordinance as they could manufacture. It was too expensive & they were either too occupied or too preoccupied with the rather expensive operation of trying to maintain their hold on their colonial enterprises. We could afford to pretend that all of our wars were “defensive” because our goal was to make sure they couldn’t pull that shit again & there was only one or two relevant powers at a time we were in direct competition with that was otherwise keeping us busy. Telling the UK & France to fuck off during the Suez Crisis was approximately a phone call. But whether a war was actually offensive or defensive still came down to what story we wanted to tell ourselves at the end of the day.
- throw0101d 5d ago
  > I answered in response to a different comment about the level of patience I have with men that think changing one word in the title of the bureaucracy in charge of war somehow meaningfully changes the reality or meaning of war (spoiler: none). Except it wasn't just a change in the name in the department: the Department of War actually became the Department of the Army, the DoNavy was merged with, the Air Force was split off from being with-in the Army (USAAF -> USAF), creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA, etc: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947 > But whether a war was actually offensive or defensive still came down to what story we wanted to tell ourselves at the end of the day. And sometimes a war does not happen because someone has a big enough stick that other people don't want to risk it being used on them. It's not like the 'other side' was passively sitting around: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire There needed to be various measures done (on a spectrum from more to less 'active') to keep things in check: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment

edgyquant 6d ago

Defense was an Orwellian spin on the greatest warfighting organization in the history of the world. This quote does nothing to change anything but is some weird appeal to authority when no authority is needed

tolerance 6d ago

I don't think that quote helps your case or detracts from the parent. Tangentially—and perhaps counterintuitively—it can be taken as an argument in favor of the name change. The statement also does little to address the ethical concerns at the root of the relationship between industries and the military.

AngryData 6d ago
They noted it but I think the important part was before then the Department of War only really existed when congress declared war. Once the war was over 95% of those people went home and back into civilian life. So even if a President wanted to start a war they had limited resources to do so unless Congress declared war and re-expanded or formed a Department of War.
- tolerance 6d ago
  Right. But somewhere in between then and now the powers of the President expanded so that "the actual exercise of military force" in the name of defense ("preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies") involved fighting in wars.

SllX 6d ago

I answered in response to a different comment about the level of patience I have with men that think changing one word in the title of the bureaucracy in charge of war somehow meaningfully changes the reality or meaning of war (spoiler: none). I wanted to address this though: > The Department of War had a different function for a different geopolitical outlook that no longer matched reality in the post-WW2 world. The reality of the post-WW2 world is that those who were most responsible for bringing big messy & complex wars to the world were no longer able to litter their own little subcontinent hanging off the western edge of Asia with as much ordinance as they could manufacture. It was too expensive & they were either too occupied or too preoccupied with the rather expensive operation of trying to maintain their hold on their colonial enterprises. We could afford to pretend that all of our wars were “defensive” because our goal was to make sure they couldn’t pull that shit again & there was only one or two relevant powers at a time we were in direct competition with that was otherwise keeping us busy. Telling the UK & France to fuck off during the Suez Crisis was approximately a phone call. But whether a war was actually offensive or defensive still came down to what story we wanted to tell ourselves at the end of the day.

throw0101d 5d ago
> I answered in response to a different comment about the level of patience I have with men that think changing one word in the title of the bureaucracy in charge of war somehow meaningfully changes the reality or meaning of war (spoiler: none). Except it wasn't just a change in the name in the department: the Department of War actually became the Department of the Army, the DoNavy was merged with, the Air Force was split off from being with-in the Army (USAAF -> USAF), creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA, etc: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947 > But whether a war was actually offensive or defensive still came down to what story we wanted to tell ourselves at the end of the day. And sometimes a war does not happen because someone has a big enough stick that other people don't want to risk it being used on them. It's not like the 'other side' was passively sitting around: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire There needed to be various measures done (on a spectrum from more to less 'active') to keep things in check: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment