Why Call It Secretary of War, Not Defense?

Vladimir Gessen
17 sept
13 Min. de lectura

“War” is more than a word: it signals offense, not protection. America is no longer just guarding… it’s getting ready to strike.

The name change ordered by Donald Trump is no trivial matter. It’s not a word game to grab headlines, nor a nostalgic nod to the days when Washington had a War Department. It is, in fact, a strategic pivot by the United States. Psychologists remind us that language is never innocent. Words frame realities and shape behavior. Trump knows this. By replacing “defense” with “war,” he sent a signal of transformation that reverberates across multiple levels, among military leaders, allies reading Washington’s signals, and adversaries interpreting the word as a declaration of intent.

This act —what we might call cognitive framing— triggers military mindsets. An army that sees itself as “defensive” resists, preserves, and endures. But a force that defines itself in terms of “war” prepares to advance, strike, and occupy space. In strategic psychology, shifting from defense to offense means no longer thinking in terms of survival, but in terms of prevailing.

Every soldier knows it: defense preserves sovereignty, but rarely delivers victory. At best, it avoids loss. Offense, on the other hand, opens horizons, conquers ground, and pushes the adversary back. Politics works the same way: offense wins. A congressman triumphs when he takes a seat another loses; a president succeeds when he walks into the Oval Office and forces his rival to walk out.

By sending this message, Trump reminds us that on the global chessboard it’s not enough to resist. Defense sounds passive; war evokes decision. It is, in essence, a psychological declaration of intent. The United States stops seeing itself as a besieged fortress and projects instead as an actor ready to go on the attack.

Like in chess, you don’t win by protecting the king, you win by taking risks, seizing the center of the board, and forcing the opponent’s king into checkmate. And let’s be clear: Trump has never been defensive. From the very start of his presidency, when he openly floated U.S. ambitions toward Greenland, Panama, or even Canada, the posture was offensive. In practice, the Department of Defense had already begun acting like a Department of War.

History shows the same pattern. In Fascist Italy under Mussolini (1922–1943), the top military body was called the Ministero della Guerra (Ministry of War). The term “Defense” didn’t appear until after World War II, when republican Italy created the Ministero della Difesa in 1947. In Nazi Germany, Hitler reorganized the Reichswehrministerium (Ministry of Defense of the Reich) in 1935, renaming it the Reichskriegsministerium (Ministry of War of the Reich), a clear marker of the offensive and expansionist spirit of his regime.

Strategy: The Legacy of Sun Tzu and Clausewitz

When we talk about strategy in the highest levels of military thought, we can’t avoid looking back at two thinkers who, though separated by more than two millennia, still seem to be in dialogue today: Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz. Both understood that war is never just about cannons and soldiers, it is at its core, a clash of human wills and an exercise in collective psychology.

Sun Tzu, writing in the 5th century BC, saw war as an art where cunning outweighed brute force. His famous maxim, “to win without fighting,” still holds true. The true strategist, he argued, wins before ever setting foot on the battlefield. Victory comes from corroding the enemy’s cohesion, clouding his perceptions, manipulating his emotions, and breaking his morale. For Sun Tzu, psychological preparation, deception, flexibility, and mastery of terrain mattered more than troop numbers or firepower. War, in his vision, was a mental dance where the clever outmaneuvered the strong.

Clausewitz, in the 19th century, took another path but reached an essential overlap: he insisted that war is inseparable from politics and psychology. His monumental work —significantly titled On War not On Defense— set the standard. His famous phrase, “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” captures the shift from the purely military to the strategic. For him, the key was the enemy’s center of gravity, which was not always its army, but often the nation’s will to resist. Breaking that will mattered more than seizing cities or inflicting casualties. Clausewitz also warned that “absolute war” was only a theoretical concept. In reality, the passions of the people, the calculations of governments, and social constraints always restrained total violence.

Both thinkers converge on a point that today feels essential: war is never purely military. It is a psychological, political, social, and economic phenomenon. It is a theater of perceptions where confidence, fear, morale, and narrative are constantly in play. In modern terms, we might say that both Sun Tzu and Clausewitz understood war as the management of collective mindsets.

When Trump revived the word war, he placed himself —whether consciously or not— inside this tradition. Sun Tzu would have seen in that gesture a strategic framing move: by naming it “war,” you already condition the adversary and bolster your own morale. Clausewitz would interpret it as an effort to strike at the will of allies and rivals alike, projecting an image of firmness. In both cases, the old masters live on, and the struggle unfolds not only in the barracks but in the minds of those who watch, decide, and fight.

Chess: Always Offensive

From its Persian roots to its exaltation in the Soviet school, chess has long been a privileged metaphor for strategic thought. It is not just a game but a symbolic representation of the struggle of wills. Offense in chess means developing your pieces, gaining space, and launching attacks that force your opponent to respond under pressure. Defense, far from being passive, is the art of holding the line, consolidating strength, absorbing momentum, and preparing the decisive counterblow.

In Sun Tzu’s terms, defense preserves, conserves the essential, and wears down the enemy. Offense, by contrast, seeks to seize the decisive moment and turn accumulated energy into victory. For Clausewitz, defense was the strongest form of war because it offered positional advantages and attrition. But he warned it could never deliver a decision on its own, victory eventually demands offense.

Thus, on the chessboard as in history, defense is always a transitional phase. The decisive outcome comes only when initiative is seized, when offense is embraced. Chess reminds us of a timeless lesson: every strategy, no matter how cautious, eventually tilts toward the attack.

The Message: From Euphemism to Strategic Nakedness

Legally, the presidential order allows the use of “Department of War” and “Secretary of War” in public communications and non-statutory documents; a full renaming would still require congressional action. Yet the message it sends inside the system is unmistakable: the White House is reshaping identity and doctrine. Internally, the government reaffirms the armed forces as an instrument of offensive power, not just protection. The word war anchors a shift in identity: from guardian to warrior. That change ripples through military culture, training, rules of engagement, and the very language of command. The explicit invocation of a “warrior ethos,” already codified in the Soldier’s Creed, works to mold the psychology of the combatant, giving him a higher sense of purpose and reinforcing unit cohesion.

Externally, the message is one of deterrence and warning. Washington signals that it will no longer hide behind euphemisms, that it is ready to take the initiative. It is a strategic move that sacrifices the comfort of softer language to gain psychological ground, elevating perceptions of will and risk. In Clausewitz’s terms, it aims at the enemy’s center of gravity: the will to resist. In Sun Tzu’s language, it seeks to win first in the mind. The obvious danger, of course, is that every show of toughness can deter —but also escalate— if not balanced with narrative control and reliable diplomatic channels. Unsurprisingly, the media have underlined the administration’s clear intention to “go on the offensive.”

The third message is political and electoral. At home, the semantics of “war” connect with the promise of national rebirth, reclaiming pride, moral clarity, and the will to victory among MAGA supporters. It is political storytelling designed to “rename” and reorder collective emotions like pride, grievance, and the thirst for restoration. The immediate response was applause, though not without resistance from within the Republican Party itself, with Senator Rand Paul voicing dissent.

Principles and Elements of Strategy

In this context, replacing Defense with War alters the very architecture of U.S. strategy, stratagem, and tactics. Strategy is no longer about preserving order against threats; it becomes the deliberate projection of power to achieve political goals beyond U.S. borders. Stratagems, once seen as marginal maneuvers, now become the public face of a policy that embraces the bluntness of attack, through psychological operations, explicit deterrence campaigns, and tougher diplomatic maneuvers. And tactics —the “how” of each battle— fall in line with this offensive mindset, prioritizing strike systems over purely defensive shields, overseas deployments, even operations close to home such as in the Caribbean, and training exercises that simulate not just resistance but penetration and domination. The recent case of anti-cartel operations is a clear example: what we see is the behavior of a Department of War, not one of Defense.

In other words, the name change rewires the invisible threads of war because it transforms how conflicts are planned, deceived, and fought, sending the world an unmistakable message: the United States now sees itself not only as the defender and caretaker of its own territory, but as an actor willing to use war as a central tool of policy and to claim new spaces.

The Transformation of Strategic Principles

The semantic shift from Defense to War is anything but neutral. It pushes the emphasis of classical strategic principles toward an openly offensive reading. The principle of Unity of Objective will no longer be limited to protecting national integrity but expanded to include projecting influence and power beyond U.S. borders. Concentration of Forces will prioritize striking first in external theaters, relegating homeland defense to a secondary role. Economy of Means will be reinterpreted not as saving resources, but as optimizing them to sustain a prolonged offensive. Maneuver will highlight expeditionary mobility and the rapid global deployment of strike forces. Surprise will gain centrality with the use of hypersonic weapons, autonomous drones, and preemptive cyberattacks. Security will shift from passive protection to active denial of enemy capabilities. Flexibility will mean readiness for simultaneous interventions across multiple fronts. And Morale will evolve from mere cohesion into the narrative of a warrior ethos, elevating offense itself as a national virtue.

Reconfiguration of the Elements of Strategy

Each structural component of strategy is equally reshaped. Objectives shift from defending territory and maintaining nuclear deterrence to expansive goals: securing technological supremacy, access to strategic resources, and dominance within alliances. Means now privilege investment in offensive systems —intercontinental missiles, expeditionary fleets, space-based weapons— over defensive shields. Methods and Plans will no longer revolve around resisting but around penetrating, neutralizing, and dominating. The paradigm of hybrid warfare and multi-domain operations becomes the central axis.

When it comes to Time, the aim will be permanent initiative, shortening the cycle between preparation and action to leave no breathing room for the adversary. In terms of Space, geography is no longer limited to the homeland: the theater of war becomes global, stretching from the Arctic to the Indo-Pacific, or anywhere an offensive strategy dictates. Will and Morale will no longer mean sustaining defensive resilience but cultivating in both the population and the armed forces an offensive mindset, legitimizing war as a natural instrument of policy.

It is crucial to recognize that, until now, U.S. strategy has largely presented itself as defensive: supporting allied governments or supplying arms to third parties so they could withstand outside aggression. That has been the dominant pattern, acting indirectly, under the banner of defense. But the panorama changes dramatically if the nation adopts an openly offensive doctrine. One thing is to back a partner so they can shield themselves, like in the case of Ukraine, where arms deliveries are framed as defensive measures to repel Russian attacks. Quite another is to equip that same ally with weapons designed not to resist, but to strike directly at Russia. That shift would alter not only the nature of the conflict but the global balance itself, exponentially raising the risk of direct confrontation between the United States and Russia, two nuclear powers. What has so far been explained as containment could quickly escalate into an offensive spiral, with unpredictable consequences for world peace.

Strategy in the Small Things Also Changes

Even at the smallest level, chains of command and everyday communications are altered when the official title shifts on signs, memoranda, and ceremonies. It also reshapes meta contracts, those unwritten, implicit agreements about mission and risk that guide relations between individuals and institutions. A change from “Defense” to “War” modifies the daily code, redefining what is expected of soldiers, citizens, and allies alike. The emphasis moves from protection to projection of force.

In planning and military procurement, the offensive mindset tends to prioritize power projection over purely defensive capabilities. In missile development, for example, the focus shifts toward systems designed to strike adversaries rather than intercept attacks from third parties.

Alliances, too, are affected. The bluntness of the word “war” may serve as a deterrent to rivals, but it also unsettles allies accustomed to the strategic ambiguity that buys time and flexibility. This demands compensatory diplomacy and disciplined strategy to avoid miscalculation.

By naming it “war,” intentions are clarified, but options are narrowed. Backing down becomes more costly, public opinion hardens, and broad coalitions become harder to sustain. And if the designation of “War” turns out to be mere symbolism without real strategic depth, only the militarization of language will not make the United States stronger, in fact, weaken it.

Psychological Warfare

That is the name given to the set of operations designed to influence the emotions, thoughts, and behavior of an adversary, undermining their will to fight and breaking the cohesion of their society or armed forces. The goal is to win the mind before the body, relying on propaganda, manipulation of information, rumors, intimidation, symbols, covert operations, and messages aimed either at demoralizing the enemy or mobilizing one’s own population.

As a formal military doctrine, it began to take shape in the 20th century.During World War I (1914–1918), European empires discovered that pamphlets, loudspeakers, and the press could be as decisive as artillery. Britain created the secret Wellington House in 1914 to influence international opinion. Germany dropped leaflets from the air in an effort to weaken French and British morale.

In World War II (1939–1945), psychological warfare became a decisive front. In Nazi Germany, Joseph Goebbels and his Ministry of Propaganda perfected mass manipulation through radio and film. In the United Kingdom, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was founded in 1941 to wage psychological campaigns against German morale. In the United States, the Office of War Information (OWI) was created in 1942, and psychological warfare branches were embedded in the military, especially in the campaigns across Italy and France. The Soviet Union mobilized propaganda to rally its people under the banner of defending the “Motherland,” demonizing the invader and glorifying resistance.

During the Cold War (1947–1991), psychological warfare was institutionalized. The U.S. established the Psychological Strategy Board in 1951, followed by the United States Information Agency (USIA), which coordinated messaging toward the Soviet bloc. Within the U.S. Army, specialized PSYOP units were created and later integrated with Special Forces. The USSR developed the doctrine of maskirovka (strategic deception) and ran a massive global propaganda machine through the KGB, Radio Moscow, and satellite publications. Maoist China, beginning with its civil war (1927–1949), institutionalized “political work” within the People’s Liberation Army as a core tool of cohesion and propaganda.

Later conflicts —Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq— saw the U.S. deploy PSYOP operations intensively, from local radio broadcasts to leaflet drops and television messages aimed at shaping civilian and military perceptions.

In today’s world

Russia has expanded the concept into what is now called “hybrid warfare,” where disinformation campaigns and digital manipulation, including social media, are central weapons, as seen in Ukraine and even in Western elections. China has codified its own doctrine of the “Three Warfares” (2003): psychological, media, and legal (xinli zhan), which guide much of its current global posture. North Korea relies on nuclear threats and grandiose military spectacles as psychological instruments rather than purely tactical ones.

Born in the strategic philosophy of the East, formalized in the world wars, and refined in the Cold War, psychological warfare today is an indispensable pillar of modern militaries. For the United States, Russia, China, and North Korea —each in its own way— it remains a strategic constant. What matters most is no longer simply destroying the enemy on the battlefield but breaking their will to resist and shaping their perception of reality.

Strategic psychology

Defensive psychological warfare seeks to preserve one’s own morale, shield the population from enemy propaganda, and sustain internal cohesion through narratives of resistance, as seen in the Soviet Union during the “Great Patriotic War” or in the United Kingdom with Churchill’s messages during the Nazi bombings.

Offensive psychological warfare, on the other hand, aims to break the adversary’s will before the fighting even begins: to inject fear, sow confusion, and erode confidence in opposing leaders. The Nazis used radio broadcasts and leaflets for this purpose during World War II. The United States did the same in the Gulf War of 1991, transmitting radio messages designed to persuade Iraqi soldiers to desert.

The shift from defensive to offensive, in psychological terms, means moving from protecting one’s own mind to actively colonizing the enemies.

Warning

The world has entered a twilight zone where chess risks being replaced by reality itself. Words now open paths as dangerous as missiles. Calling something war instead of defense does not just raise the rhetoric, it reconfigures America’s psyche back to the mindset of empires and unsettles the balance of nations. By fully embracing the logic of offense, the United States risks turning deterrence into escalation, and strategic prudence into a drift toward the abyss.

Sun Tzu reminded us that the supreme victory is to win without fighting, while Clausewitz warned that war must remain subordinate to politics and reason. Ignoring these timeless lessons is like playing chess with dynamite instead of pieces. On the global board, every move is magnified, every word becomes action, and every gesture can be read as the prelude to a conflagration no one will be able to control.

Today humanity watches as a simple semantic change reshuffles priorities, doctrines, and wills. It is a reminder that empires fall not only from excess of force, but from excess of confidence in it. If “defense” was once about protection, the naming of a Department of “War” pushes us into the open air of the irreversible.

And if names create destiny, the destiny sketched by a “Secretary of War” is none other than open confrontation. The challenge before us is immense, perhaps the greatest of our era. Either reason prevails over rhetoric, guiding humanity’s steps with calm and prudence, or unbridled eloquence, turned into action, will end up writing history in ink of fire, to the clash of swords and the roar of missiles. If the voice of sanity falls silent, if speeches replace reflection, humanity may discover —when it is already too late— that this board never had an escape square. Then the match will be sealed, and there will be no way left to defend ourselves.

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