On September 5, President Trump signed an executive order making The Department of War an official secondary name for The Department of Defense, seemingly with the expectation that legislation will make the switch official and eliminate that Department of Defense name entirely down the road.
The change was accompanied with the usual macho swagger that has become the norm in his second administration, with talking points about this name clearly sending a message to potential adversaries that we mean business and won’t be limited to just “playing defense.”
I doubt that many adversaries, contemporary and historical, were under the illusion that the Department of Defense meant that the US would be somehow limited in its military undertakings, as the cratered wrecks of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or further back the multiple millions of tons of bombs dropped on Southeast Asia can readily attest. So while the stated aims of the change are questionable to say the least, this change is, in fact, a surprising step down the pathway of good governance, or so at least the Chinese sage Confucius would argue.
In book 13 of the Analects of Confucius, Confucius is asked by a disciple what he would do as his first order of business if he was put in charge of the Kingdom of Wei. Confucius replied, “It would, of course, be the rectification of names.” His disciple is incredulous at this, but Confucius replies:
If names are not rectified, speech will not accord with reality; when speech does not accord with reality, things will not be successfully accomplished. When things are not successfully accomplished, ritual practice and music will fail to flourish; when ritual and music fail to flourish, punishments and penalties will miss the mark. And when punishments and penalties miss the mark, the common people will be at a loss as to what to do with themselves. This is why the gentleman only applies names that can be properly spoken and assures that what he says can be properly put into action. The gentleman simply guards against arbitrariness in his speech. That is all there is to it.
From this way of thinking, renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War may not do much to change the Chinese or Iranian assessment of American intentions, but in a small way, it might actually be a small step towards the restoration of good governance.
“Defense” has much more positive connotations than “war” and it is much easier to advocate for “defense spending” in order to “defend” America by bombing hither, thither, and yon. In contrast, “war” is a much more honest term that encompasses defensive measures alongside everything else. And there can be little doubt that for decades most of the actions undertaken by the Department of Defense have fallen under the “everything else” classification.
America’s foreign policy went off the rails decades before the Department of War was turned into the Department of Defense in 1947, arguably beginning in earnest with the annexation of the Philippines following the Spanish American War in 1898. But for over a century prior, American foreign policy, under the Department of War, more or less managed to adhere to the Monroe Doctrine and the principles laid out in Washington’s Farewell Address and John Quincy Adams’ Monsters to Destroy speech.
During this time, “words accorded to reality” a great deal more than they do today and “things,” namely defending the American homeland, were much more “successfully accomplished” than in the days of the Orwellian Department of Defense, where “defense” came to mean anything and everything, and therefore nothing. For decades, American military might has flopped around from one disaster to another, spending untold trillions of dollars and immeasurable American blood while doing little that actually defends America.
Given the Trump administration’s less-than-thrilling foreign policy track record thus far, there is little reason to suspect that merely changing the name of the world’s largest bureaucracy will immediately transform our America-first foreign policy to one of realism and restraint. However, it would be unwise, following in Confucius’ disciples’ footsteps, to dismiss the significance of this rectification as being “out of touch with reality.”
As Ludwig von Mises explains in Theory and History, “A language is not simply a collection of phonetic signs. It is an instrument of thinking and acting. Its vocabulary and grammar are adjusted to the mentality of the individuals whom it serves.” In other words, the language that we use to communicate is inextricably tied to our thinking process about the realities that such words concern.
As a fundamental building block to understanding reality itself, and furthermore to engage in the inter-personal communication that makes social life possible, the words we use are truly of essential importance.
Given the vast sea of lies and euphemisms that have infected American society and institutions, especially in government and business, a return to reality for something as significant as the Department of War demonstrates that perhaps not all is lost. Perhaps a return to less outright lying in official communications is possible after all.
A small ray of the light of truth has burst onto the scene, and as Václav Havel wrote in The Power of the Powerless:
As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness.
Let us hope that this small rectification of a name portends more rectification, and therefore truth and ultimately order, to come.
