On September 5, ultra-reactionary President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving the Department of Defense a “secondary name” as the Department of War. The name change, which is expected to cost millions of dollars to enact, signifies US imperialism’s more aggressive posturing amid its declining strength.
“This name sharpens the Department’s focus on our own national interest and our adversaries’ focus on our willingness and availability to wage war to secure what is ours,” the executive order says. In other words, the name change speaks to claims of imperialist entitlement backed by the threat of war.
The US Department of Defense was originally named the Department of War, and saw the name change to the DoD in 1947 following the second imperialist world war. The change in name then coincided with the US becoming the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower following the devastation of the European and Japanese imperialists in the war, and its increasing projection of “soft power” through semi-colonial domination to consolidate and defend its hegemony.
The current name change to the Department of War correlates with the demands of US imperialism to increasingly resort to naked aggression as its hegemony is increasingly under fire from national liberation movements and is increasingly in contention with the other imperialist powers.
This is evident in its latest military deployments to the Caribbean and Latin America under the guise of the War on Drugs. Just days before the rebranding, the might of the US Navy was directed at sinking a fishing vessel and murdering 11 individuals onboard in international waters off the coast of Venezuela—a story that the President has gone to great lengths to laud, and the veracity of which continues to be under question.
In his reasoning for the name change, Trump explains that the US has not won any wars since World War 2. The top imperialist representative explains this is due to “wokeness”, that is, both the reason for the name change to the Department of Defense and the failure to win wars since.
“We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between,” Trump said during signing of the executive order, continuing: “And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense. So we’re going Department of War.”
While Trump is correct that the US has failed to win any war since WW2—including the wars begun by Trump himself, such as the recent wars against Yemen and against Iran—the reason is found not in cultural shifts in the US, but in the increasing politicization and armed mobilization of the masses around the world in response to imperialist aggression, and in the fundamental degeneration of imperialism, which is plunged in economic crisis and beset on all sides. US imperialism is increasingly characterized by desperation, coupled with increased aggression and bombastic theatrics against the workers in the USA and the peoples of the world. Imperialism’s logic is to make trouble and lose again and again until it is swept from the face of the earth, while the people’s logic is to fight again and again until their victory.
In the face of these justified rebellions, while also being slowly outmaneuvered by competing imperialist powers, the US imperialists can only resort to more open aggression, which in turn will only hasten its decline. In typical Trumpian fashion, the bombast projects an image of strength to hide US imperialism’s fundamental decrepit weakness.
Image: Imperialist-in-Chief Donald Trump salutes during the military parade on the 250th anniversary of the US army in Washington DC on June 14. US Army photograph.
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