The Trump administration’s “Department of War” rebranding effort looks even more foolish than it initially appeared, thanks to an eye-watering price tag on the horizon. “President Donald Trump’s directive to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War could cost as much as $2 billion,” NBC News reports, citing “six people with knowledge of the potential cost.”
Trump’s efforts to change the nation’s foreign policy ethos never required a potentially multibillion-dollar name change.
The name change, which has to be approved by Congress, “would require replacing thousands of signs, placards, letterheads and badges, as well as any other items at U.S. military sites,” according to NBC News. All new department letterhead and signage alone could cost about $1 billion, the sources said, and less visible changes such as rewriting digital code to update and redirect websites could also contribute to costs. “The Department of War is aggressively implementing the name change directed by President Trump, and is making the name permanent,” a Pentagon spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “A final cost estimate has not been determined at this time due to the Democrat shutdown furloughing many of our critical civilians.”
As I’ve explained previously, rebranding the Department of Defense to the Department of War should be understood as a change in more than name. It captures the Trump administration’s effort to reconfigure U.S. global hegemony, moving away from pursuing the interests of the conventional liberal international order and moving toward using force — or the threat of it — to pursue Trump’s political and geostrategic interests.
But to be clear: Trump’s efforts to change the nation’s foreign policy ethos never required a potentially multibillion-dollar name change. Why not let his foreign policy speak for itself? Optics are everything for our former reality television star president, who also once owned the Miss Universe Organization (and previously co-owned it with NBC). Well, glitzy optics. While the pain of the government shutdown played out before him for six weeks, the president ignored Democrats’ demands to extend health care subsidies and argued to the Supreme Court against delivering food aid to low-income Americans. Trump instead busied himself with the minute details of renovating the White House and throwing a Gatsby-themed party.
But the huge amounts of money required to change the name of this massive agency also underscore the ruse of Trump’s emphasis on government efficiency. Surely nobody who cared about trimming costs in government would even consider spending so many taxpayer dollars on letterheads and signage. That $2 billion would’ve covered most of the gap in money required to cover all of the November SNAP benefits that the Trump administration said it lacked the money for. Or $2 billion to cover most of the money that Trump is redirecting away from housing programs that help mitigate homelessness. But, of course, those are things the president doesn’t see as part of making America great again.
