WASHINGTON, DC – Donald Trump is indicating a new willingness to go to war.

Literally, in the case of his newfound determination to smash the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren De Aragua. And rhetorically, with his announcement that the Department of Defense is to revert to its former name: the Department of War.

Trump’s decision to formalise the Pentagon’s designation as the country’s war-fighting operation is a classic Trump re-branding operation. Calling it a “better name”, he indicated last month that “we’re going to have to go back to it”, 76 years after the name was abandoned in favour of the less bellicose, post-war focus on defence.

But the renaming is also the logical conclusion of Trump’s insistence that America’s 1.3 million men and women on active duty are to be “war fighters”

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