In a striking speech this week, Secretary Pete Hegseth — now head of the newly renamed Department of War — addressed a rare gathering of top military officials in Quantico, Virginia. He laid out his vision for reform and announced directives aimed at restoring the fighting spirit of the U.S. armed forces.
Hegseth began by explaining why the Department of Defense has once again become the Department of War. “To ensure peace, we must prepare for war,” he said, reviving the older and more honest title abandoned in 1948.
That explanation drew from the Roman writer Vegetius, who coined the maxim si vis pacem, para bellum — if you want peace, prepare for war. But Hegseth’s reasoning also echoes St. Augustine, the Christian bishop whose writings helped shape just war theory.
In a letter written in 418 A.D. to the Roman general Boniface, Augustine commended the nobility of military service. He reminded him — and us — that the proper object of war is peace.
“Peace should be the object of your desire,” Augustine wrote. “War should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace. For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained.”
He concluded with a hard truth for every soldier: “Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.”