SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth^[1] and Air Force Gen. Dan Caine^[2], chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Puerto Rico on Monday as the U.S. steps up its military operations against drug cartels in the Caribbean.

The arrival comes more than a week after ships carrying hundreds of U.S. marines deployed to Puerto Rico for a training exercise.

Puerto Rico's Gov. Jenniffer González^[3] said Hegseth and Caine visited the U.S. territory to support those participating in the training.

“We thank President Trump and his administration for recognizing the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. national security and for their fight against drug cartels and the narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro,” González said.

Hegseth and Caine met with officials at the 156th Wing Muñiz Air National Guard Base in Carolina, a city just east of the capital, San Juan.

González said Hegseth spoke to nearly 300 soldiers at the base and thanked those he described as “American warriors” for their work.

The visit comes as the U.S. prepares to deploy 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for operations targeting drug cartels, a person familiar with the planning said Saturday. The person spoke only on condition of anonymity because information about the deployments has not been made public.

Tensions escalating 

On Sept. 2, Trump announced that the U.S. carried out a strike in the southern Caribbean^[4] against a vessel that had departed Venezuela and was suspected of carrying drugs. Eleven people were killed in the rare U.S. military operation in the Caribbean, with the president saying the vessel was operated by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua^[5].

While the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago praised the strike^[6] and said the U.S. should kill all drug traffickers “violently,” reaction from other Caribbean leaders was more subdued.

Barbadian Foreign Minister Kerrie Symmonds recently told The Associated Press^[7] that members of Caricom, a regional trade bloc, sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio asking for an open line of communication on developments, saying they want to avoid being surprised by any U.S. moves against Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Maduro on Friday vowed to defend Venezuela’s sovereignty^[8] and urged Trump to engage in dialogue to avoid conflict.

‘No to War’ 

The ongoing training of the Marines in Puerto Rico and the upcoming deployment of fighter jets have riled some in the U.S. territory, where the memories of the U.S. Navy using nearby islands as training ranges in the 1940s remains fresh, with the cleanup still ongoing^[9].

The April 1999 death of civilian security guard David Sanes Rodríguez then sparked large protests that eventually led to the U.S. military leaving the island. Rodríguez was killed after two 500-pound bombs were dropped near him as part of a training mission in Vieques.

On Sunday, dozens of people gathered at the National Guard base in Carolina to decry the increase in U.S. military on the island.

They held signs that said, “No to War” and “No to military bases in P.R.”

Organizers also warned against the use of Puerto Rico as a staging ground for potential U.S. military actions in the region.

“We denounce the existence of military bases in Puerto Rico,” said Sonia Santiago Hernández, founder of Mothers Against War.

González has dismissed those concerns, saying that Puerto Rico is playing an important role in Trump's ongoing fight against drug trafficking since it represents a U.S. border in the Caribbean.

Marines in Puerto Rico 

Siul López, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s National Guard, told the AP that a group of Marines currently training on the island are not tied to the U.S. maritime force recently deployed to Caribbean waters.

“One thing has nothing to do with another,” he said, adding that the training in Puerto Rico was pre-planned.

López said he did not know when exactly the training exercise in Puerto Rico was first planned but noted that such exercises are usually planned about a year in advance.

He said the training began on Aug. 31 but that he does not know when it will end, nor how many Marines are involved.

He said they are practicing amphibious maneuvers with a variety of vehicles.

Meanwhile, González said last week that she estimates more than 1,000 Marines were on the island.

The U.S. Marine Corps issued a statement on Aug. 31 noting that marines and sailors from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit would be conducting amphibious training and flight operations in southern Puerto Rico.

“The challenging terrain and tropical climate of Puerto Rico provides an ideal environment for the 22nd MEU to conduct realistic amphibious training and hone specialized skills such as patrolling, reconnaissance and survival techniques, ensuring a high level of readiness while forward deployed,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear how long Hegseth and Caine planned to stay in Puerto Rico, or if they planned to visit other sites while on the island.

López, the National Guard’s spokesman, declined to comment on specifics of the visit.

___

Associated Press reporter Will Weissert in Washington D.C. and AP videographer Alejandro Granadillo in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed.

The Trump administration is now referring to the Pentagon as the Department of War, even though the name has not legally changed.

On Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump signed an executive order giving the Department of Defense the “secondary name” of the Department of War – a workaround for the fact that a formal name change requires an act of Congress. The order also authorizes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use the “secondary title” of secretary of war.

The change aligns with the administration’s fixation on “lethality” and a “warrior ethos,” and exemplifies the more aggressive military posture it has been taking, such as its legally questionable military strike^[1] on alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and deployment of troops to U.S. cities^[2].

Read Next: Veterans Maintain Low Unemployment Rates Despite Hiring Slowdown in Weakening Economy^[3]

“We’re going Department of War,” Trump said during an Oval Office signing ceremony. “I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now.”

“It really has to do with winning,” Trump added later. “We should have won every war. We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or ‘wokey.’”

Standing alongside Trump, Hegseth said the name change signifies the department will focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct.”

Almost immediately after the signing, the rebrand began. The defense.gov website redirected to war.gov; Hegseth’s handle on the social media site X changed to @SecWar; and officials swapped the placard^[4] on Hegseth’s office door with one with the secretary of war title.

Trump and his allies have framed the rebrand as a return to the Defense Department’s historical name, but the Department of War was not the same agency as the Pentagon.

The Department of War was, essentially, the Department of the Army.

The Department of War was established as a Cabinet agency shortly after the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. Nine years later, the Department of the Navy was established as its own Cabinet agency.

Following World War II, then-President Harry Truman advocated for a sweeping reorganization of the country’s national security agencies, arguing the war demonstrated that the existing structure was incohesive and uncollaborative.

Congress approved the reorganization with the 1947 National Security Act. The law replaced the Department of War with the Department of the Army; created the Air Force; and established a new umbrella organization to oversee the departments of the Army, Air Force and Navy.

Originally called the National Military Establishment, the name of the umbrella agency was changed to the Department of Defense with a 1949 amendment to the National Security Act.

The choice of the word “defense” for the nascent department reflected changing attitudes about the morality of war, said Matthew Schmidt, associate professor of national security and political science at the University of New Haven.

“After Truman – of course, he was the only human being to order the dropping of nuclear weapons – everybody rapidly realized that you could not have a department of war, because the whole point of such a place was to defend against the outbreak of war because it was understood that no one could win in a nuclear war,” Schmidt said.

Conversely, reviving the Department of War name signals a return to a more aggressive mindset, he added.

“It signals a move back into an older, more insecure and frightening global order where the world and the peoples of the world, including the peoples of the United States, have to worry about warfare as an everyday function and not as something that should be rare, that should be defended against,” Schmidt said. “There's no reason that you can't have a Department of Defense that is focused on this idea of lethality and not call it a Department of Defense. You do not have to privilege this idea of aggressive war in order to privilege the idea of lethality. You can say the best way to defend my country, the best way to defend the Constitution, is to bulk up the lethality of my military.”

While Trump’s order does not formally rename the department, it directs Hegseth to come up with legislative proposals to do so.

Hegseth may not have much work to do on that front. Republicans have already introduced proposals in Congress to officially change the name to the Department of War.

As first reported by Military.com last week, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., filed an amendment^[5] to the annual defense policy bill to make the change. Steube and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also introduced a stand-alone bill this week to formalize the name change.

“‘But senator, don’t you often criticize needless foreign wars?’ Yes. I also oppose polite euphemisms that help politicians dodge responsibility for the deadly conflicts they often engineer and force you to pay for,” Lee posted on social media Tuesday about introducing the bill.

Still, it’s unclear whether such legislation could pass. Legislation in the Senate usually needs 60 votes to pass, and Democrats, who hold 47 seats in the upper chamber, are panning the idea.

“Only someone who avoided the draft would want to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War,” Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., a former naval aviator, posted on social media Thursday night.

Related: Trump Wants a Department of War. A House GOP Amendment Would Give Him One.^[6]