Nobody seems to actually officially declare war anymore. Is there any diplomatic or legal reason for this, or is it just the practice of a bygone age?
I don’t know much about the UK, but in the US, an official Declaration of War gives the President a whole bunch of extra powers, federalizes the railroads, militarizes the coastguard, and all sorts of other stuff. Since the US has only been involved in relatively small military engagements since WWII and now maintains a large all-volunteer army, most of these things are unnecessary. Congress is generally content to resolve to support the Commander in Chief in a particular military action if they want to go to war these days. A Declaration of War would probably only be used in a “total war” scenario, such as something similar to WWII.
I had a question about war crimes in another thread. The first person to reply gave a link to the Crimes of War Project. If you click on “Act of War”, this document claims that a first act of agression (declaration of war?) is in violation of the U.N. charter. I suppose that the defender in an aggressive situation could declare war.
While I understand that a first act of agression is in violation of the charter, the writer doesn’t make clear how this really relates to the declaration of war. It doesn’t say that a member can’t declare ware, but that they can’t act agressively first.
Perhaps someone else can clarify the link between these two.
The subject has been discussed in this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=169862
The best answer I saw there was the same as friedo’s – The U.S. Congress doesn’t declare war because they don’t want to see the militarization of America – they just authorize the military actions and release funds. I suspect that similar reasons apply in other countries. Also remember that actions by the U.N. do not require any declaration of war by its members.
That is very questionable. Check out Section 2© of the War Powers Resolution. It says nothing about UN authorization being a substitute for the Constitution.
The topic has been discussed so recently that I’ll close this thread and direct further comment to the previous thread, linked to above by Nametag.
bibliophage
moderator GQ