The United States has been in a bunch of military actions since World War II, from big ones (Korea and Viet Nam) to embarrassingly-small ones (Grenada). But Congress hasn’t issued a formal declaration of war since WWII. It seems to me that the Constitutional requirement that only Congress may declare war was intended as a means of preventing adventurism by the Commander-in-Chief – another example of “checks and balances.” But it has apparently gone out the window.
I guess I can see it when the enemy is some shadowy group of terrorists with no unified national identity. But recently we went to war against Iraq – the government, the army, the **nation ** of Iraq – without a formal declaration of war. Why didn’t Congress make one? It authorized spending the money; it obviously wanted a war; it just didn’t declare one. Why not?
Two reasons: First, there’s generally conceived to be a political difference between what can be termed general, total, or unlimited war, and limited war. General war is when a country mobilizes all of its power (military, industrial, political) to a conflict. World War II is a good example. An authorization for a use of force (which was passed for Vietnam and both Iraq wars) implies a lesser degree of mobilization, and sometimes can be intended to constrain the President in his warmaking power. The political idea of mobilizing our entire country to a war footing to take on, for example, Afghanistan, just strikes many as being politically out of scope.
Second, in a point related to the first, a declaration of war triggers a number of special powers that the President may only claim during times of declared war (but not limited, authorized war). For example, if Congress were to declare war on Iraq, the President could mobilize as many National Guardsmen for as long as he pleased. Under a use of force resolution, the President is statutorily limited to mobilizing 1 million reservists for not more than 2 years active duty. If Congress does not want to give the President these various and sundry powers of which there are dozens, then it would not wish to pass a declaration of war.
Oh, and there’s not much to the idea that the Constitution forces Congress either to declare or not declare war. An authorization for a use of military force (as opposed to a declaration of war) has been a device used by Congress for more than 200 years. It is not in any way a recent invention.
Really, no one declares war anymore. It’s not just the USA.
And, for example in the case of Afganistan- there was no one to declare war* on*. Pretty much no nation recognized the Taliban as the legit government of Afganistan, thus we were really intervening in a civil war in a nation in chaos.
As has been said above, Congress authorizing the president to go to war without a declaration of war is not a new thing. IIRC, we fought the French in the 1790’s without a declaration of war, and the Barbary states (present-day Libya) in the early 1800s under similar circumstances, I believe.
Also, there could be political reasons not to declare war in a number of these cases, from an international standpoint. The US didn’t declare war on North Korea or China because it wasn’t a war between the US and the North Koreans. The United Nations was fighting the North Koreans (later the Chinese too) with substantial American support. Thus, the US didn’t declare war in Korea for the same reason that the state of Texas never declared war on Germany in WWII.
To put it in the context of the Iraq War (hopefully without overly politicizing this discussion) one might say the US didn’t declare war on Iraq because we were attacking under the auspices of enforcing a UN resolution.
Yep, a rather interesting, if brief, chapter in US Naval history. In a class I took a few semesters ago (the class being, as it happens, History of US Sea Power), the professor mentioned the funny politics that existed between the US and the UK at the time.
We were most definitley not allied with the Brits. We were most definitely not even FRIENDS with them. The fact that our ships often sailed from their bases, used British supplies, and coordinated patrols with British naval ships (the UK was also at war with France at the time, as they often were) was irrelevant, as we still were not friends with them. :rolleyes: In any case, contrary to what some folks might think, the fledgeling US government and the French Revolutionary government didn’t seem to like eachother that much.
It IS kind of funny to try and keep track of periods of US History where we liked the French, and periods of history where we didn’t like the French. They seem to alternate every 20 or 30 years. Must be a generational thing. Just watch, in 15 or 20 years our two countries will be leaping to eachother’s sides against some nasty foe or a pain in the ass more-or-less ally.
The French folks who helped out during the Revolutionary War were of course royalists – the French monarchy, which obviously had good geopolitical reasons for wanting the British to lose their colonies. But when they were overthrown, the Americans lost their friends in power there.
In addition, pretty much every monarchy in Europe was anxious to suppress the French Revolutionary government, because they were afraid they’d be next.
Actually the US government was sending millions to the Taliban government ostensibly to curtail the supply of opiates leaving the country. The people we could’ve declared war on (and didn’t) were cashing our checks…
I think the reason we don’t have declarations of war any longer is that is allows Congresspeople, by and large a craven lot, to have wiggle room when the feces hits the fan. They vote to give the executive branch warmaking power and then wash their hands of the business Pontius Pilate-style. “Hey, I voted for the President to make some decisions based upon intelligence… hey look over there a puupy!” The US Constitution is pretty clear that Congress has warmaking powers, but we seem to avoid a lot of that document these days.
Which of course muddled diplomacy between the Americans and France, because they owed the Royals for their own independence, but there was a lot of pro-revolutionary sentiment in the US since they’d of course gone through the same thing themselves, and in many ways the French Revolution was inspired by the American.
Of course, by 1798, any idealism about the French Revolution had long been wiped out by Robespierre and the Committee, so war made sense.
