CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THE UNITED STATES MAY WAGE WAR

The forefathers thought they had this topic covered when they granted the exclusive right to declare war to Congress.  Unfortunately, it hasn't worked worth a damn; there was an entire decade of shooting in the 1960's and 70's that left 60,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese dead without Congress having to declare squat.  Clearly, an amendment to the Constitution is needed to delineate exactly when the United States can justifiably attack other sovereign states and when members of our government are acting wholly without authority.

I haven't worked this all out yet, so I cannot provide a complete suggested text for this amendment.  I would hope that it would significantly limit the authority to declare war, as opposed to the current situation where a President can drag us into a war whenever he feels his approval ratings need a boost.  For example, part of this amendment could read like this:

The United States shall not attack another sovereign state unless one of the following has occurred:

If every country abided by these same restrictions, there would never be any more wars!  That, in my humble opinion, should be a guiding principle behind any country's policy towards war: is this the kind of policy that will result in war, or is this the kind of policy that will avoid war when it can possibly be avoided?

By "public treaty", I mean as opposed to secret alliances.  A country should know they are attacking an ally of the United States.  I see no justifiable reason for alliances to be secret; if countries agree to come to each others' defense if attacked, then the world should know about it.

Regarding that first condition, the amendment should clearly spell out what is meant by "the United States".  I presume it would include the states and territories, plus all the U.S. embassies worldwide.  It might also include any U.S.-registered vessel on the high seas -- or perhaps only within U.S. territorial waters.  It might include U.S.-registered aircraft over foreign lands, or it might not.  It might include manned and/or unmanned U.S. satellites in earth orbit, or it might not.  It might include military and/or civilian persons travelling abroad, or it might not.

The first three restrictions have the effect of absolutely preventing the United States from getting embroiled in another country's internal disputes.  This would effectively prevent the U.S. from helping some poor downtrodden people overthrow a tyrant.  That is as it should be; it should not be up to the U.S. to decide what other countries' leaders are in need of deposing.  If external influence is called for, it should be the United Nations calling for it -- which is where the fourth condition comes in.

The problem, of course, is that differentiating between internal struggles and conflicts between countries is always problematical.  If it was Vietnam, it was an internal dispute -- but if it was North Vietnam and South Vietnam, then it was one country attacking another.  In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Saddam Hussein insisted it was an internal affair on the grounds that Kuwait was once part of Iraq and was unjustified in declaring itself a sovereign nation.  The Balkans are a constant source of examples; are all the disputes internal matters of Yugoslavia, or is it Serbia attacking Bosnia and Croatia or vice versa or whoever?  And in the Middle East there are some nations without formal boundaries laid out in the soil, since many of the peoples are nomadic and therefore consider groups of people as nations rather than particular tracts of land.

Ideally, such issues should be addressed in the proposed amendment, giving government as little wiggle room as possible to finagle a situation to further their own ends.  Having nations recognized by countries other than the U.S. would be good; recognized by the United Nations would be ideal.  If there's a public treaty involved, it should obviously spell out clearly who the treaty is with; this might provide some flexibility in allowing the U.S. to defend peoples whose sovereignty is in some doubt, but it probably should have some restrictions added in so a President can't sign a treaty with a half dozen drunks in an alley somewhere and use that agreement to start dropping nukes.

Another key issue is speed of response.  When the forefathers wrote the U.S. Constitution, there is no way they could have foreseen a world in which humanity has the power to exterminate itself within a matter of hours.  They conceived of Congress getting together and discussing their options at length before making any weighty decisions about whether or not to declare war.  Today, the U.S. arguably cannot afford to wait to get most of the congressmen on their cell phones.

Or can they?  A situation made untenable by advances in technology may actually be resolved by advances in technology.  Presently, the President (who now has the de facto authority to conduct war because Congress has shirked that responsibility) carries around a briefcase that allows him to start WWIII from whereever he happens to be.  Why can't each and every congressman just as easily have a device by which they can authorize a declaration of war from whereever they are?  For that matter, might a cell phone work?  It might actually only require a central processor with secret authorization numbers and voice identification software to collect votes from a majority of Congress within a couple of minutes.

It might also be worth considering to include in this amendment conditions under which the U.S. would automatically be at war with another sovereign nation -- no declaration necessary.  This would lead to a distinction between actions that will bring the U.S. to a state of war and actions that might bring the U.S. to a state of war.  For example, a deliberate attack on the 50 states might automatically put the U.S. at war, while a deliberate attack on an embassy might require action by Congress to declare war.

Having war declared automatically under certain conditions would certainly address the speed of response issue.  The President would not need to ask Congress or anyone else for authorization to retaliate.  He would bear the responsibility of making sure the conditions leading to an automatic state of war were met, but in many cases -- such as the attack at Pearl Harbor or the attacks on the World Trade Center -- those conditions are obvious.


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