The United States is a global superpower, and its military trains for war in every domain. During my years as a military educator, I saw American officers wrestle with any number of scenarios designed to challenge their thinking and force them to adapt to surprises. One case we never considered, however, was how to betray and attack our own allies. We did not ask what to do if the president becomes a threatening megalomaniac who tells one of our oldest friends, Norway, that because the Nobel Committee in Oslo refuses to give him a trophy, he no longer feels “an obligation to think purely of Peace” and can instead turn his mind toward planning to wage war against NATO.
As my colleague Anne Applebaum wrote today, Donald Trump’s threatening message to the Norwegian prime minister should, in any responsible democracy, force the rest of the U.S. political system to act to control him. The president is talking about an invasion that would require “citizens of a treaty ally,” as she put it, “to become American against their will,” all because he “now genuinely lives in a different reality.” And yet neither Congress nor the sycophants in the White House seem willing to stop him.
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Congress has largely looked the other way for some 50 years as far as war powers go (along with a lot more of its exclusive power). Worse yet while there is text to say that the executive will execute the laws created by congress, they largely pick and choose the laws they enforce and to what degree, which is constantly ignored (especially when the executive and majority in congress share the same party).
We now have a situation where the executive sees how loose the responsibility and accountability congress wields, and now decides to violate the norms and there no standard for congress to follow. Congress all seem to be looking at each other shrugging, while rank and file military see nothing in a future of pain and loss for standing up to do the right thing because ultimately nobody has thier backs.