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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That is true but he didn’t declare war so he didn’t break the law. I WISH that we’re breaking the law but the fact is Congress has abdicated that responsibility and there is precedent to support the executive killing people with the use of the military.
We need Congress to stand up for itself and revoke the ability to abuse the use of the armed forces, by making laws that have consequences and enforce those consequences on any executive who breaks them, even if they’re in the majority’s party.