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.
*🎁 link
take your pick:
deployment to Minneapolis (under what trump himself has called an invasion.) (don’t believe his lies. the only unrest here is brought by federal agents violating the shit out of our rights.)
initiating what is certainly an act of war in Venezuela.
Same for Denmark should that happen.
using the military to engage civilian ships in Venezuelan waters with lethal force rather than using the cost guard for police actions.
Also to your specific example, yes, it is. Constitutionally, the president is not allowed to initiate wars without approval by congress. This has been pissed away for longer than I’ve been alive, using ‘authorizations’ but it’s still largely there. (Korea, Vietnam. Iraq/Afghanistan, etc.) the only currently still active war authorization is related to the 2002 authorization meant to go after the people behind 9/11, and any attempt to link that to Venezuela is going to be a lie. (never mind Greenland and the rest of NATO.)
So that’s illegal but the soldiers followed those orders and killed civilians. I don’t see how that’s a good look for what’s coming up.