It’s been less than a week since the beginning of the war with Iran.
While the United States has not declared war on Iran, it has — along with Israel — killed its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, other government leaders and targeted high-priority military assets.
Iran in turn attacked Israel and other countries in the Middle East that host members of the U.S. armed forces by launching missiles and drones.
To a lot of people that would sound like a war, but according to our government, “Operation Epic Fury” is a military campaign, military operation or decisive action.
That leads many to ask, what really is a war?
Josh Rovner, an associate professor of international relations at American University in Washington, told WTOP, “There’s a lot of different ways to define a war.”
“If you are a political scientist, you can have some operational definition. If you care about the law, then you go through a formal process, be it a declaration or an authorization to use force,” Rovner said. “If you’re indeed participating in a war or the target of violence, you don’t care so much about that at all.”
To them, he said, “war is simply military violence for some political objective.”
“If you are in the midst of a shooting war, the legalists don’t really matter to you,” Rovner said.
It’s been 84 years since Congress last declared war. In that time, the U.S. has had military conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice and Afghanistan. That does not count conflicts in Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo along with Syria and Yemen.
Why has it been so long since Congress has declared war even when we’ve sent tanks, jets, ships and the men and women of the U.S. military to fight in these foreign lands?
Rovner believes it’s because “Congress has offloaded a lot of its responsibilities in foreign policy to the executive branch.”
“If you are a congressperson, your priorities are local and regional. They’re typically not International,” Rovner said. “You are working for local political goals. International politics is usually outside of your primary focus.”
Rovner pointed out that “Congress has been less interested in formally declaring war,” instead authorizing the use of military force, including against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban right after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.
While he said “Congress has had political reasons not to get deeply involved,” there have been times — like at the end of the Vietnam War — they pushed back against the executive branch.
“Congress, and especially the Senate, was so fed up with what the United States had been doing that it passed the War Powers Act in 1973 as a way of trying to claw back some congressional power and constrain the presidency,” Rovner explained.
History did not repeat itself on Wednesday as the Senate voted down a Democratic measure to limit President Donald Trump in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Why should we care if Congress does or does not declare war when we attack another country?
“First big reason that you want to have a declaration or an authorization is you want the debate. You want people to be forced to take a position and explain why,” Rovner said.
The second reason, according to Rovner, is “restoring the rule of law.”
“The idea that policy decisions are not simply decided on a whim, and policy decisions must go through a formal process,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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