War

I find myself more and more displeased with President Obama for the military action in Libya. I have enough idealistic Wilsonian to understand the motives, but initiating this action without Congressional authority certainly violated the spirit - if not the letter - of the Constitution. I realise that sometimes military decisions need to be made on short notice, and that, as commander in chief, the President has to be able to act on short notice.

But, and it's a critical but to me, Congressional approval should be obtained as soon as reasonable to continue the action. And approval is what is needed, not "consultation", which is all this administration has offered. The Constitution does not require "consultation" before going to war, but states that only Congress can "declare war". And playing games with the difference between "declaring war" and initiating some other kind of active military action is just Orwellian.

That all being said, when should the United States be willing to initiate a "war of choice (i.e., a war where we or one of our treaty allies are not attacked or subject to immanent attack)? I can see several conditions that should be met.

First, that target of the action must be preforming soem action that justifies military action. So a trade disagreement would not typically be a "casus belli".

Second, there is some clear vital, or at least important, interest of the Uited States involved. Military action to stop the massacres in Rwanda would be difficult to justify under this condition.

Third, a viable political case can be made. This is, to me, the main reason we didn't take more aggressive military action in response to North Vietnam's violation of the treaty removing US forces from South Vietnam.

And, fourth, but certainly not last, it is a situation where U.S. military power can be effetively applied at a cost in time and resources that is reasonable, given the 1st and 2nd conditions. Again, Rwanda is a situation where this condition would be hard to meed.