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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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The fact that this is even something Congress needed to consider doing is crazy.
The main purpose of the US military is deterrence. Soldiers and tanks and aircraft carriers do their job by being so intimidating that no one starts a major war. (They're still useful if a war does start, but winning a war is far worse than not having to fight it in the first place.) A major component of this system of deterrence is the presentation of an indivisible united front between us and our allies. Simply having the President publicly question the dedication of the USA to NATO did billions of dollars worth of damage - compare how much better it would be to have had Trump keep his mouth shut than it would be to build an extra carrier battle group. (Arguments about who pays how much can be held in secret.)
The fun part is that they can pass a law to prevent Trump from officially leaving NATO, but they can't pass a law to make him actually honor the alliance if a war does start, and they especially can't pass a law to make the enemies of the USA believe that he would honor the alliance.
I was under the impression that while one function of the the US military is being a deterrence army, they also regularly invade countries around the globe in wars of aggression?
Eh, sorta. As far as full scale invasion is concerned, off the top of my head, it's happened three times since WWII (Iraq twice, Afghanistan once). There are many other cases that aren't really invasions, but are terrible in their own right.
Korea and Vietnam were both cases of the country's government being split, and one of the factions asked the US to intervene. Then there are a hundred conflicts all over where the US was involved in some capacity--usually material support or training, but not combat. Those smaller support actions are where the really bad stuff is. Most of South America was completely fucked up in that way. The US could pretend not to be involved while one faction of locals commits crimes against humanity.
It's not to deter countries from starting wars, it's to deter countries from stopping using the dollar as a reserve currency. The wars of aggression come with that.
Cries in Gaddafi
Congress will declare the state of war which is their constitutional power to do so.
He's still the commander of the military. Unless they actually impeach him there is no check.