America’s infatuation with war turns challenges into conflicts

America and Americans are infatuated with war as a concept and a word. Otherwise, the word would not be in such universal use.  

While the last time America formally declared war was the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, no other state — not the Soviet Union, Russia or China — has gone to “war” as many times since then as has America. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq (twice) were based on resolutions or authorizations to use force.

The so-called “war on terror” is still ongoing. War drums are beating over Taiwan and a possible Chinese invasion. U.S. admirals and generals, while not predicting a war with China, are arguing to prepare for one. Both Houses of Congress seem in agreement with this assessment. And the House Select Committee on The Strategic Competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) played a war game on the Taiwan scenario. When did that last happen?

The U.S. has not been sparing in lesser uses of force, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the failed raid to free U.S. hostages in Iran, invading Grenada, capturing Panama’s president Manuel Noriega, deposing Muammar Gaddafi and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Perhaps that is one reason why video war games such as “Call of Duty” are multi-billion dollar businesses.

A succession of presidents relied on wartime analogies in putting that word to good use at home. Lyndon Johnson waged a “War on Poverty.” How many wars on drugs, crime, terror, diseases, illegal immigration and even Jimmy Carter’s “moral equivalent of war”— energy consumption — have been launched? How many have been won? And how much have these wars cost?

Donald Trump did not use the word “war.” But he did threaten North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong Un, with “fire and fury” before he “fell in love” with the dictator. President Joe Biden has not been immune to this. He argues that the conflict (i.e. a surrogate for war) of our time is between democracy and autocracy.

It is also interesting to ask why other countries have not declared war either abroad or domestically. In the Brexit debate, Brexiters did not call for a war on the European Union. One wonders if the U.S. were in that position whether it might have. 

What makes America different, and will this trend continue?

The word “war” means crisis and urgency. And in a crisis, it is easier to mobilize political support. War also allows using simple sentences or phrases that can be accepted as aphorisms or truths and thus not challenged. Who would oppose a war on drugs, crime, terror or fill-in-the-blank? And therein lies a double danger applicable to domestic and foreign wars. The first is that simplicity often leads to rushed and simplistic actions that are not well thought out.

The second virtually guarantees failure: the lack of knowledge and understanding of the war that is being fought. The war on poverty is one example. In the nearly six decades since it was passed in 1965, about $22 trillion dollars have been spent by the U.S. government. Yet the poverty rate has been about the same.

The war on drugs has been a bargain. Over the last 50 years, about $1 trillion dollars have been spent. Drug use is increasing beyond that which has become legal. And since 2000, drug overdose deaths have increased five times to over 106,000 last year.

As this column has pointed out, a flawed race to judgment got us wrongly engaged in too many wars and uses of force, with Vietnam, the second Iraq War and Afghanistan being the saddest examples. But even in Grenada in 1983, the Reagan administration invaded on the specious reason to protect U.S. students at the St. Georges Medical School who the operational commander Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf said were in no danger. The real reason was to halt Cubans from building a runway that was presumably intended to be used by the Soviet Union. However, the expansion was being made by a British firm with British funding to increase tourism. Being good capitalists, Plessey PLC sought the lowest bidder — Cuba.

The lesson is clear. Before crying wolf, be certain a wolf is present. Before declaring war, at home or abroad, make sure there is a real crisis. Otherwise, we know how this movie will end.

Harlan Ullman, Ph.D., is a senior advisor at Washington D.C.’s Atlantic Council and the prime author of the “shock and awe” doctrine. His 12th book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD:  How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” He can be reached on Twitter @harlankullman.