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Comment by giraffe_lady | Hacker News Reader

The parliamentary structure of the invader doesn't matter very much to the invaded. The assessment that the US is more likely to invade another country than china is not ridiculous anymore.

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The parliamentary structure does matter actually. There is no way for the president of the US to launch a war of conquest without approval of the US Congress (there are a limited set of military actions the president could authorize under the war powers act or an existing AUMF but they would not merit being described as an invasion). That would require majority support in both houses of Congress, which can barely hold together long enough to pass a spending a bill.

We'll see I guess and I hope you're right.

IMO the simplest and most realistic way to reconcile "democracies don't invade each other" and "the US might do invasions now" is that the US is not a democracy within this model.

It certainly still is in a technical sense that is sometimes useful. But by other metrics, like "can the president start an unpopular war with a steadfast former ally" uhhhhh. If the military refuses an elected president's order to invade is it still a democracy?

>If the military refuses an elected president's order to invade is it still a democracy?

Yes, because the military can't follow an illegal order, which is what a declaration of war without the approval of Congress would be. The military also can't spend money Congress hasn't authorized, even if the president tells them to.

>Yes, because the military can't follow an illegal order, which is what a declaration of war without the approval of Congress would be.

Congress hasn't actually declared a war since World War 2. The President sends troops wherever he likes, whenever he likes, for whatever purpose he likes and Congress rubber-stamps their approval after the fact, and they call it something other than a war.

You're correct that the military can't follow illegal orders, but what you're describing as an example of an illegal order is just the way the US military industrial complex works.

In every major conflict since the creation of the war powers act became law, an authorization for the use of military force was passed by Congress prior to major combat operations. This was true in the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq. There were cases where the president invoked the war powers act for short term deployments of forces, which did later result in Congress authorizing additional use of force (e.g. Lebanon), but nothing even close to the scale of invading a stable, sovereign state.

America had nothing close to a violent transfer of democratic power for a long time too. Not sure if you've noticed, but a lot of things are happening that "are unthinkable to happen" recently.

I don't think this argument is landing that strongly.

Yes, surely this is a norm that cannot possibly be changed.

When the people want a king, what's written in the rule book doesn't matter anymore.

It very much matters, because it's a reason an invasion happens at all, especially between peer states.

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-3134,0...

> The assessment that the US is more likely to invade another country than china is not ridiculous anymore

When was it ever?

Chinese want revenge on the west for colonizing them. You think they just forgot about 'century of humiliation' and just moved on? naive

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