Many do.
Here is why:
Trump’s Iran war fits an old US pattern
The story of US overseas military engagement arguably begins in 1898, when President William McKinley led the country into the Spanish-American War.
What was couched as a humanitarian effort to liberate Cuba from Spanish rule quickly morphed into America’s first major ‘imperial’ venture abroad. In its aftermath, the United States acquired the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, marking its transition from a continental to a global power.
The declaration of war has long been a point of contention between the legislature and the executive.
While, in principle, the US Congress holds greater authority and places formal constraints on such decisions, in practice the President’s prerogative powers have frequently prevailed in matters of foreign policy and the use of force abroad.
In the case of the 1898 war, Congress formally declared war, and public opinion was overwhelmingly supportive, driven by nationalist sentiment and sensationalist journalism.
Yet even in victory, tensions surfaced.
The subsequent Philippine-American War exposed the contradictions of American expansion, generated domestic opposition, and gave rise to the Anti-Imperialist League. The United States had won a war, but in doing so had also inherited the burdens of empire.
Such a pattern — of rapid entry, initial unity, and eventual domestic friction — would recur across US involvement in foreign wars throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.
When President Woodrow Wilson took the United States into World War I in 1917, he cast it as a moral crusade to “make the world safe for democracy”. Congress declared war, and public opinion rallied decisively.
Yet the aftermath bred disillusionment.
The Senate did not ratify Wilson’s bid for the League of Nations, and the United States withdrew into a phase of strategic restraint, often described as the inter-war period of isolationism.
World War II was a decisive turning point. President Franklin D Roosevelt led the United States into direct involvement in the war after this policies provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, with Congress offering near-unanimous approval and public support running overwhelmingly high.
The war holds added significance because, by its end, the United States, already the most materially powerful country in the world, had shed any remaining restraint about its global role.
It openly embraced the ambition of global leadership, reshaped the international system to its advantage, and spearheaded the institutionalisation of a global security and financial architecture, often described as the ‘rules-based order’.
The Korean War, the first Cold War theatre, was the initial test of America’s new global role.
President Harry Truman committed US forces without a formal declaration of war, framing the intervention as a United Nations action. Congress largely acquiesced, setting a lasting precedent for expanded presidential war-making authority. Public support was strong at first, but waned as the conflict stalemated.
The Korean War also introduced the concept of ‘limited war’, where, unlike in ‘total wars’ such as World War II, objectives were restricted by the risk of escalation, exacerbated by the nuclear dynamic between the US and the Soviet Union.
Vietnam was the most dramatic illustration of this dynamic. Presidents from John F Kennedy to Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon steadily escalated US involvement to support South Vietnam against the North.
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964 granted sweeping authority without a formal declaration of war. Congress and the public initially backed the effort, shaped by Cold War fears of communist expansion. But as casualties rose and victory remained elusive, opposition surged, fuelling protests, political divisions, and social unrest.
In response, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to reclaim oversight. The US withdrawal and the fall of Saigon in 1975 marked a profound strategic and psychological setback, underscoring how prolonged wars can fracture domestic consensus and force recalibration.
The impact of the Vietnam War was witnessed in the 1991 Gulf War under President George H W Bush, which reflected restraint and wariness of long-drawn wars. It had congressional authorisation, broad international backing, and a clear objective: expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
The swift victory restored American confidence and reinforced perceptions of military superiority.
However, the complex dynamic in Iraq, and America’s strategic presence and objectives in West Asia, would generate strategic dilemmas that would reveal themselves in the years to come.
11 September 2001 ushered in a new era of American warfare. President George W Bush launched military operations in Afghanistan and later Iraq under broad congressional Authorizations for Use of Military Force.
Public support was overwhelming initially, but both wars became prolonged and complex. Afghanistan evolved into the longest war in US history, while Iraq drew controversy over intelligence failures and strategic missteps.
Over time, public opinion shifted, and these conflicts, dubbed America’s ‘forever wars’, came to symbolise the limits of nation-building and counterinsurgency.
They also emerged as markers of ‘imperial overstretch’, fuelling debates on restraint in overseas commitments and the need to prioritise nation-building at home.
Subsequent presidents — Barack Obama, Donald Trump 1.0, and Joe Biden — sought to scale back US military commitments while preserving global influence. Even as large deployments declined, drone strikes, limited interventions, and security partnerships persisted.
The 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan symbolically ended two decades of war but raised questions about American credibility and strategic endurance. It brought into relief a recurring feature of great power behaviour: reframing disengagement from protracted conflicts as strategic recalibration rather than defeat.
Fast forward to 2026 and the West Asian imbroglio. Senate Republicans have repeatedly blocked efforts to limit Donald Trump’s war authority in Iran as operations approach the 60-day threshold under the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
The law requires presidents to end military action within 60 days, extendable by 30 more only through formal certification to ensure the safe withdrawal of troops, unless Congress authorises the use of force.
Much as in earlier wars, presidential decisions are driving escalation in the Iran conflict, while Congress remains divided and US public opinion skews negative.
The justifications offered for war — deterrence, credibility, regional stability — mirror past conflicts, even as the risks of escalation, economic strain, and prolonged engagement start stirring internal unrest.
At the core lies a structural tension: Congress holds the power to declare war, but presidents, as commanders-in-chief, often control its conduct.
Public opinion remains an influential, if not decisive, force. American wars, thus, tend to follow a familiar cycle: crisis-driven unity, early optimism, mounting frustration during prolonged engagement, and eventual withdrawal as support declines.
While war fatigue may not trigger immediate policy shifts, it steadily constrains leadership.
Military setbacks, rising costs, and casualties fuel calls for retrenchment within the American polity.
Great powers expand commitments to sustain influence but eventually face resource limits and domestic resistance.
The question today is not whether the United States will continue to engage abroad; history suggests it will.
The question is how the US balances global ambition with domestic pressures. Military setbacks seldom end great power status, but force reassessment.
Such reassessment and recalibration, resulting from political, economic, and strategic strains, will have consequences far beyond the war zones, altering the broader balance of power in the international system.
Trump's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz raises a number of questions. These questions are, of course, part of a larger discussion about war.
The media tends to dwell on practical and strategic issues. News reports focus on weapons, tactics and targeting.
Practical questions about the attacks on Iran include: How long it will last? How much will it cost? How will it impact the global economy?
Trump ordered a blockade; one wonders how the U.S. Navy will enforce it. Will ships be boarded or sunk?
But practical conversations ignore whether the war and the blockade are justified.
The conversation begins with the justification of the entire war. The just war theory maintains that war can be justified when a legitimate authority pursues a just cause with right intentions, and when war is a proportional last resort.
With regard to Iran, the cause and aims are unclear.
Depending on which social media post you see, Trump's inconsistent and contradictory justifications include nuclear non-proliferation and "liberating" Iran';s people.
Iran's people proved in 1979 that they know how to liberate themselves without American assistance - in fact, in spite of it.
- Other excuses have included "regime change". No one knows which wild theory Trump will conjure up next as he seeks to make his unprovoked aggression seem necessary.
- Historians tend to agree that sneak attacks are difficult to justify. Should the dogs of war be unleashed against merely speculative future threats?
There are legal limits to what can be done in war, and the United States was instrumental in forging those limits.
Most obviously, international law states that it is wrong to bomb noncombatants and destroy civilian infrastructure. Civilians should be spared.
That’s why the threats Donald Trump makes against Iran are illegal.
The president threatened to destroy Iran's civilization. All of it.
Trump declared, “a whole civilization will die tonight.”
The president’s defenders suggest he was only pretending to be a madman in making those threats.
But the “madman strategy” is pernicious.
Genocidal threats open the door to dehumanization and justification of mass murder, which are serious concerns in blockades.
Trump's blockade of an entire coastline includes incound ship laden with food and medicine.
With the prior threat already on the table, the worry about genocide is not irrelevant.
Blockades and siege warfare are morally problematic because these strategies harm noncombatants. If children cannot get food and medicine, the moral problem is obvious, to anyone but a Trump supporter.
