Daily Herald opinion: Our national identity: Increasing imperialistic tendencies require Congress to assert itself into foreign policy

As famously observed 2,000 years ago, there have been wars and rumors of wars throughout human history and there probably will be for the rest of our time on the planet. That somber expectation notwithstanding, many historians point to the seven decades since the end of World War II as the longest period since at least the end of the Roman Empire without major armed conflicts between or among global powers.

Regional conflicts, of course, are still common and even among the most powerful countries, dangerous tensions erupt. But they have generally been contained by a faith in and practice of careful diplomacy — notably the core strength of NATO — combined with international cooperation and an awareness of the catastrophic risk in a nuclear age.

All that has steadily been eroding during the Peace Presidency of Donald Trump, who once wooed voters with a vow to avoid “forever wars” and now seems eager to engage in armed assault wherever he can devise a justification.

Then on Monday, comes his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, with a promise to expect more. Indeed, Miller stated all but categorically in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that pre-World War I imperial tension is the natural order of the world and qualifies a nation of power to exert its strength wherever it considers to have an interest.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he said.

He was talking about the Trump administration’s policy toward, in the immediate instance, Venezuela, and in the future, Greenland.

Greenland.

Reportedly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been trying to calm Congress with assurances that Trump intends to try to buy rather than conquer the island. But that was certainly not the deputy chief of staff’s message. Nor that of White House Press Secretary Pam Bondi, who said Tuesday in a statement that, “of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander in chief’s disposal.”

Imagine that American policymakers are seriously considering and steadfastly refusing to rule out military takeover of a NATO ally, and you get a chilling insight into concerns we expressed less than a month ago about “a major shift from a view of the world as democracy-vs-autocracy to a view where, we fear, power rules somewhat indiscriminately and with flagrant self-interest.”

We have arrived, in short, at a perilous time in American history, and we have been brought here not just by a president and his close advisers who harbor a world view based on military aggression over diplomatic cooperation, but by a Congress that tolerates and enables acts that only a few years ago would have been anathema to almost every American.

Make no mistake, indiscriminately destroying a sovereign nation’s vessels and seizing its leader based on presumptions they are involved in the drug trade is something beyond killing an international terrorist who planned and ordered the murder on American soil of thousands of our people. Nor does it equate even to the — itself questionable — invasion of a foreign country under the belief (mistaken as it turned out) that it was developing nuclear weapons. But it is, in fact, an extension of those actions and of questionable presidential exercises of deadly force that extend through practically every administration of the last half century.

And now it has reached the point of potentially destroying a NATO alliance that has provided a foundation for global stability unparalleled in history This new level of assertive executive power has been reached because Congress decades ago abdicated its constitutionally established responsibility to authorize acts of war, and it has steadily grown more docile and acquiescent with each month that has passed during the second Trump presidency.

Since at least the Second World War and perhaps long before, it has been a dominant theme of peace-loving governments in general and the American people in particular that invasion of foreign lands to assume control of their people or resources, deciding to “run” a less powerful country, to use Trump’s vernacular, or engaging in armed conflict without knowledge, consent or influence from the people’s representatives amounted to unacceptable autocratic behavior in direct conflict with our democratic principles.

In a Dec. 14 editorial on the implications of the president’s new National Security Strategy, we sought a broader, serious conversation about the trend we are seeing. Actions of the past several weeks, culminating in the virtual takeover of Venezuela and open talk of something not terribly dissimilar involving a NATO ally emphasize the urgency of such conversations — and of our leaders in Congress, especially, getting involved to extend the course of our national identity and the world’s natural order beyond two millennia of perpetual imperial conflict.