There’s been a lot of chatter about war with Iran and the unlikely alliance between George Soros and the Koch brothers forming a new foreign policy think tank aimed at ending “forever war” policy.
Ending war, however, is harder to do when it never “officially” starts. Congress has officially declared war 11 times in the nation’s history. The last time was June 4, 1942, when Congress passed three different joint resolutions against Romania and Hungary. Before that, of course, were the declarations of war against Germany and Japan in 1941.
Despite the surrender of both Germany and Japan in 1945, the state of war between them and the United States did not end. Because there had been an official start to the war, there needed also to be an official end.
On July 9, 1951, President Harry S. Truman requested Congress formally end the state of war with Germany. It was in November 1951, nearly 10 years after officially declaring war, that hostilities formally came to an end. As for Japan, the official state of war did not end until 1952, when 49 nations signed the Treaty of San Francisco. It would be another four years before Japan and the Soviet Union formally ended the state of war between the two countries with the signing of the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956.
The idea of “forever wars” could be solved quickly enough sans the formation of a think tank. If Congress exercised its authority to begin a state of war officially, that body could also bring one to an official end.
