So Congress has done it. They have passed a war powers measure against Iran, a theatrical gesture that reeks of the same senatorial grandstanding that marked the late Republic before it collapsed into Augustus's embrace. The lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to remind the executive that the Constitution still exists, even as they fund the very machinery of perpetual conflict they claim to restrain. It is a farce, a beautiful, tedious farce.
Let us be clear: this measure is not about peace. It is about procedure. It is about the political class asserting its relevance in a system that has long since outsourced its soul to the security state. The Iran hawks will rage, the doves will preen, and the bombs will fall anyway. The United States, like Rome before it, has become addicted to the oxygen of foreign entanglements. Pull the plug on one front, and another crisis is manufactured to keep the legions marching.
And then there is Britain. Good, loyal, post-imperial Britain, clinging to the special relationship like a Victorian widow clutching her husband's portrait. We maintain our strategic alliance with the US, of course. What else would we do? Strike out on our own, perhaps, and pretend we are still the power that once painted the map red? No. We are a satellite, a well-dressed but ultimately dependent client state. Our role is to nod gravely as Washington blunders, to provide a base for aircraft and a flag for coalitions. It is undignified, but then dignity is a luxury of the truly sovereign.
This war powers measure, for all its constitutional window dressing, changes nothing. It is a symptom of a deeper decay: the intellectual and moral decadence of a ruling class that no longer believes in anything but its own survival. They debate, they posture, they pass resolutions. But the drone strikes continue, the sanctions persist, the tension with Iran escalates. We are sleepwalking into a crisis that no one truly desires yet no one can prevent. It is the tragedy of the late empire, where decisions are made not by statesmen but by bureaucrats and generals, where debate is a ritual rather than a deliberation.
The parallels to the late Victorian era are stark. Then, as now, a global hegemon found itself overextended, its economy teetering between industrial might and financial speculation, its culture oscillating between jingoism and doubt. The Boer War was the British Empire's Vietnam, a quagmire that exposed the limits of power. Now, the Middle East is America's graveyard of ambitions. Congress, like the old British Parliament, attempts to claw back authority from a prime ministerial (or presidential) war machine. But the machine is too vast, too embedded. It will grind on.
What, then, is the solution? There is none, at least not in the short term. The cycles of history are indifferent to our moral panics. But we can at least recognise the farce for what it is. We can laugh, bitterly, as the senators pose for cameras, as the ministers in Whitehall reaffirm their loyalty. We can note that the fall of Rome did not happen in a day but in a thousand small surrenders, each one justified by necessity. So too with the American Republic. This war powers measure is not a turning point. It is just another step on the long, slow road.
