Initiate war is correct and usable in written English.
It is often used in the context of military or political actions. For example, "The president authorized the military to initiate war against the enemy nation."
Two days later Berchtold persuaded Franz Joseph to initiate war.
Hitler's absence allows none other than Stalin to move in and initiate war with the United States.
There is no doubt that they intended that Congress and not the Pres. to possess the power to initiate war against other nations.
The question of whether presidents may initiate war has been disputed since 1950, when President Harry S. Truman went to war in Korea without going to Congress.
He published his own essay saying that this illustrated why Congress, and not the president, should have the right to initiate war.
In a reference to the Iraq war -- which the pope opposed -- he added, "I think that he thought that you shouldn't initiate war, even against oppressive leaders, until there was some immediate human tragedy pending".
Like the French Bourbons who forgot nothing and learned nothing, Ms. Clinton eagerness to initiate wars for regime change was undiminished by the Iraq and Libya debacles.
He was fiercely anti-war, and had no trouble pronouncing those that initiated war as putzes.
"The fundamental question is left unanswered: Why initiating war against Saddam is better than the next option, which is deterring and containing him," Professor Allison said.
In January 1847 the by-then Whig-controlled House voted 85 to 81 to censure Polk for having "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally" initiated war with Mexico.
Rather, these deaths were at the hands of a committed faction of radical Islam that initiated war against the United States and made the thousands of people at the World Trade Center their primary target.
