By initiating hostilities without explicit United Nations sanction and despite fierce opposition abroad, it has shown that when it comes to using force, the world's sole superpower insists upon absolute freedom of action.
Bismarck cleverly exploited the ensuing controversy to provoke the French into initiating hostilities in such a way as to inflame German patriotic indignation.
Iraq commemorated the anniversary on Sept. 4, the date on which it accuses Iran of initiating hostilities, and Iraq's official press has called for a new page to be turned in relations.
Yet when this same president cites the 2001 AUMF as the basis for initiating hostilities hither and yon, something that is on the face of it not legal but ludicrous, they passively assent.
Initiating hostilities against a nuclear-armed power sensitive to its borders would create far more geopolitical dangers than it would resolve.
On June 5, the first day of the war, the Israeli government used three separate diplomatic channels to warn Jordan — then occupying the West Bank — not to initiate hostilities.
But he did not actually answer the two critical questions that must precede any decision by Britain to initiate hostilities within Syria: namely, what is the political end game and what is the military plan to achieve it?
Not that North Korea is likely to initiate hostilities with a nuclear strike.
Still others voiced uncertainty about whether Mr. Obama was exceeding his legal authority in Libya, noting that many presidents in recent generations have initiated hostilities without prior authorization, and that Congress had not stood up to them.
Having initiated hostilities without a back-up plan, the anti-Qatar coalition can move neither forward nor backward without a huge loss of face.
From World War I right through the Persian Gulf War, the United States had never initiated hostilities or invaded a major country without the provocation of an attack from that country on this nation or its allies.
