#Gate广场四月发帖挑战

Understand in One Article Why U.S. Presidents Always Prefer to Wage War and Stir Up Financial Markets.

It’s not a matter of “personal preference,” but a structural phenomenon driven jointly by institutions, interests, hegemony, and political culture.

1. Institutions: Presidential war powers are too broad, and constraints are too weak

• Vague constitution: Congress’s “declaration of war power” vs. the president’s role as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces”—long overridden by the president.

• Sidestepping Congress: under the names of “counterterrorism, self-defense, protecting citizens abroad, emergency action,” fighting without declaring war.

• Hidden costs: after the war, taxes basically do not increase; wars are waged by borrowing, so the public feels no immediate pain.

• Accountability is hard: in the short term, the “rally-around-the-flag effect” (approval ratings rise), but the long-term mess is left for the next administration.

2. Economy: the military-industrial complex + oil + dollar hegemony

• Military-industrial complex (Eisenhower warning):
arms makers—military—Congress—think tanks are deeply intertwined; war = orders = profits.

• Oil and the dollar:
controlling Middle Eastern oil-producing regions, maintaining the oil-dollar system; anyone who dares to abandon dollar settlement will face military suppression (Iraq, Libya).

• Capital logic: war drives the military-industrial complex, oil, infrastructure, and finance—becoming a tool for economic stimulus.

3. Politics: war is a “quick-acting medicine” for domestic politics

• Shifting tensions: when economic conditions are poor, scandals surface, or approval ratings are low, going to war abroad is the easiest way to unite public opinion.

• Electoral logic: a “strong president who’s willing to fight” pulls in more votes; presidents who fight less often often struggle to win re-election.

• Bipartisan consensus: Democrats and Republicans are highly aligned on “protecting hegemony and strengthening the military,” and opposition is often criticized as “weak.”

4. Strategy and culture: hegemonic mindset + “American Exceptionalism”

• Hegemonic necessity: the U.S. rose to power through war and relies on war to maintain global dominance.

• Security view distortion: “my security = your insecurity,” so it must act first overseas, eliminate threats before they grow.

• Cultural genes:
Westward expansion, expansionary tradition, “a city upon a hill” and “a predestined destiny”—believing they have the right to export systems and interfere in other countries.

5. Typical examples after World War II

• Truman: Korean War

• Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon: Vietnam War

• George H. W. Bush: Panama, Gulf War

• Clinton: Kosovo War

• George W. Bush: Afghanistan, Iraq Wars

• Obama: airstrikes on Syria, Iraq, Libya, and 7 other countries

• Biden: continuing airstrikes in the Middle East, military aid to Ukraine, intervention in the Middle East

Summary

It’s not that presidents “like to wage war,” but that the U.S. system is designed to make “war easy”:
power is easy to abuse, costs can be shifted, interest groups are strong, hegemony must be protected by force, and politics provides incentives for war.
As long as this structure doesn’t change, no matter who becomes president, it will be hard to break the inertia of war.