(b) Present your people the necessary rhetoric to ensure public opinion supports a war, urge your national legislature to adopt laws that may aid in the capture of the perpetrators of the attack and eventually may erode deeply treasured civil liberties?
(c) Assemble a multinational coalition that requires you to make promises to each leader only to find those pledges restrict your action against the enemy?
(c) Use a combination of all these things?
Although creating a multinational coalition may seem the most appealing option (and is partially the policy the US has adopted), in the long term it is quite troublesome for obvious reasons. But if a formal declaration of war is the best answer, why is it not the policy now used?
As defined by customary international law, war is a particular form of hostile relations that exist between states. A state is any entity that occupies territory, has a population, has a government, and has legitimacy. Legitimacy is derived by de jeure governments (governments that are recognized by other governments through the exchange of ambassadors) or de facto governments (governments that fulfill the basic functions of state administration but lack recognition by other governments). As a tangible example, the Taleban is the de facto government of Afghanistan. It controls 80% of the territory; the territory it controls obviously has a population; the rulers perform the basic functions of government. Therefore a declaration of war against Afghanistan would be a declaration of war against the Taleban. When the Taleban is destroyed and defeated, the US should adopt formal declarations of war against the next terrorist-supporting state it targets.
There is now much discussion in the US about revoking the visas of students and other people from known terrorist-sponsoring states. In the current circumstances that would be illegal, but a formal declaration of war automatically would draw such substantive action and other legislative restrictions into effect. The old adage that "all is fair in love and war" is quite true in respect of the wartime authority of governments. Any coalition partner of the US who would complain about such a declaration should be shown again the images of what happened on 11 September, then he/she should be asked directly: "If this were your country, what would you do?" Most leaders probably would say: "I would declare war immediately against those who committed such an intentional act of aggression".
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