Declarations of war identify an enemy, they don't (inherently, though they could also do this) limit the geographic area in which forces of that enemy will be attacked.
> Imagine - I know this is a tricky one - Russia intervening in North Dakota between two rival bike gangs. The United States would see this as an act of war against the USA, and rightly so.
Yes, but that doesn't make declaring (or prosecuting) war against non-state actors impossible, it just means that prosecuting such a war will either require cooperation of or conflict with other states.
That's often true with regard to third-party states in interstate war, too, whose territory is often violated (or, in some cases, the entire country occupied, as the British did to Iceland in WWII) without declaration of war as part of prosecuting a declared war against some other state.
So the American Civil War wasn't a war, since the south wasn't another country? The Chinese civil war wasn't a war? The Iruqois Wars weren't wars? The Seljuk-Crusader War wasn't a real war? The War of the Sicilian Vespers wasn't a real war? The War of the Succession of Champange wasn't a real war?
It seems like there's about 4,000+ years of natural language clearly establishing that a war is NOT just about fights between two nation states.
But, hey, I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time Congress has passed a resolution that ended up being found unconstitutional and it won't be the last.
No, it was a Civil War. As you already wrote.
> The Chinese civil war wasn't a war?
No.
> The Iruqois Wars weren't wars?
You are really reaching now.
It seems to me that you are trying very hard to hold on to the idea that there is such a thing as a 'war on terrorism' but the whole thing is nonsense, just as much as the 'war on drugs' or any other mis-use of the term.
> But, hey, I could be wrong.
Yes you are.
> It wouldn't be the first time Congress has passed a resolution that ended up being found unconstitutional and it won't be the last.
It's not the constitution of the United States that matters here but international law.
Armed militant groups are first and foremost the problem of the countries bordering and including the territory these militants operate in.
Any action against them by foreigners not otherwise involved in the region is an act of war in and of itself.
Imagine - I know this is a tricky one - Russia intervening in North Dakota between two rival bike gangs. The United States would see this as an act of war against the USA, and rightly so.
The only way this could happen is if there was a direct invitation from one of the governments of the affected countries and this would then still be limited to the territory of that country.