Over three-and-a half centuries ago, exhausted from decades-long religious warfare, treaties brought peace to Europe while establishing an international system of sovereign nation states. Those documents signed at Westphalia started to develop rules of war between nations, which were later refined by conventions established in the Swiss city of Geneva.

Almost three quarters of a century ago (seventy-four years yesterday), on a quiet Sunday morning, the nation woke up to the news that a bit of American soil of which most had never heard — Pearl Harbor in Hawaii — had been attacked by the Imperial Navy of Japan, killing thousands of American sailors and others, and severely disabling our Pacific fleet. Had our aircraft carriers been additional targets at harbor rather than out at sea, the situation would have been far more dire.

As Don Surber notes, the FBI did not get involved, and no one asked what “their motive” was. Instead, before the week was out, we had declared war on Japan and, after their totalitarian ally declared war on us, on Nazi Germany as well. Along with allies, we went on to win it decisively, establishing modern peaceful democracies in the defeated lands. It was the last time to date that we have done so. Our nation has been involved in armed combat in the defense of freedom against totalitarianism many times over the decades since, and lost tens of thousands of American lives in the process, but we have never formally declared war and, more importantly, never been allowed to actually win one. From Korea, to Vietnam, the superpower that emerged from that global conflict was constrained by threats of nuclear annihilation or the dictates of the dictators’ club that we established at Turtle Bay seven decades ago.