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The reality is that they have abdicated the constitutionally specified power to declare war on other nations for political reasons. Generally, they are too scared to take a stand, and would rather let the president make the decision. Then they are free to cheer or snipe as the popularity of the war waxes and wanes.

You raise some good points here, and this is probably one reason why Congress doesn't declare war anymore, but it is far from the biggest reason.

The real reason Congress no longer declares war is that a war declaration would effectively force the U.S. government -- from a political standpoint as well as a military standpoint -- to wage a full-scale war against a foreign nation, obliterate its infrastructure, kill many people, etc. The U.S. hasn't had any intention of doing any such thing in decades. Nowadays, we fight colonial wars whose sole purpose is to topple one regime, support another governing faction, and spend many years in what often ends up being a useless "nation-building" campaign.

In this kind of scenario, destroying a foreign enemy's infrastructure and laying waste to large pieces of real estate is completely counterproductive.

So we don't fight wars anymore. We just pick sides in the internal affairs of foreign countries.

“would effectively force the U.S. government — from a political standpoint as well as a military standpoint — to wage a full-scale war against a foreign nation, obliterate its infrastructure, kill many people, etc”

No, it wouldn’t. War does not necessarily mean total war. It’s not all about unconditional surrender.

“Nowadays, we fight colonial wars whose sole purpose is to topple one regime, support another governing faction, and spend many years in what often ends up being a useless ‘nation-building’ campaign.”

You think we wouldn’t be doing that if we had to declare war like in the old days? Seriously? No, I mean it, really, seriously? Is it really, honestly, seriously possible anyone thinks that?

“In this kind of scenario, destroying a foreign enemy’s infrastructure and laying waste to large pieces of real estate is completely counterproductive”

If that doesn’t describe what we did in Korea, Vietnam, and are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, that’s only because they had no significant infrastructure or valued real estate in the first place. But that’s neither here nor there, unless you think not having to declare war in the traditional manner freed us up to fight Vietnam in the first place. Which is to say, as if had we to declare war explicitly we’d never fight anyone so backwards as the Vietnamese.

Of course you don’t think that, since you’re crazy. I just want to point out that though Vietnam did not possess 20th century civilization and we deliberately went out of our way not to target civilian centers and not to extend the war to unpopular extremes which would have been perfectly acceptable in other wars, we dropped more ordnance in Vietnam than in both WWII theaters and Vietnamese deaths were in the millions. To you that may be “just pick[ing] sides in the internal affairs of foreign countries,” but to me that’s pretty much a full scale war.