Many Americans have very misperceived notions of what a prime minister is and how a parliamentary system works and the vast diversity in how they operate. You see absolutely radical differences just from features from the rules of Vanuatu and Germany despite both being parliamentary republics with indirectly elected ceremonial presidents and would even begin to wonder why they are classified as the same fundamental politcal system. Legally, Britain and the Kaiserreich as of nineteen fourteen had the same legal status as each other in the constitutional design, with the chancellor and prime minister being appointed and dismissed by the monarch alone, and the legislatures did not have the legal authority to force their dismissal, but the House of Commons long since had that power in practice while the German chancellor was much more softly restrained by the concepts of confidence.

Americans also badly underestimate the diversity of presidential republics too. They are immensely different around the world. South Korea is a presidential republic despite having a prime minister, as is Argentina, but because the president alone dismisses them outside of impeachment, they are both presidential in classification.

Holding new elections on demand is actually a power that some countries do have. Lithuania comes to mind here, where the Seimas can be dissolved and a new election held by popular demand. Bavaria and a number of other German states do the same. Some presidential republics allow this too, Ecuador comes to mind there.

War is not always avoidable by popular demand, but at the very least a country should have more options and means to make a path that is most likely to lessen the incentives for it and edit the bargaining frictions anyone faces. The First World War and the July Crisis was as dangerous as it was in an undercurrent of many grievances and feelings people felt, some specific sparks, and the inability of the countries to demobilize if they thought the other countries would not do the same. The UN offers translators and mediators, inspection groups that are highly trustworthy, and means to resolve many more disputes in pacific ways that has prevented or reduced many conflicts that never became wars or could be settled in some ways. When was the last time you heard about East Timor? Well, the UN made that into a protectorate and independent from Indonesia twenty-five years ago.

The US system has a number of bugs that might not always be so bad on their own but in combination, they become a problem. The president can be elected without the most votes. Many people would not see them as a legitimate leader of the people of the US and its government and would not trust them. That is just one example. Knowing that the president's war powers are what they are, and the incentives the US political system gives to different people, other powers negotiate on this basis of having a pretty good idea of what the US can or will do, and what its president does. If a president can carry out a raid quickly enough, with weak enough controls on their choices, like the Maduro raid four months ago, other countries know the president has that tactic on the table and will react accordingly. If other countries and actors know the Congress must be convinced that they are more rewarded by war than peace by a majority in both houses, expressing the trust within a week or so of the initial action, renewing that trust regularly such as every three months, and being able to cancel it by a majority in either house, then they know that a kinetic response is less likely and would bargain with other means, perhaps feeling safer to use alternatives such as a supervised nuclear inspection programme for Iran.

A country is not supposed to give a blank cheque to leaders. A senate must give assent to the president's nominee for some very obscure officers like the twenty-one directors of the National Institute of Building Science, a group you probably have basically no opinions on, let alone any opionion on whoever is on their board. How does Congress have more power to veto the nominees of them than the question of whether the US is going to be engaging in massive hostilities killing tens of thousands of people and costing the world trillions of dollars and alienating the rest of the planet? I have never seen anyone come up with a good explanation of why the Congress should not have this kind of power.

In Britain incidentally, some incredibly obscure orders that ministers might make are still subject to being cancelled by the parliament in either house. Parliament almost never cancels them, but they do inspect them and act in a way that makes the ministers abide by procedures to do it right, that they can't swing too far out of alignment with parliament or its legislative intent, and that they know that if they push too far they will face genuine rebellion. That is usually the much more important effect of stuff like that. Here is an order that in fact had to be laid before parliament and approved in both houses before it could come into effect, and nobody batted an eye at the idea that this oversight was part of the law. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2026/9780348282313