All Alone in the Night

This month's issue of Military History includes an excellent article by Jonathan Turley about the U.S. government's power to make war and how the President and Congress have, over the past two centuries, expanded that power well beyond the limits envisioned by the Founders. I cannot find the article online, but for those who are interested it should be easy enough to find a copy of Military History magazine at your local bookstore, for those of you who aren't subscribers.

The United States government has been expanding the scope of its powers since the day the Constitution was ratified. This process ramped up markedly in the 20th century, and the expansion of the President's war powers grew alongside that more general growth. Today the United States finds itself embroiled in (arguably) three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Global War on Terror. The Democratic Party took back both houses of Congress in 2006 at least partly on the strength of their promises to end the war in Iraq, but their efforts have not accomplished the removal of a single American soldier from Iraq as of this writing.

As Turley points out, this is largely because the war powers have changed from being primarily the province of Congress to being almost entirely the province of the President. Yes, the Constitution names the President as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, but for most of American history Congress still kept a close watch on the wars the nation engaged in. It wasn't until Harry Truman decided to take on North Korea without a Congressional declaration of war that Congress began to fall out of the war picture, leading up to the current war, which Congress has almost completely divested itself from, even to the extent of Congressional leaders claiming Iraq as 'Bush's war.'

Congressional cowardice aside, the general expansion of Presidential powers would make it very difficult for even a very aggressive Congress to stop a war once it has started. Back at the start of the 20th century a different Republican President, Teddy Roosevelt, told Congress he wanted to send the U.S. Navy (the Great White Fleet) around the world. Congress told the President it wouldn't pay for it. Roosevelt sent the fleet anyway, loaded with enough coal to make it about halfway around the world, and told Congress that if they wanted the Navy back, they would have to pay for the coal required. Left with the unpalatable option of leaving the U.S. Navy stranded, Congress caved. Now consider a Congressional resolution that ordered the President to bring all troops home from Iraq no later than December 31, 2007. What could Congress do if the President did not comply? They would be well within their rights to impeach and convict him, but in this polarized age, I'm not convinced they would be able to do so, and in the interim if they didn't provide funding for the troops, the President would be taking advantage of his bully pulpit to point out that Congress had defunded the troops, even though the real fault would lay with him for disobeying Congress. Such a battle would be worth fighting in my estimation, because it is probably the only way for Congress to recapture its role as the first branch of government, but I'm not at all confident Congress would be willing to make such a fight, simply because the President's advantage in communications would make it very hard for Congress to fight off negative perceptions about their performance.

The United States would not be in this dilemma had Congress not authorized the war in the first place, but Congress doesn't do a very good job at that, either. While I suspect Congress would have approved the Iraq War in any case, it is my opinion that a sizable fraction of those voting for the war did so not because they believed the war was justified or necessary, but because they feared what would happen to them in the election if they voted no. A determined Democratic Senate could have prevented the war via a filibuster, although they almost certainly would have paid a price at the ballot box. Still, a few Democratic losses in the Senate seem a pretty good trade for stopping a war that has cost the United States billions of dollars and thousands of lives, not to mention what the war has cost Iraq.

Not all the blame can go on Congress, however. Because the Democrats were almost certainly correct in their belief that voting against the war would have hurt them at the ballot box. U.S. citizens have an unfortunate martial streak, and too often going to war is seen as a question of intestinal fortitude rather than an issue of necessity. The Iraq War may at least do a reasonably good job of convincing a lot of Americans of the limits of military power, although the lessons of Vietnam didn't last more than a decade or two, so it would be unrealistic to suppose that Iraq will do any better, particularly given the far more limited losses in Iraq. Still, while the American people are more cognizant of what military power can and cannot accomplish, perhaps Congress could create a few structural changes to make it harder to take the United States to war.

First among these would be a Congressional amendment that requires at least a two-thirds majority to declare war. If war is really necessary, I have every confidence Congress will recognize that fact and act accordingly. But a two-thirds or three-quarters majority requirement could keep us out of wars that aren't necessary, a change that would save the U.S. a great deal of money, life, and prestige.

This doesn't address the problem of Presidents who decide to start wars on their own, however, such as Truman in Korea, Reagan in Grenada, Bush in Panama and Somalia, and Clinton in Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo (Yes, I realize no shots were actually fired in Bosnia or Haiti, but that was far from a guaranteed outcome). Congress tried the War Powers Act in the 1970s (a time rather similar to what I expect we'll see in the 2010s from a political standpoint), but it has never been enforced and so has done nothing to restrain Presidential aggressiveness. A Constitutional amendment that declares that the President has no authority to initiate the use of military force might help to reduce this tendency, although it would depend on Congress being willing to enforce it. Such an amendment would also be vulnerable to Gulf of Tonkin/Resaca de la Palma type actions, where a President seeking a war sends the military to be aggressive enough to provoke a reaction from the intended target. The fact such an amendment could be circumvented under some circumstances does not seem sufficient reason for it not to be considered, however.

There is no perfect solution to this problem. Presidents almost always turn towards the military because they have so much more control over the military than they do over anything else they can accomplish, so it seems an easy way for them to establish a legacy. And the American people have a disturbing tendency to see military power as far more capable than it can ever be. The former will never change, but it may be possible to change the latter, a paradigm shift that would make it at least more difficult for the President to make war. But such a change will require a major shift in American attitudes, one unlikely to occur quickly. Until then, some structural changes to place more roadblocks in the way of Presidents convinced of the efficacy of military action would at least make it a little more difficult for America to wind up in yet another country bleeding with little hope of strategic gain.