Defending Presidential War Powers
And Thinking About Our Definitions of War
There’s been a lot of talk recently about presidential war powers. How much autonomy should the president have outside of congressional approval to take military action? How much authority?
These questions stem from a more fundamental one, one that is seemingly answered in the Constitution: can the president take any military action without a congressional declaration of war? The founders believed the answer was no.
In this essay, I would like to consider the benefits of another answer: sometimes.
The founders gave the president the powers of commander and chief of the armed forces because they understood that war could not be run by a committee. Congress, made up of the people’s representatives, was necessary to decide if the nation wanted to enter a war, but once approved, a single efficient and absolute authority was necessary to wage and hopefully win it.
I apply this same reasoning to the modern era. But because international relations and war have changed a lot since the 1800s, specifically the complexity of the former and the speed of the latter, threats of escalation can come quicker than before and do more harm. Since conflicts are more nuanced now, the role of the executive as an efficient and unified…
