Presidential Warmaking is a capacity issue too
The U.S. invasion/capture of Venezuela/Maduro has reopened a public discussion of the proper role of Congress and the president in decisions to go to war. I have written a fair amount about this in the past, and I will have much more to say about it shortly. But I wanted to make a couple of brief points.
First, I am generally a believer in a large/greater congressional role in these decisions, chiefly for three reasons:
- Legislatures are generally more conservative about war than executives;
- Legislative involvement creates broader public consideration; and
- Consensus war is more likely to be successful.
Note that none of this is an appeal to law or Founders' intent, though much of their reasoning for arranging war powers they way they did rests on similar beliefs drawn from their experiences. The rule of law is obviously important, and we want it upheld, but it's a very abstract idea in any individual case of potential warmaking. For me, the substantive advantages of consulting Congress are the real value of the system.
A lot of people---including me!---have strongly criticized Congress for not aggressively asserting its role in these things over the last 50 years. I continue to believe that, but I think many people with that view overlook a key feature of the modern age: Congress does annually consider warmaking, in the form of voting to build and maintain the most powerful standing army in world history.
This isn't nothing. The president can only fight with the army Congress builds him. One reason it was so easy to constrain presidents in the past was that we did not maintain a large standing military. After wars, they were drawn down. Often to laughable small levels.
That all changed after WW2. And rightfully so. Congress judged that the speed and deadliness of modern warfare required a large standing force. And so we never really drew down our capacity. And that is a choice that Congress has affirmatively made every year since.
The side effect, of course, is that the president now has a massive standing army at his disposal to use in situations that are less dire than an impending WW3. In some sense, it would be ridiculous to expect anything other than what we have gotten from presidents in the last 50 years, given the capacity we have supplied them with.
The solution, however, is not so simple. To draw down the military to a size that would render presidential warmaking less harmful would also gravely endanger the country in a true military emergency. And so the job of Congress is tougher. What we need is more legislative control and direction over the use of this massive force. This can be achieved legally through NDAA and limitation provisions in DoD appropriations bills, but of course requires a level of political will that is not currently available.