The concept of “The Imperial Presidency”, first coined by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., was that the United States as a result of World War II had become a superpower and so implicitly ruled over the entire planet, every other country an ally, a dependency or a sphere of influence, except those that had fallen under the sway of the Soviet Union, the only other super-power because it had both a massive army and atomic weapons. The result of this geopolitical situation was that the President of the United States had almost unlimited powers in foreign policy. He could unleash nuclear war without an act of Congress that authorized war because only he could quickly respond to the threat posed by a foreign power’s nuclear arsenal. Moreover, he could engage in wars that Congress might feel the need for a role in declaring because he could manipulate the laws and sentiments of the United States citizenry in the pursuit of his policies. So Truman did not declare war in Korea because he knew it would not get through Congress and instead called the war “a police action” and no one seriously challenged that. It was a phrase that suited the purpose of legitimizing what seemed expedient during the Cold War even if Congress had not authorized it. Congress found itself reluctant to restrict Presidential military initiatives during the Cold War and so the Congress authorized the Bay of Tonkin Resolution, which was supposed to empower the President to negotiate with the Vietnamese, even as it, after the Cold War, also authorized, as a bargaining device, the resolution to go to war in Iraq, no one wanting to challenge the ability of the President alone to form foreign policy. The Javits War Power Act of 1973 was meant to circumscribe the President’s actions by requiring him to go back to Congress after thirty days to authorize whatever he had done on his own, but it has worked out that such a procedure is meaningless because if we are engaged in a major operation for thirty days, the Congress is not likely to pull the plug on an ongoing military operation, and so the President has carte blanche.
But now, finally, because of Trump, the Congress is likely to resume its war making power because it is clear, after wars waged from the White House, as was the case with Iraq, and significant foreign policy initiatives by Trump, that the country cannot trust to the Presidency that any incumbent will act with prudence about what becomes at risk once we enter a war. So far, we have lost wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, just this past week, in Syria without any significant threat to our domestic tranquility, however much Kissinger feared that losing in Vietnam would lead to the end of our Weimar Republic. But our luck could run out. Kaiser Willhelm, Hirohito and Hitler came to realize that the fortunes of war do not always go to those who take the initiative.
A new perspective on the untrammelled war powers of the President is a major change in thinking and it is taking place just as much in Republican circles as in Democratic ones, as is shown by the fact that Republican Senators who have not distanced themselves from the President on the issue of impeachment have been quite critical of him about his conduct of foreign policy. The tide is turning and so the legislature may return to having a role as the embodiment of the wisdom of the nation while whomever is elected as President starts out as being a questionable figure who has to earn the respect of his people and of his cabinet before he can proceed on taking a very independent course in military policy.
Now, to some extent, that has always been true. It takes a while for a President to take control of his military because they are far more familiar with the ins and outs of interagency committees than are the people who come into the White House after the inauguration of a new President. JFK inherited the Bay of Pigs and had to arm wrestle to get his way during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Barack Obama had to give in to the Pentagon about increased deployments of troops to Afghanistan before he was able to get his way and decrease troop commitments throughout the region. It has taken a few years for Trump to rid himself of the professional military men who kept him from doing anything too adventurous in foreign policy, to follow his own ideas, but they--Mattis, Kelly, McMaster-- and so now he is free to do what he wants in foreign policy even though that always seems to mean doing what Putin wants him to do though for reasons that are not as yet clear.
Moreover, there are Presidents in recent memory who have played fast and loose with their war powers. The George W. Bush team, well versed and experienced in foreign affairs, nevertheless embarked on the Iraq War for reasons that we still do not know, given that the idea the Iraqis were not in possession of weapons of mass destruction was known to the CIA and other experts and the Bush Administration went on with the war anyway. The realpolitik behind that decision is not known but we all think there must have been some because of the already admitted expertise of the people in charge.
That, however, can’t be said of Trump’s decision to pull out of the borderland between Syria and Turkey. That decision does seem to have been the result of a phone call between Trump and Erdogan during which Trump was, perhaps, intimidated by Erdogan’s threat to go into Syria even if American troops were still there. Trump operates without staff and so there was noone to counsel him against caving in. Yet nothing he did was unconstitutional. He has a right to order his troops anywhere he sees fit even if he does not have the right to use foreign policy to lever help for his domestic political campaign, and so opens himself to impeachment. So even Republicans take pause at a Presidency so unleashed that there is no way to stop it from doing things that are simply foolish, uninformed or cowardly or some combination of the three.
The present debacle in Syria may therefore have significant domestic political consequences even if it does not have serious foreign policy consequences. The United States has, after all, sacrificed Kurdish interests in the past, as when it passed over the idea of an independent Kurdish state in the Seventies because Kissinger wanted to solidify the Shah’s position in Iraq. Should the Congress desire, in its new mindset, to reassert its power over foreign policy, it has plenty of resources by which to do so. It can, for starters, refuse to approve a declaration of war and it can pass a resolution saying that a situation that is ripe for war would require a declaration of war.
Most importantly, the Congress has the power of the purse. The courts upheld the legality of the Vietnam War because the Congress had never withheld funds to prosecute the war from the executive branch. The Congress could have if it wan’t to, but it didn’t and so it acquiesced in the war, all that aside from the Bay of Tonkin Resolutions. The Congress, through the Boland Amendments, barred the Reagan Administration from spending any money to assist the Contras in their revolution against the Nicaraguan government. That forced the White House to sell weapons to the Iranians and used the proceeds to supply the contras with weapons. I always thought that activity was unconstitutional and was an impeachable act because it violated the constitutional provision that the executive could only spend money that was allocated to it by Congress, but no one wanted to pursue Reagan down that road. A reinvigorated Congress, however, could insist that no money go to Turkey or any other nation without the Congress’s explicit permission and so that would put a crimp in any President trying to pursue a foreign policy backed only by some of his off the books ministers (such as Guiliani) in whom the Congress has no confidence. The Congress could also strengthen the rules about who has the power to meet with representatives of foreign powers, restricting it, perhaps, only to people who have had Senate confirmation, so that only seasoned foreign policy hands would have that access. As I say, there are ways for Congress to act to curtail a President if they take on the mindset to do so.
There are real foreign policy challenges that face this nation and perhaps we can get on to dealing with those once we have put Trump and his obedience to Putin behind us. These don’t have to do with Ukraine or Turkey or Venezuela. They have to do with trade issues concerning intellectual property and that might require a global pact, not just a series of individual trade deals, to enforce. Because many nations now have the cyberspace capacity to interfere in one another’s elections as well as to hold one another’s infrastructure hostage to hostile action, it might be necessary to conclude another international pact governing what countries can and cannot do so with regard to one another. Broadcasting a democracy’s view of a human rights abusing nation may be alright, while subverting their elections may not be, It would take a very carefully worded document to sort that out. That is what diplomats are for, not pursuing made up conspiracy theories for a President who can only think in those terms. We have to start thinking big again.