A New Way To Declare War

A blue-ribbon panel of former American government officials, politicians, military commanders and academics has come up with a proposal for a new mechanism by which the United States could go to war, aimed largely at applying a veneer of ‘national unity’ to the process.

The National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former secretaries of state James A. Baker, who served under George H. W. Bush, and Warren Christopher (in the Clinton administration), issued its study Tuesday, urging the passage in 2009 of a new “War Powers Consultation Act.”

The commission takes as its starting point the failure of the existing procedure, embodied in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed over President Richard Nixon’s veto in the midst of mass opposition to the Vietnam War.

The 1973 statute says that the president may exercise his powers as commander in chief “only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States.” The authors of the panel’s report note that “Since the enactment of the Resolution, Presidents have sent troops into conflict on several occasions when none of these circumstances were present: including Grenada, Yugoslavia, and Haiti.”

The US Constitution is quite clear. Article 1, Section 8 provides that “Congress shall have the power … to declare war.” The report’s authors observe that proponents of congressional authority “say that by vesting Congress with the power to declare war, the framers [of the Constitution] stripped the Executive of the powers the English king enjoyed. They say the framers placed the powers to decide to go to war in the hands of Congress because it is the branch most deliberate by design, most in touch with the American people, and thus least inclined to commit soldiers to the battlefield.”

The act largely removes congressional authority granted by the 1973 resolution and merely calls for the president to consult with a congressional super-committee when he or she is contemplating a “significant armed conflict.”

The president, however, is not obligated to consult with Congress in the event of “minor hostilities, emergency defensive actions, or law enforcement activities”; nor in regard to actions taken by the president “to repel attacks, or to prevent imminent attacks”; nor “limited acts of reprisal against terrorism or states that sponsor terrorism,” “humanitarian missions,” “investigations or acts to prevent criminal activity abroad,” “covert operations,” “training exercises” or “missions to protect or rescue American citizens or military or diplomatic personnel abroad.

The central thrust of their concern is evident. They see a serious danger that the bitter internecine disputes that opened up within the political establishment over Bush’s “war of choice” and subsequent debacle in Iraq could become even more fractious in a future conflict. Under those conditions, the disputes within the ruling elite could create a political crisis into which masses of working people opposed to war could intervene decisively. The attempt to create a fig leaf of legality and national unity for American militarism is a desperate attempt to stave off such a threat.