PAUL CELLA: Formal Warmaking Authority Now Resides With The President

Editor’s note: 💡Big Tent Ideas always aims to provide balancing perspectives on the hottest issues of the day. Below is a column from Paul Cella, where he argues that the Executive Branch has the legitimate warmaking authority. You can find a counterpoint here, where Brandan Buck argues otherwise.

While always a misfortune, war may be necessary and can be just, provided certain criteria are met. It must be waged for a just cause, after exhausting recourse to negotiation; it must have peace as its goal, compassing even the good of the enemy; it must be undertaken with rectitude of intention, holding out a reasonable prospect of success; and it must be declared by legitimate public authority.

The war against Iran falls short of justification on many of these grounds; on the last, however – the criterion of legitimate sovereignty – it has provided a service to the American people by clarifying for us that formal warmaking authority now resides with the President.

Put another way: it is no longer reasonable to suppose that Congress possesses the exclusive constitutional authority to declare war.

This ominous conclusion arises from observing the practice of American military action, carried out under relevant war powers over many decades, of which the war of the past two months forms the unmistakable culmination. It is not a conclusion compassing normative judgment, prescriptive endorsement, much less political triumphalism; but rather a sober analysis of events and the public deliberation that accompanies them.

The brazenness with which the administration launched a major war without even superficial consultation with Congress, and the supine acceptance of the subordinate role by the latter, demonstrates this reality.