John Norton Moore
At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, "What have you wrought?" He answered, "[A] Republic, if you can keep it."1
The President of the United States has broad authority to employ military force in emergency settings engendered by attacks against the United States or its interests, allies, forces, or citizens, at home or abroad. In developing this broadly supported proposition, though not in all its elements a unanimously supported proposition, this chapter will briefly examine the debate about the general scope of the war powers, the relevant issues in constitutional interpretation, the goals at stake in constitutional decision about the war powers, and the war powers in settings of emergency and immediate engagement. Most importantly, this chapter will develop an argument that we need to incorporate "new thinking" about war avoidance into policy considerations in the war powers debate: "new thinking" suggesting that major wars in the twentieth century have resulted in substantial part from a synergy between aggression by totalitarian, or at least nondemocratic, nations and settings of system-wide failure to deter such aggression. If this paradigm is correct, then it may suggest, as one way of enhancing deterrence, greater presidential authority in initial commitment decisions, always subject to congressional checks through the power of the purse and the ability to legislatively (through the normal law-making process) prohibit or terminate specific major foreign wars.
Throughout American constitutional history, the proper allocation of authority between Congress and the executive in the use of the armed forces has been surrounded by controversy. This controversy has been invited by a skeletal consti-