One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress’s constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war. The president wages it.
Over the past several decades, presidents of both major parties have increasingly treated military intervention as an executive prerogative rather than a congressional requirement.
The last six presidents have not reflected distinct foreign policy doctrines but a uniparty continuum of executive overreach. While the particulars differ, each administration has initiated or significantly expanded military action without a formal declaration of war or without clear evidence that the targeted country posed an imminent threat to the United States.
President George H.W. Bush assembled an international coalition following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Congress ultimately authorized the use of military force. However, it was not a defensive war; it fostered the growing post-Cold War assumption that the United States should act as the world’s policeman.
President Bill Clinton likewise employed military force without declarations of war. The 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo conflict proceeded despite Congress failing to authorize it in a clear and lasting manner. The administration argued humanitarian intervention justified military action. But even compelling humanitarian concerns do not erase the Constitution’s allocation of war powers.
President George W. Bush fundamentally reshaped American foreign policy after the Sept. 11 attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan initially enjoyed broad support and congressional authorization in response to al-Qaeda’s attacks. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq remains one of the most controversial and catastrophic military actions in modern American history.
Congress did authorize force, but the constitutional process was undermined by intelligence failures and exaggerated claims about weapons of mass destruction and links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda that ultimately proved unfounded. We now know that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States warranting a preventive war. The conflict resulted in enormous human suffering, significant financial costs, regional instability and expanded executive authority that future presidents would inherit.
President Barack Obama accelerated executive war-making despite his early criticism of the Iraq War. His 2011 intervention in Libya stands as perhaps the clearest example. The United States joined NATO air operations that helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, yet Congress never authorized the intervention. The administration argued that the operation did not constitute “hostilities” under the War Powers Resolution because American forces faced limited risk and most of the killing was done by U.S. intelligence assets.
President Joe Biden continued this pattern through military operations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, strikes against Iranian-backed militias — and by funding Ukraine’s war against Russia. The administration justified these actions primarily as force protection, counterterrorism, responses to attacks on U.S. personnel, or defense of democracy and sovereignty. None of these rationales substitutes for congressional authorization.
Moreover, Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are members of the United Nations. Like the U.N. or not, the U.N. Charter is a treaty written by U.S. officials and ratified by the Senate. Under the Constitution, treaties are the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution itself. The U.N. Charter prohibits all war except for immediate defensive purposes or when authorized by the U.N. Security Council; neither of which is the case with Ukraine.
President Donald Trump famously campaigned against “endless wars,” yet his administration launched missile strikes against Syria in 2017 and 2018 without congressional approval, assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in January 2020, commenced the current unlawful and meaningless war against Iran, now in its third stage of combat, and he has financed Israeli expansion — all without congressional authorization.
He has famously indicated that he rejects the constitutional role of treaties and the international laws written pursuant to them. He has even threatened to annihilate the Iranian/Persian civilization.
Hellbound and Down 