This article examines the changing role of Congress and the president in military policy. The argument is that the basic contours of the debate about executive versus legislative control of military policy have changed very little in 200 years, that, nonetheless, the balance of power in that relationship has shifted in favor of the executive, and that that shift is attributable largely to the substantial increase in the size of the standing military establishment under the direct command of the president. As a result, contemporary presidents, regardless of their inclinations, are in a substantially different position from that of their predecessors during the 200-year history of the Constitution.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
1. Leonard D. White, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 146.
2.
2. The term “standing army” is used here and elsewhere in this article in a generic sense and includes all of the armed forces. The Founders tended to think of the standing army as land forces—that is, those that could be quartered in citizens' homes and used to subjugate the people— not as naval forces and thus would not necessarily approve. The characterization here is meant to apply to the regular, standing military establishment, so the wider usage is appropriate and not as unwieldy as “the standing army, navy, marines, and, later, air force” would be.
3.
3. This story is recounted in, inter alia, Charles Warren, The Making of the Constitution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), pp. 482-484.
4.
4. A good discussion of these last two points can be found in an interesting essay: Edward Mead Earle, “Adam Smith, Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List: The Economic Foundations of Military Power,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Mead Earle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1948), pp. 117-154.
5.
5. See, for example, Louis Smith, American Democracy and Military Power: A Study of Civil Control of the Military Power in the United States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 17-19.
6.
6. Quoted in Warren, Making of the Constitution, p. 484.
7.
7. See Pendleton Herring, The Impact of War: Our American Democracy under Arms (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1941), p. 30.
8.
8. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist (New York: Mentor, 1961), no. 25, p. 166.
9.
9. On the question of civil-military relations, see Smith, American Democracy and Military Power: A Study of Civil Control of the Military Power in the United States (1951), pp. 17-36.
10.
10. This argument bears some relationship to the notion of the military-industrial complex, but rather than the version now offered by the Left, it is meant here to conjure up an argument closer to the bureaucratic politics model than the elitist model. The presence of a sizable military establishment creates an inertia in favor of continued existence, but its presence is also an invitation for its use.
11.
11. Harold and Margaret Sprout provide an enlightening analysis of the voting patterns in Congress during this period, primarily with regard to naval bills. Harold Sprout and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944), pp. 25-72.
12.
12. It should be noted that one needs to focus on personnel actually available to the president. The various state militias were intended to be used for national defense, but in truth early presidents could not readily command them and frequently could not depend upon them.
13.
13. This calculation excludes the state militias, which, in aggregate, were much larger than the garrison national army. Space prohibits analysis of the quality and quantity of militia forces. By most accounts, they were generally ineffective and did not represent a substantial contribution to national security. They were not directly funded by Congress or immediately in the control of the president so they do not alter the legislative-executive balance of power appreciably.
14.
14. The figures presented here are for the Union army only. It is estimated that a total of almost 2.2 million military personnel served with the Union during the Civil War, with a peak of about 1.1 million in 1865. U.S., Department of Defense, Selected Manpower Statistics: Fiscal Year 1986, DIOR/MO1-86 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986).
15.
Edward A. Kolodziej , The Uncommon Defense and Congress, 1945-1963 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966).
16.
16. These acts would include, for example, the Budget Act of 1921, the Executive Reorganization Act of 1939, the Employment Act of 1946, and the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 plus the series of foreign policy resolutions that served to endorse the executive's military power: the Formosa Resolution of 1955, the Middle East Resolution of 1957, and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964. These legislative acts mark a continuous shift in power, by design and by default, to the executive during the twentieth century. See James L. Sundquist, The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1981).
17.
17. 2 Cranch 170 (1804).
18.
18. 9 Wheat. 1 (1824).
19.
19. More generally, see Louis Henkin's authoritative Foreign Affairs and the Constitution (New York: Norton, 1972).
20.
20. 4 Blatch. 451, 454 (1860).
21.
21. 2 Black 635 (1862).
22.
22. It might be said that, in the fall of 1983, President Reagan also complied with the act when he signed a congressionally initiated resolution— S.J. Res. 159, 98th Cong., 1st sess. (Pub. L. 98-119)—that declared that the War Powers Resolution was in effect and limited the presence of U.S. Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, to no more than 18 months on their so-called peacekeeping mission.
23.
23. Pat Towell, “Senate Shows Its Ambivalence in Votes on Gulf,”Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 24 Oct. 1987, p. 2595.
