Desperate for Approval: Congress’s Enduring Control over Conflict Initiation

• In Event: The Tension in Foreign Policy: A White House Perspective

Abstract

Despite the widespread belief in an Imperial Presidency and the purported cession of the war-making power to the executive after Truman’s unapproved “police action” in the Korean War of 1950-53, no President has actually entered into a major war without formal congressional approval in the last seven decades. Instead, Presidents since Eisenhower have consistently asked Congress for authorization before risking large-scale conflict—only entering such conflict when granted, and consistently avoiding such conflict when denied. While it is certainly true that many uses of force in the postwar era have lacked congressional approval or seen Presidents attempt to substitute some form of international approval for that of Congress, these conflicts have been distinctively smaller in scale than those undertaken with Congress’s formal backing. This article provides a novel theory to explain the relationship between congressional and international force authorizations, and utilizes an original dataset to illustrate the formal-legal status of U.S. uses of force over time. It argues that (i) there is little evidence of an Imperial Presidency when it comes to a supposed increasing scale of military operations undertaken without congressional approval over time, and (ii) that international force authorizations are not viable substitutes for congressional approval. While international authorizations can boost public support for an intervention in the short-term, only express authorization from Congress provides the long-term commitment a president needs to commit to a major conflict.

Author

• Michael Patrick Hulme, University of California, San Diego