Global Security and Legal Restraint: Reconsidering War Powers after September 11
The United States Constitution mandates a sharp division of the au thority to make war between the Congress and the president, but in the contem porary global order, in which technology and new institutional arrangements have fundamentally altered the pace of world politics and the very nature of power itself, this divided authority is not functioning as intended. The most telling recent example of this fact occurred only days after Sep tember 11, when both houses of Congress overwhelmingly authorized the presi dent to use force against not only those who had attacked the United States but also against individuals who had helped or harbored them, groups with similar ideologies, and those who might be planning such activities for the future. The resolution passed by Congress ceded to the president the right to decide who these enemies were and how the war would be conducted, without any limita tion in time or geographic scope. A little more than a year later, Congress au thorized the president to conduct a war to topple the government of Iraq in similarly vague terms. These new wars represent the latest in a decades-long series of steps away from the constitutional balance of war-making powers. While the Tonkin Gulf Resolution remains the most important symbol of this trend, more recent uses of force may be just as significant, since they have shown that it will continue even absent the Cold War.