The Tragedy of the War Power: Presidential Decisionmaking from Truman to Obama

Abstract

Why does the government always seem to fall short when it decides for war? In this article and the larger project from which it is taken, I argue that the decisionmaking failures in the major wars fought by the U.S. since 1945 fall into distinct patterns that are connected to a broader imbalance in the constitutional order. More precisely, they are executive branch failures that stem from the lack of interbranch deliberation built into the post-1945 constitutional order. The most prominent patterns have been a failure to engage in realistic war planning, a closely related failure to decide on war aims, and a background assumption that the president, as chief officer of the executive branch, can carry the entire burden of war decisionmaking alone. In particular, understanding the decisionmaking failures in Korea, Vietnam and the 1991 Gulf War can illuminate what was widely believed to be an inadequate deliberative process before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Keywords: War powers; presidential power