ABSTRACT
The Constitution, as written, ratified and amended, gives presidents no authority to start wars, enter wars, provoke wars, commit warlike acts or even put troops where they might become involved in hostilities, without advance congressional authorization. The constitutional division of war powers made sense when potential enemies were a wind-powered ocean voyage away, the argument goes. The Constitution authorized Congress to declare war. It made the president commander-in-chief. These two clauses are sometimes cited to suggest that the legislative and executive branches were meant to be roughly equal partners in war powers. By contrast, the president’s title of commander-in-chief is the only constitutional language that gives him any war powers. World War II created the modern world. It started the nuclear age and turned the United States and the Soviet Union into two paranoid giants, each thinking the other is bent on its destruction, each with the power to destroy the world a thousand times over.
