ABSTRACT
The Constitution grants the power to declare war to Congress. Writing in Federalist No. 69, Alexander Hamilton argued that the intent of this choice was to grant authority that would "amount to nothing more than the supreme command of the military and naval forces," and expressly make the position of President "inferior to that of either the monarch or the governor." Consider three cases where a president who had criticized the office's expansive war powers—President Barack Obama—found himself making military decisions involving the use of force. First, in Libya, Obama confronted an unraveling state caught in the throes of the Arab Spring. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 established the Secretary of Defense as the office in control of all aspects of DoD functions. President Dwight Eisenhower had tried to impart this authority to the secretary's office by executive fiat in 1953, with only limited success.
