As a result of the copious conflicts which the US has found itself mired in since the end of World War Two, many have looked for someone to blame for the chaotic and most-often deleterious conflicts. People often turned to the president who, as a result of the expansion of the office since FDR, has accrued power in many areas, including that of military capability. One must be careful, however, not to take this expansion of power for a usurpation of Congress’ powers. To do so would be to define Congress as an unwilling and unwitting participant in the exchange, whereas Congress was very much complicit in expanding the president’s capabilities, yet still holds tremendous power over the president’s power to make conflict.

The world has changed dramatically since the inception of the president’s role as Commander-in-Chief. Whereas war was once something which, though destructive, could be approached with a fair amount leisure with the benefit of time, with the coming of the nuclear age the importance of the decision-making process (and the time involved) was exacerbated. The president is in an utterly-unparalleled position to understand and respond to conflicts, and the efforts taken throughout the 20th Century in order to expand the Executive’s power by both them and Congress recognized this. With this in mind, Congress still has an immense amount of power over how the president operates themself in relation to war, as Bauer points out. To look at the record and point to the few times over the past century where the president overstepped their bounds is to ignore the numerous other times when Congress’ influence kept things in check. Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Trump all had instances where they potentially could have moved into deadly conflicts, but Congress’ constitutional power over war, equipped with the power to defund or outright end conflicts, kept things in check. If the president truly had a monopoly over war, the United States could very well have found itself in far more conflicts than we did.