It is often noted that the Constitution is a form of living document, growing with time and the changing requirements of society. However, this is not a reason to break from appropriate precedence and understanding. From the onset, the constitution has been understood to delineate war powers between the branches of government. The Commander in Chief is tasked with directing and producing policy to guide the armed forces only after Congress has issued a decision to declare war on a foe or enact wartime powers. Without initiating these wartime powers, the President of the United States is merely the head of the executive branch, not yet titled Commander in Chief. Without these powers being granted to him, the President simply has no authority over the armed forces.

The path toward the executive office’s thievery of the power to declare war from Congress was a very slippery slope. A caveat in the rule was established that the Executive would be allowed to take immediate action when the United States was in danger. What was left ambiguous was what exactly could be considered the United States. Since its inception America had largely been isolationist, concerning itself with its own continent. This was solidified in the Monroe Doctrine. This document called for other world powers to refrain from encroaching upon the American hemisphere. This position dissolved at a time when the world was more connected than at any other point in history. As America entered the world stage a tangled web of alliances bound the globe together and polarized the world into us and them. A view of the world through this lens is simply not literally accurate. We are not us, an all-inclusive term that includes our allies, we are the U.S., an acronym denoting our solitary nation. An attack on or threat to our allies does not constitute an attack on the United States and so does not call for an immediate response from the Executive to defend our nation and constitution. An attack on an ally is an attack on a foreign nation with which we have a treaty of mutual defense. A treaty is ratified by Congress and so enforcement should be reviewed by Congress as well.

When we developed our constitution communicating meant sending a messenger to ride for several hours, perhaps days, before the message could be delivered and a response would take just as long. Mobilizing troops was a matter of walking or riding horseback to the location the army was needed. In these circumstances every moment counts and sending the first messengers to round up Congress instead of the military is nonsensical. In our modern time, Congress can be roused with a phone call and on a face-to-face zoom meeting in five minutes time. These luxuries allow us to call for more congressional oversight of our military endeavors, not less, especially when many of our defenses are practically automated. A missile defense system hardly needs to await a Presidential order before grounding a missile on its way to the mainland, or at least I hope this is the case.