On April 1, President Trump made his first formal public address about the United States’ military actions in Iran. His speech came over a month after the United States and Israel sent missiles and drones into the country, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other officials and destroying infrastructure. As of early April, there are 50,00 U.S. troops throughout the Middle East (around 10,000 more than usual). Despite this military action, the United States Congress has not formally declared war, and President Trump has not sought Congressional approval.
We spoke with Fredrik Logevall, the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of History and International Affairs at HKS and an expert in international relations and U.S. foreign affairs, about the history of war powers in the United States, the role of Congress and the Constitution, and how past presidents have approached these weighty choices.
So is the United States considered officially at war with Iran?
Strictly speaking, according to the Constitution, we aren’t officially at war because only Congress has the power to declare war.
War powers are shared in the Constitution—according to Article I, Congress holds the power to declare war, and Article II says that the president is the commander in chief who will then make key decisions about the resulting war.
In reality, of course, what we’re seeing in Iran is very much a war. It can have no other name.
What does it look like for Congress to declare war?
It is a full vote of the Congress, requested by the president, resulting in a declaration of war. It is by way of joint resolution on both houses of Congress, and a simple majority is required.
I think it’s worth noting that the founders felt strongly that you should not have a situation whereby you could have unilateral executive action on something as important as declaring war. It’s the weightiest, most important policy decision that a leader can make, taking the nation to war. And I think the founders felt strongly that only Congress, as the body most accountable to the American people, should have that power, that you shouldn’t have it in the hands of one person.
And up until World War II, that mostly held, and then it hasn’t since.
What happened after World War Two?
Over the last eight decades, the United States has been involved in innumerable military conflicts. President after president after president has committed the nation to what I think in any by any reasonable definition is war—and yet we have not seen this declaration.
Why haven’t presidents declared war formally since World War Two?
A key moment was the Korean War. When President Truman decided to call the American military intervention in Korea with ground troops—a significant number of ground troops—he called it a police action.
He didn’t want to go to Congress for a declaration, partly because of timing and partly because he didn’t want a potentially contentious debate. And that set a precedent.
I’m not sure Harry Truman understood what he unleashed. He set a precedent that we would then live with. Up until the present day, presidents have taken advantage of the opportunity to commit American military power without Congressional authorization. They’ve taken a page from Truman’s playbook.
Is President Trump’s approach to military action in Iran different than prior presidents?
What’s extraordinary about President Trump in the current context is that he has not really bothered to even consult with Congress, never mind seek the approval of Congress.
In advance of the first Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush worked hard to get Congressional backing. It was a painstaking effort to build up Congressional support and allied international support. The vote in Congress was close, but he got the joint resolution he sought.
His son did the same in advance of the Iraq invasion in 2003. There was conviction on the part of senior politicians, both Democratic and Republican, that even if you don’t actually want Congress to declare war, if you want to be able to wage this campaign without a formal declaration of war, you nevertheless will benefit from the approval of lawmakers to engage in military action. It shows unity at home and shows foreign observers that you have broad domestic backing. The younger Bush likewise got the Congressional authorization he sought, and by a more comfortable margin than his father did.
Other presidents have felt the same. And certainly in terms of a major conflict, there have been other presidents besides the Bushes since 1945 who have engaged in more limited, quicker military action without even really seeking Congressional approval. But for a major undertaking of the type that we’re in now—this is a major military conflict—you would have seen in the past an effort to bring Congress along and to bring allied governments along. That’s what makes Trump’s approach exceptional. He has not bothered to do either.
“What’s extraordinary about President Trump in the current context is that he has not really bothered to even consult with Congress, never mind seek the approval of Congress.”
Is President Trump’s approach to military action in Iran different than prior presidents?
What’s extraordinary about President Trump in the current context is that he has not really bothered to even consult with Congress, never mind seek the approval of Congress.
In advance of the first Gulf War, President George H. W. Bush worked hard to get Congressional backing. It was a painstaking effort to build up Congressional support and allied international support. The vote in Congress was close, but he got the joint resolution he sought.
His son did the same in advance of the Iraq invasion in 2003. There was conviction on the part of senior politicians, both Democratic and Republican, that even if you don’t actually want Congress to declare war, if you want to be able to wage this campaign without a formal declaration of war, you nevertheless will benefit from the approval of lawmakers to engage in military action. It shows unity at home and shows foreign observers that you have broad domestic backing. The younger Bush likewise got the Congressional authorization he sought, and by a more comfortable margin than his father did.
Other presidents have felt the same. And certainly in terms of a major conflict, there have been other presidents besides the Bushes since 1945 who have engaged in more limited, quicker military action without even really seeking Congressional approval. But for a major undertaking of the type that we’re in now—this is a major military conflict—you would have seen in the past an effort to bring Congress along and to bring allied governments along. That’s what makes Trump’s approach exceptional. He has not bothered to do either.
What were those efforts to engage Congress like?
In terms of these presidents that we’ve been talking about since Truman, I think they have felt to a greater or lesser degree—Democratic as well as Republican—that because the executive branch was amassing more and more power, in what Arthur Schlesinger called “the imperial presidency,” the formal declaration of war called for in the Constitution was not really necessary. Presidents, I think, have preferred to get that authority through consultation with Congress rather than by declaration.
So the two Bushes had the important votes in Congress. And Lyndon Johnson had the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, which basically gave him a blank check to take any necessary measures he deemed imperative to wage war in Southeast Asia to protect American interests. He sought and got Congressional approval, by way of a lopsided vote in both houses of Congress. He got what a sought, Congressional backing, swiftly and efficiently.
If presidents were already rallying Congress for military action, why didn’t they just encourage them to declare war?
Part of the answer at least is that the administrations feel that they have greater latitude without a formal declaration. You have more flexibility. You don’t have to put the country on a war footing. You don’t have to alarm the public unnecessarily. You don't have to call up the reserves. You don’t have to do a lot of things that a formal war situation would require.
You are getting Congress signing off in a clear way through a vote. Each member has to vote. That’s cover for you, and you can say “Congress supports me.” To use Vietnam as an example, Johnson made great use of the fact that he’d gotten that resolution in August of 1964. He brought that up time and time again as the war escalated in later years. “Don’t come complaining to me,” he in effect said. “You backed this thing.”
Have there been attempts to “reset” back to Congress declaring war?
There was a belated recognition by lawmakers during the Vietnam War that basically Congress had allowed the executive branch to get too much power. They said, “We need to rein in the president’s ability to act with impunity in military terms without any kind of involvement from us.” And so what you see is the passage of the War Powers Resolution. This happens in November 1973.
It’s an effort to reassert Constitutional authority that had lapsed. It reasserts Congressional authority over the use of military force, ensuring that there will be active consultation about the that use. The War Powers Act requires that Congress be notified within forty-eight hours of the military commitment and that unauthorized troop commitments—troop commitments that don’t have explicit Congressional authority—will be limited to sixty days.
Those are the key provisions of the War Powers Act.
Did presidents follow the provisions of the War Powers Act?
There was a hope for a while that, “well, maybe this is going to be the righting of the balance, and we’re going to go back to a system where we’re not going to have military engagements of any notable size without an active Congressional role.”
The 1973 Act has not been wholly without effect. The problem is that there are loopholes in the act, and so it hasn’t had the impact that its sponsors envisioned.
What, precisely, constitutes “hostilities”? That’s hard to determine, and administrations have been able to use that fuzziness to skirt the act’s provisions. This is true among Democratic as well as Republican administrations. Lawmakers, for the most part, have been willing to go along, to defer to the White House. They’re often reluctant to go against the commander-in-chief, and moreover the geopolitical issues are often complex. It’s tempting, from their perspective, to stand aside, never mind the Constitution.
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