HARRIS-WALZ WOBBLY ON THE CONSTITUTION’S DECLARE WAR CLAUSE
By Bruce Fein*
The Democratic Party ticket of Harris-Walz is wobbly on the clearest and most
enlightened and significant provision in the United States Constitution: The Declare War Clause,
Article I, section 8, cl. 11. Both, like their Democratic and Republican colleagues, have
acquiesced in the President’s usurpation of the war power from Congress in violation of their
respective oaths to preserve and protect the Constitution. Presidents will not voluntarily
surrender the power back to Congress but wield it to keep the United States a permanent
belligerent or co-belligerent fortified by a climbing $1.5 trillion annual national security budget.
President Joe Biden is a bracing example. As a United States Senator seeking the
Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2007, Mr. Biden screamed that he would lead the
charge to impeach President George W. Bush if he attacked Iran without a constitutionally
required declaration of war. But as Vice President, Mr. Biden declined to protest President
Barack Obama’s unconstitutional attack on Libya to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi making a
wilderness featuring industrial scale murders, rape, destruction, human trafficking, slavery, and
refugees fleeing and dying in the Mediterranean Sea to escape Mr. Obama’s dystopia. And
President Biden has repeatedly avowed he would attack Russia if it invaded a NATO member
and China if it invaded Taiwan without constitutionally required congressional declarations of
war. And President Biden has continued to fight unconstitutional wars in Iraq, Syria, Somalia,
and Yemen and as co-belligerents with Ukraine and Israel through the systematic supply of
weapons without required congressional declarations.
The Harris-Walz ticket promises the same unconstitutional presidential wars. Here’s the
litmus test. Ask Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris if she would go to war against
Russia if President Putin invaded a NATO member, for example, Finland, Latvia, or Poland,
without a congressional declaration of war. Ms. Harris would never say, “No.” That
constitutionally correct answer would awaken the wrath of the multi-trillion-dollar military-
industrial-security complex which has dictated the national security policies of the United States
since at least the Koran War if not earlier. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the same
as long ago as 1960. Ms. Harris would be equally adamant against saying “No” to warring with
China over Taiwan irrespective of a congressional declaration.
By osmosis, Harris-Walz have absorbed the commandments of the American Empire,
which displaced the Republic more than a century ago. Our Empire is fueled by the
magnification of fleas into elephants and the shrinkage of elephants into fleas. Commandment 1:
the United States is uniquely indispensable to peace and prosperity in the world because we are
God’s new chosen people. Commandment 2: Preemptive wars to destroy pre-embryonic
imaginary threats are mandatory because the first step towards a mushroom cloud over NYC or
Washington, D.C. is a foreigner who has learned quantum mechanics. Better that tens of
millions of innocent foreigners die than that one evil foreigner eludes extermination.
Commandment 3: An eye for ten million eyes. A tooth for 100 million teeth.
As the saying goes in politics, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The Constitution’s authors were unanimous: the President would be an untrustworthy
steward of the war power. The temptation to fabricate excuses for war to aggrandize power
would be too great for the commander in chief. James Madison, father of the Constitution,
explained that presidents would be drawn to war for fame, glory, secrecy, and salutes. The
appalling evils of war-the crucifixion of liberty on a national security cross, the legalization of
first-degree murder on an industrial scale, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the
squandering of trillions of dollars better spent on hospitals, roads, airports, schools, bridges, mass
transit, or other infrastructure, would be readily indulged by presidents as the price of an
American Empire bestriding the world like a colossus.
Congress, in contrast to the President, has no incentive to invoke the war power except in
response to actual or imminent foreign aggression. In times of war, Congress shrinks to an ink
blot except for the power to suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus. No war monument or
statue has ever been constructed to heroize a Member of Congress who voted for war.
Accordingly, Congress has declared war in only five conflicts over 235 years and only in
response to an actual or perceived attack, whereas Presidents have unilaterally deployed the
military offensively on scores of occasions, including Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Kuwait, Serbia,
Iraq, Syria, and Libya.
In November, the American people will have a choice between Harris-Walz and Trump-
Vance. But they will not have a choice between an Empire and a Republic. The Empire is here to
stay until self-ruination arrives like the scores of its predecessors.
*Bruce Fein was associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan and author of
American Empire Before The Fall. He is a constitutional and international lawyer.
www.lawofficedsofbrucefein.com