In my previous post, I suggested that one way of putting the breaks our tendency toward global empire would be to institutional dis-incentivize both the President and Congress from deploying and using the military except when absolutely necessary.

The first restraint I proposed was to take the veto power away from the President as soon as soldiers starting dying absent a declaration of war. Basically, this would say to the President: “You can have your war without congressional consent, but you will lose your leverage over domestic politics if you do. If it’s that important to you, so be it.”

As I suggested, however, this creates a problem, since it would institutionally incentivize Congress to never declare war, in the hopes of taking the veto power from the President. That’s not what we want. So we need to put some restraints on Congress too, ones that would hopefully lead them to declare war only when absolutely necessary, and minimize the number of soldiers who die in undeclared wars.

This is not an easy task.

One idea would be to limit Congress on both sides of the equation, with an institutional restraint similar to the Presidents if soldiers are dying absent a war declaration, and also serious consequences for declaring war. But it just doesn’t seem to work; any limitation you think of has the potential to badly backfire. And I’ve thought of a lot of them: bars on tax cuts, no pay for Congress, term limits for Congress, limitations on domestic spending, conscription requirements. All of them have their problems.

Which leaves me convinced that the solution is not only to trigger the amendment with a dead soldier, but also ban  foreign deployment. Something like this:

No more than 100 active duty uniformed members of the military may be stationed, based, or otherwise deployed by either Congress or the President in any individual foreign country absent a declaration of war by Congress that authorizes such deployments. 

In the case of any offensive combat death of a U.S. soldier at a time when no congressional declaration of war is in effect for the combat being undertaken by the solider, or the combat death of any enemy soldier killed by the offensive actions of the U.S. military at a time when no congressional declaration of war is in effect for the combat being undertaken that led to the enemy death, the president shall not have the power to veto congressional legislation for the following 60 days.  Any bill passed by both the House and Senate in identical form shall become law automatically.

So basically no troops overseas, and any missile attack the President initiates means he loses the veto power for period of time. It’s just at trade off: you want to bomb Libya, get ready to have no domestic influence.

However, we still need to make sure Congress does not just declare war willy-nilly to escape this provision. How about this:

Congress may declare war by a majority vote in each chamber. The President may not veto a declaration of war. Whenever Congress declares war, the President shall have the power of absolute veto over all congressional legislation during the period under which war is declared, except for stand-alone legislation ending the declaration of war. Such legislation will not be subject to any Presidential veto, and will be effective upon passage in identical form by the House and Senate. 

So, to sum up: no troops deployed around the globe. Presidents may use the military to launch missile attacks and the like, but lose the veto power for a period of time if they do. However, if Congress does declare war, the President becomes more powerful — with an absolute veto over legislation.

This makes sense to me — when there is no war declared, the President may not maintain an empire and may only use the military at a servere cost. When Congress does declare war, the President becomes more like a dictator. Isn’t this what we want? Think of the benefits:

* it severely limits the global standing-army capabilities of the United States

* it discourages Congress from declaring war

* it limits Congress ability to interfere with a war, once declared

* it incentivizes Congress to end wars

* it makes it easy and effective for Congress to end a war

Any thoughs?

U