Bomb Power

by Dennis Green

Garry Wills has a new book, Bomb Power, that describes how the invention of the atom bomb has subverted the U.S. Constitution and enhanced the war making powers of the Executive. Like most of Wills’ books — including What Jesus Meant — it is brilliant and valuable reading.

The bomb introduced into our concept of national defense the unthinkable, and the unthinkable always produces a paradigm shift.

Harry S. Truman inherited a Presidency, and a war that had already been officially declared by Congress, as the Constitution demands. And then, three days after he was sworn in, he was informed about the existence of a new, powerful weapon, the atom bomb. And suddenly, the Executive Branch of the U.S. government came into possession of something it had never had before: the ultimate prerogative.

Whether to use the bomb or not, how to use it, when, under what circumstances — all these choices and decisions lay at Truman’s fingertips. And Truman’s Missouri-bred politics were very different from FDR’s. He and advisors like Dean Acheson and Clement Atlee believed that the biggest threat to world peace was no longer Nazi Germany, which lay in ruins and was weeks from surrender, but Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Republic, with whom FDR had carved up Europe at Yalta.

And so, scholars like Wills say, Truman’s decision to use the atomic bombs against Nagasaki and Hiroshima Japan was driven largely by the fear in the West of the Soviets, and a desire to cow and intimidate them by the stark vision of what devastation those bombs could actually produce if used against cities and populations. Some even say that Japan tried to surrender all that summer of 1945, and that Truman simply ignored them.

At any rate, having the bomb changed the power of the American Presidency forever. No longer, in a world dominated by the Cold War and two Superpowers who both possessed the bomb, could any “Commander in Chief” depend on Congress for a declaration of war. And in fact World War Two was the last war pursued by the U.S. that was officially declared by Congress.

Neither the “Korean Police Action,” nor the Cuban Missile Crisis nor the War in Vietnam allowed time or opportunity for Congress to deliberate, debate and vote one way or the other. President Clinton invaded Somalia and Bosnia, bombed Belgrade and Al Queda training camps in Afghanistan with only the most cursory consultation from Congress, as George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq in the Gulf War, and his son invaded Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11, with only a cursory assent from Congress.

President Ronald Reagan is credited with “winning the Cold War” by spending the Soviet Union into bankruptcy, not by invasion or dropping the Bomb. But he was also the first American President to insist he be saluted by troops upon his arrival at U.S. Bases, and even returning to the White House, a tradition that continues today. But our President is not a member of our Armed Forces, cannot be demoted or court marshaled or disciplined by the military in any way.

This is an enormous, significant shift in policy and power, one that most citizens don’t take into account when they go to the polls during the primaries or general election, either to elect a President or to elect those congress members who once had the power to keep that Executive in check. We just assume that Congress is still working the way it always has.

But it’s not. It has been de-fanged, de-nuded, stripped of the most important power it ever had — the power to declare war…or not — power it was given by the Founding Fathers in their wisdom, keeping the Executive Branch in check. Congressional impotence, gridlock and corruption may be the results, and if so, we have all lost something that was special about our nation, a separation of powers that kept us sane and free.

©2010 Dennis Green