Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Interestingly, and contrary to Washington’s apparent expectation, US declarations of war were neither purely in support of a president or the country’s desire for an offensive expedition “of importance” nor were they purely defensive replies to foreign assaults. That should not surprise us. The lines between offense and defense are so easily blurred—and so susceptible to being blurred by a president who sees advantage in doing so. Was the 2003 Iraq war an offensive foreign adventure? It seems so. The United States was not retaliating for an attack against it or against its diplomatic facilities abroad. But President George W. Bush apparently believed that Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq’s government had designs on using them against the United States or at least against some of our closest allies. Is that not an offensive threat that is so severe as to warrant a defensive, preemptive war to nip the enemy’s potential in the bud? Is a constitutional declaration of war required in the latter case or only in the former? Washington seemed to think defensive actions—ill-defined as they are—were not covered by the sole authority of Congress to declare war. Indeed, the founders did not provide adequate answers to questions like these, perhaps as an oversight, or perhaps to assure their own discretionary authority. We do not know. What we do know is that the constitutional limitations on the declaration of war have proven too vague and too easily thwarted to prevent the array of privations Madison believed executives were inclined toward.

Since the founding of the nation, Congress has exercised its war declaration authority in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II (declaring war separately against Germany, Japan, Italy, and Romania).25 Certainly James Madison’s War of 1812 involved an American offensive adventure against Britain’s Canadian colonies even though Britain had largely abandoned its impressment policy against American sailors before war was declared, as we will demonstrate in Chapter 2. Still, the fledgling nation arguably was defending its independence against an alleged British effort to reassert control over America.

The Mexican-American War was portrayed by President James Polk in similar terms as a defense of the nation against a Mexican assault. Yet, then congressman Abraham Lincoln, who opposed the declaration of war, argued in Congress in 1848, even as that war was winding down:

Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President . . . remember he sits where Washington sat; and, so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed . . . then I am with him for his justification. In that case I shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. . . . But if he cannot , or will not do this—if, on any pretence [ sic ], or no pretence [ sic ], he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be fully convinced . . . that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him; that he ordered General Taylor into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, purposely to bring on a war . . . and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy—he plunged into it, and has swept on and on , till disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. . . . 26

While Lincoln felt a declaration of war was justified against Mexico only if its purpose were to defend the United States against a Mexican attack—an attack he doubted had occurred—Congress, for its part, rarely declared war in the circumstances identified by Washington; that is, when engaged in foreign expeditions. Congress, for instance, did not declare war, or was not called upon to do so, in the vast majority of American foreign military engagements ranging from two expeditions against Samoa to the massive wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. It seems undeniable that modern American presidents have followed the lead of their predecessors in eviscerating the commonsense understanding of what it means to be at war.

Contrary to popular notions, it seems much less clear-cut that presidents going to war today act differently from their earlier counterparts. They engage now, as they did then, in offensive expeditions, often of great importance at least to the targets of the campaigns, without the benefit of a declaration of war. They did so in the countless wars against the Indian tribes who occupied lands that did not make up part of the original United States. These wars spanned the time from the birth of the nation when, in addition to fighting tribes aligned with Britain in the American Revolution, wars were also fought with the Cherokee over lands coveted by America’s colonial settlers and land speculators; and wars against the Indians continued up to the 1890–1891 Pine Ridge campaign against the Sioux. Over these many years, the United States managed as well to engage in battles against peoples as widespread as in Granada (1856), Cochin (1858–1862), Korea (1878), Samoa (1898–1899), and elsewhere. None of these undertakings could be justified as being required to defend the nation against threats to its security nor did any president seek congressional authorization through a declaration of war for these adventures.

By better understanding the reality of American presidents at war, perhaps we can advance in our society and in all societies an urge to reward those leaders who are best at promoting peace and prosperity rather than those whose success and glory is evaluated in the shedding of blood. Sadly, as we are about to see, the more US deaths occurred in a war overseen by a president, the greater that president’s odds of reelection and the greater the esteem in which he is held in the hindsight of history. Sad as that fact is, it is even sadder that advancing the welfare of the average US citizen by improving prosperity has had no beneficial bearing on a president’s legacy or, indeed, his reelection prospects.

Political Laurels and the Urge for Power or for Peace

FIGHTING WARS HAS BEEN GOOD FOR PRESIDENTS. REVOLUTIONARY WAR hero George Washington is perhaps unique among American presidents in not having manifested any great desire for political power, although he did not shrink from accepting it. He alone—with the possible exception of James Polk—stepped aside even though his reelection was all but assured.27 Of course, being first in the office of president, he had little idea of what the job entailed. In any event, his lifetime pursuit was the acquisition of land, not political power (as we will discuss in the next chapter).28

With hindsight, we can see that war was good for Franklin Roosevelt’s reelection prospects and for many other American leaders who engaged in it. Consider Figure I.1, which compares how historians collectively rate US presidents against the number of Americans who died in wars fought during those presidents’ respective term(s), taking into account the nation’s population and the number of years a president served.29

The dotted line running across the graph reflects a statistical estimate of the average response of the ranking of presidents to war deaths during their time in office. The line slopes upward, showing that the more war deaths per year in office, after taking the growing American population into account, the more highly the president is regarded in hindsight by historians; that is, the more deaths, the better the president ranks in the collective judgment of historians. The worst-regarded presidents (such as Warren Harding, denoted by his initials, WH) are clustered around low levels of war deaths. We can see the initials of each president, revealing that the top-rated presidents—such men as Abraham Lincoln (AL), Franklin Roosevelt (FDR), Woodrow Wilson (WW), Harry Truman (HST), and James Polk (JP)—all presided over major wars (the Civil War, World War II, World War I, the end of World War II and the Korean War, and the Mexican-American War, respectively). Their purposes in waging war may have been different—that remains to be seen as we examine many of America’s wars in the chapters to follow—but there can be no real doubt that Madison’s concern—“the honourable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace”—is at least amplified by this striking graph. Who got the laurels of historians? Those who oversaw death and destruction!