WHEN HARRY S TRUMAN announced in June 1950 that he was committing U.S. forces to defend South Korea without prior Congressional approval, he redefined the role of the president as commander in chief. Without fanfare but with implications potentially as significant, Bill Clinton seems determined to forfeit that role.
Truman’s assertion of the authority to make war in this way established a precedent that his successors regardless of party would affirm. Yet in explaining his actions to the American people, Truman established a second precedent: responsibility for the decision to intervene was irrefutably and undeniably his. Acting in his capacity as commander in chief, Truman was accountable. Americans knew precisely where the buck stopped.
This union of authority and accountability in matters relating to war and peace virtually defined the presidency throughout the Cold War. In an era marked by the frequent use of force in actions ranging from major wars to minor incursions, American presidents guarded fiercely their prerogative of choosing when and where to employ American military power. Yet they did not flinch from accepting the parallel requirement of justifying their actions to the American people. From the 1960s onward, it became something of a ritual; the grim-faced Commander in Chief appearing on television to explain to the nation why he felt compelled to send young Americans into harm’s way.
The recent escalation of hostilities in Bosnia signifies a fundamental break with this tradition. As a result of the American-led air campaign, the United States is today a de facto belligerent in the complex civil war within the former Yugoslavia. Yet at no time in the history of the United States has responsibility for a major American military action been more ambiguous.
Under whose authority do Americans fight in the Balkans? U.S. officials seem content to convey the impression that military developments there are the product of negotiations between two supranational entities, NATO and the United Nations. Newspapers report — without contradiction by administration officials — that “the decision to launch the attacks was made jointly” by two military officers, an admiral commanding NATO’s southern flank and a French general responsible for UN operations in the former Yugoslavia. Likewise, we are told, “the aerial campaign can be formally ended only by a joint decision of these two men.”
That the U.S. involvement in this war proceeds without the sanction of an old-fashioned declaration of war and with minimal consultation with Congressional leaders is unsurprising. That it has occurred without the explicit authorization of President Clinton as commander in chief is astonishing. Indeed, the president has gone out of his way to avoid the appearance of being in charge. Rather than asserting responsibility for directing events, Clinton has kept the lowest of low profiles, limiting himself to endorsing actions already in progress.
In effect, the commander in chief has assumed the pose of kibitzer. With the U.S.-led air campaign well underway, for example, the vacationing president allowed that he viewed escalation as “an appropriate response,” venturing so far as to aver that “I think it is something that had to be done. ” In the days to follow, he would find infinitely more to say about the accomplishments of Cal Ripken than about the activities of American pilots delivering ordinance near Pale or Sarajevo.
From the very beginning of his term, Clinton’s uneasiness with his role as civilian head of the armed forces has been palpable. When it comes to high stakes military enterprises such as the United States is presently engaged in in the Balkans, the presidential interest in minimizing his political exposure is readily apparent.
Yet however much Clinton may want to wipe his fingerprints from decisions involving the use of force, in doing so he shirks a fundamental responsibility. The consequences go far beyond Bosnia. In conveying the impression that NATO and UN military officers possess the authority to decide when to initiate hostilities and when to desist, Clinton tampers unwittingly with the principle of civilian control. Worse still, in adhering to the fiction that American actions in the Balkans are merely those of a loyal agent or obliging proxy for NATO and the UN, Clinton has allowed U.S. forces to become involved in a shooting war without either constitutional standing or popular endorsement — with implications likely to become apparent should that war show signs of turning sour.
It is precisely at such moments that the nation requires the moral courage of a genuine commander in chief. One recalls the words of John F. Kennedy, Mr. Clinton’s hero, following the debacle at the Bay of Pigs. “I am the responsible officer of this government,” Kennedy told the nation. With the United States today at war in the Balkans, who is that responsible officer? It is yet another indication of the abiding weakness of this presidency that we don’t really know.
A.J. Bacevich is executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
