President Trump powerless to defend a NATO victim of aggression

Constitutional ignorance is infinite and epidemic

Former President Donald Trump, according to his own unverified and likely apocryphal recollection, told an unnamed NATO member that he would not come to its defense if it was delinquent in defense spending as dictated by Trump’s yardstick. Trump’s implication was that he would preside over a mercenary state and fight for any country with our men and women if it paid full freight—even North Korea, Iran, China, or Russia.

The media was aghast. But the astonishment was born of limitless ignorance. Neither President Trump nor any other President is empowered to go to war. That prerogative lies exclusively with Congress under the Declare War Clause as drafted, debated, ratified, and understood by every participant in making the Constitution. There were no dissenters.

Depend upon it. Once the Declare War Clause is dishonored and de facto voided, other constitutional provisions will fall like dominoes. There is no articulable limiting principle. The Fourth Amendment is already in its grave.

The nation is doomed to self-ruination. We have plunged from the heights of the Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, and Constitution to the puerility of Taylor Swift, the Superbowl, and Barbie. We have become like Rome-an Empire of bread and circuses and will suffer the same fate.

But we dare not fail to try to stop what is as inevitable as the force of gravity. The doomed struggle is better than all the alternatives.