August 22, 2023
Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
Re: “Even if Mr. Trump is absent there’s still plenty to debate,” (Editorial, August 22, 2023)
To the Editor:
You errantly assume in proposing foreign policy questions for the GOP debate on August 23, 2023, that the President possesses authority under Article 5 of NATO or the Constitution to resort to war to defend a NATO member from aggression or Taiwan from an attack by China. Article 11 of NATO assigns to Congress responsibility for deciding how to respond to aggression against a member. Secretary of State Dean Acheson testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1949 as follows: “[Article 5] naturally does not mean that the United States would automatically be at war if one of the other signatory nations were the victim of an armed attack. Under our Constitution, the Congress alone has the power to declare war.”
Section 3 of the Taiwan Relations Act similarly stipulates that any United States response to a threat to Taiwan’s security shall be determined by the “President and Congress in accordance with constitutional processes….” Only Congress is empowered to take the nation to war. James Madison, father of the Constitution, instructed, “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.”
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, 1981-83, and author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy
300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20001
Phone: 202-465-8728; 703-963-4968
Email: bruce@feinpoints.com