Bomb Power.

• Author: Coffey, John
• Position: Book review

Bomb Power Reviewed by John Coffey

Garry Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, New York: Penguin Press, ISBN 9781594202407, 2010, 288 pp., $27.95

Recognizing that the world is a dangerous place, Alexander Hamilton observed, "It is the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority." (1) Garry Wills views the evolution of the presidency in more sinister terms. According to Wills, the secret Manhattan Project provided a paradigm for presidential usurpation of power across the spectrum of national security. Wills's determinism makes "One Thing" explain "Everything." The Bomb knocked the Constitution off the skids. "Executive power," Wills claims, "has basically been, since World War II, Bomb Power." (2) The "forces" he describes have produced an "American Monarch."

Wills' overwrought reprise of Arthur Schlesinger's The Imperial Presidency lacks three things: an appreciation of the differences between the executive and legislative authorities; historical context; and recognition of the importance of individuals in history. Let us trace his argument.

After World War II a "structure of fear" in the Executive Office drove a quest for atomic supremacy. For Wills psychology displaces historical context to explain foreign policy-making in response to a perceived Soviet threat. The 1947 Truman Doctrine announcing aid to Greece and Turkey formed a "main pillar" of the National Security State. The National Security Act of that year built the institutional structure (an Air Force, DOD, NSC, CIA). The surreptitious diversion of Marshall Plan funds for covert operations to prevent a Communist victory in the 1948 Italian elections, NATO's "militarization" of the Marshall Plan, NSC 68, and the establishment of NSA completed the unconstitutional edifice. Executive prerogative in secret CIA funding for covert operations fails to pass constitutional muster for Wills, and the Manhattan Plan's secrecy served as precedent in subsequent years for covering up "Anything Important" and concealing CIA "crimes" in its foreign interventions.

Despite congressional attempts in the 1970's (e.g., War Powers Resolution, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Church/Pike CIA reforms) to limit executive power, the "imperial presidency" remained unchecked, with the Cheney/Rumsfeld 'axis of evil' leading a "counter-revolution" against the congressional coup of the 1970's. The Bush II Administration launched...