Going to war: who decides?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: Cover story

While a U.S. attack on Syria is on hold, the debate over who gets to send American troops into harm's way continues. Here are five questions to help you understand the critical constitutional questions involved.

The images from a Damascus suburb in August shocked the world: more than 1,400 dead, row after row of bodies with no visible signs of injury and hospitals flooded with victims, many of them children, gasping for breath. It didn't take the United States long to conclude it was the result of a sarin gas attack carried out by the Syrian government against its own people in the midst of a brutal civil war.

President Obama announced that he favored launching air strikes against the Syrian government for its use of chemical weapons, long banned by international treaties (see box). But then he surprised many by asking Congress to authorize an attack, which few recent presidents have done. (A Congressional vote was postponed while the U.S. and Russia brokered a deal to get Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons. The U.S. says it may still launch strikes if Syria does not comply with the agreement.)

Regardless of whether the vote takes place in Congress, the situation has revived the long-running debate over who has the ultimate authority to order American troops into battle.

1 What does the Constitution say?

The question of who can send American troops off to fight--the president or Congress--has been debated in Washington for more than 200 years. The Constitution divides war powers between the executive and legislative branches-one of many "checks and balances" the Framers devised--but the language is open to interpretation.

That was intentional, says Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation. "The writers of the Constitution knew that there would be circumstances they couldn't anticipate," he says.

According to the Constitution, "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." (The Air Force and Coast Guard didn't exist in 1789, and the Marine Corps is part of the Navy.) Today, the heads of all five branches of the military ultimately take their orders from the president. As the commander of the armed forces, the president has a lot of latitude to take action in response to national security threats.

But the Constitution also says: "The Congress shall have power ... to declare war" and to "provide for the common defense ... of the United States." And since Congress also controls federal spending--what's known as "the power of the purse"--it can decide whether and how much to fund a war.

"In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department," Congressman (and later President) James Madison wrote in 1793.

Legal scholars agree that the Founding Fathers divided war powers partly to prevent Congress from intervening in the tactical decisions of a war. It's often said you can't have 535 generals (100 Senators and 435 Representatives).

"The way the system is supposed to work is that the two branches are designed to be at odds with each other," says Spalding. "Presidents are supposed to protect their authority. They naturally want to not defer to Congress, especially on national security."

2 When was the last time the U.S. actually declared war?

Congress has formally declared war only five times * in American history, most recently during World War II (1941-45). But presidents have sent troops abroad to fight more than 200 times. Usually, there has been some kind of congressional assent beforehand, but not always (see timeline).

"From Washington forward, presidents have engaged in military activities without declarations and without authorizations," Spalding says.

In 1950, the U.S...