Executive must act swiftly to protect commerce

The Strait of Hormuz is not a remote abstraction — a fifth of the world's oil supply moves through it, and its closure is an act of economic warfare against the United States and every nation that trades with us. The federal commerce power exists precisely because commerce does not stop at the water's edge, and the executive's duty to protect it does not pause while Congress convenes a debate. I wrote in Federalist No. 70 that energy in the executive is the leading character of good government; a president who watches a critical artery of world trade strangled while awaiting a formal declaration has already lost the initiative that defense requires. That said, I am no friend to perpetual, unchecked war-making. Strikes taken to reopen commerce and defend the national interest must be reported promptly to Congress, bounded in scope, and subjected to legislative judgment before they become a sustained campaign. Swift action and constitutional accountability are not enemies — they are partners.

Congress alone holds the war power

Article I, Section 8 could not be more direct: it is Congress, not the President, that holds the power to declare war — and that placement was no accident. The convention put it there precisely because the framers had watched executives drag nations into conflicts for dynastic ambition, for pride, for commercial interest dressed up as honor. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a genuine crisis, and the economic pressure it imposes may well warrant a forceful American response — but the Constitution does not authorize the executive to unilaterally determine that the moment for war has arrived. Treasury sanctions, presidential threats, and now military strikes: each step taken without the deliberative consent of the legislature is a step that narrows the space in which Congress can exercise the judgment the compact assigned to it. The remedy for an unresponsive Congress is not to bypass it; the remedy is to convene it, press it to act, and hold it accountable when it refuses.

Entangling force abroad courts tyranny at home

The moment a president sends armies abroad without the sanction of Congress, he has not merely stretched the Constitution — he has begun to tear it. My generation placed the war power in the legislature precisely because we understood that executives, once given the sword, are reluctant to sheathe it; and that a republic which wages perpetual war abroad will find, upon returning home, that it has imported the habits of arbitrary command along with its veterans. I do not dispute that the closure of a vital commercial strait is a grave provocation, one that legitimate diplomacy and, where necessary, a formal act of Congress ought to address. But unilateral strikes, launched on presidential will alone, establish a precedent far more dangerous to the liberties of American citizens than any foreign chokepoint. The cure for Iranian aggression is not executive monarchy. An educated citizenry should insist that their representatives vote, own the decision, and answer for it.