America’s latest air strikes on Iran were reportedly launched without Congressional approval, marking another step in the erosion of constitutional powers. Unless this drift is checked, the republic’s founding principles may not survive the next conflict, warns our U.S political analyst, Michael Bedenbaugh
There was a time, not so long ago, when the notion of a president unilaterally initiating war without the explicit approval of Congress would have provoked alarm across the political spectrum. The mere suggestion would have sparked a fierce constitutional reckoning, testing the limits of executive authority and calling forth the protective instincts of the legislature. It would almost certainly have triggered censure, and quite possibly impeachment. Today, such declarations pass almost unnoticed, raising neither headlines nor protest. In this quiet acquiescence lies a deeper erosion of the constitutional order and of the public’s memory of what that order was meant to guard.
That erosion has once again been brought into stark relief. This weekend, the United States reportedly carried out coordinated air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, targeting sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, without any formal authorisation from Congress. Though the operation was framed as a strategic deterrent, its constitutional implications were neither debated nor voted on by the legislature. It was, in effect, an act of war by executive order alone.
The gradual surrender of war-making powers to the presidency has not taken place through a single act, nor under the glare of national debate. Instead, it has unfolded over decades, under the weight of political convenience, technological speed, and a culture that increasingly accepts distant warfare as a matter of course. The American Constitution, conceived in an age of deliberate process and Enlightenment restraint, assigned the power to declare war solely to Congress. The president, by design, was tasked with carrying out policy and not defining it through force. Yet that principle has faded in practice, giving way to a model of executive primacy that few among the founders would recognise.
The case of Iran reveals the slow and uneasy transformation of this doctrine. In 1953, American intelligence operatives orchestrated the removal of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, replacing him with a monarchy more amenable to Western interests. That intervention, little understood at the time, cast a long shadow over the decades that followed. When the Islamic Revolution erupted in 1979, bringing with it the hostage crisis and a permanent chill in relations, it marked a turning point in regional politics and a hardening of posture on both sides. Since then, the U.S has repeatedly pursued military and covert action against Iran without seeking – or in some cases, even notifying – Congress.
Aside from this weekend’s bombings, one of the most striking examples came in 2020 when President Donald Trump reportedly ordered the targeted killing of General Qasem Soleimani on Iraqi soil. It was, by many definitions, an act of war. Yet rather than being debated in the legislature, the decision was reportedly justified after the fact, and absorbed into a pattern of presidential discretion that had already become familiar. What was once extraordinary now passed as routine.
This is not the story of a single administration overreaching but of a history of bipartisan neglect in which Congress has repeatedly chosen expedience over responsibility. In 1999, President Bill Clinton launched a sustained bombing campaign in Serbia under the NATO flag without congressional authorisation. More than a decade later, President Barack Obama expanded the use of drone warfare across multiple countries, invoking a legal justification originally designed for the pursuit of al-Qaeda in the aftermath of 9/11. The 2001 Authorisation for Use of Military Force has since been stretched beyond recognition, invoked in theatres of conflict that bear little resemblance to the one it was intended to address.
It’s easy to blame President Trump for his quick, rash decisions, but the truth is that he inherited, rather than invented, this framework. His actions merely conform to a precedent that has been allowed to harden into informal policy. The real danger, then, lies not in who holds the power but in the system that allows it to go unchecked.
When the decision to take a nation to war becomes the province of a single office, deliberation fades, oversight weakens, and the voices of the citizenry grow faint.
At this moment, speculation once again circles around the possibility of further confrontation with Iran. The latest strikes make clear that the threshold has already been crossed. What now hangs in the balance is the future of regional stability and the structural integrity of the republic itself – that is, its assumptions, its safeguards, and its understanding of legitimacy. In the wake of the U.S bombings, Tehran’s parliament has reportedly voted in favour of closing the Strait of Hormuz, a move that could devastate global energy markets and isolate Iran from its neighbours. Although the final decision now rests with the country’s national security council, the mere possibility has sent shockwaves through diplomacy, with Washington even appealing to Beijing to prevent such a closure. The outcome will carry consequences far beyond military posturing, touching upon the fragile architecture of international order.
In Iran, more than 60 per cent of the population has reportedly been born since the revolution of 1979. This is a generation with no direct memory of the slogans, struggles, or ideologies that defined the Islamic Republic’s early years. Their world is shaped instead by digital connection, cultural exchange, and a quiet, often dangerous defiance of the regime’s orthodoxies. They study abroad, share Western music online, and find solidarity in satire rather than dogma. Whatever resentment may linger from the past, they are not its heirs in spirit.
In the U.S, meanwhile, over 70 per cent of citizens were reportedly born after American troops first landed in Vietnam. The trauma of that war in terms of human cost and political fallout has shaped a generation’s mistrust of government and marks the last real assertion of congressional war authority. Yet for those born after it, military interventions in distant lands have become a kind of political background noise. They have not been drafted, nor marched in protest. They have inherited, instead, a culture in which warfare occurs in distant deserts and across flickering screens, initiated by presidents and reported after the fact.
The irony is as stark as it is sobering. In Iran, a population raised under revolution seeks freedom. In America, meanwhile, a population raised under freedom appears ever less attuned to the mechanisms that protect it. At the heart of that disconnect lies the question of constitutional memory and whether it can be recovered before it is lost entirely.
If the republic is to endure in any meaningful sense, it cannot do so on sentiment alone. It requires structure, and that structure demands renewal. The philosophical tradition that underpinned America’s founding – classical republicanism, in the true, pre-partisan sense – rests on the distribution of power, the necessity of public consent, and a deep suspicion of war as a tool of executive will. The authors of the Constitution placed the decision to go to war in the hands of Congress for a reason; they knew only too well what concentrated power does in times of conflict.
Congress has, however, allowed its authority to wither, fearing the political cost of difficult votes. Presidents have filled the vacuum, and the public, worn down by the regularity of conflict, has ceased to expect more.
But the preservation of constitutional government has never been automatic. It is an act of constant vigilance, not of habit. If America’s claim to moral and democratic leadership is to carry weight, especially among allies who look to it for guidance, then that leadership must begin with the rule of law and not the rule of precedent.
NATO does not exist to facilitate unilateral action, and nor should its democratic members accept it as such. If Europe is to remain a partner in peace and security, then it must demand consultation, collaboration, and legitimacy, rather than kowtowing to the decisions of a powerful ally. Lest we forget that trust among democracies cannot be summoned by decree but earned through shared deliberation and mutual respect.
The central question, then, is not whether America should act with strength but rather who determines the nature and direction of that strength, and by what authority. As the world watches the gathering of pressure in the Gulf and beyond, the true test lies not in the velocity of American missiles but in the integrity of the process that might launch them.
The choices made in the coming months will echo well beyond the Strait of Hormuz. They will speak to whether a nation founded on reasoned debate and limited power still remembers what it was meant to be, and whether it remains willing to fight against external enemies and the slow, internal drift away from self-government.
Before the next war begins, Americans must ask themselves: who decides, and in whose name?
Author and political thinker Michael Bedenbaugh is a respected voice in constitutional principles and American governance. Based in South Carolina, he is deeply involved in his home state’s development while contributing to national discussions on governance and civic engagement, most recently as standing as an independent candidate for Congress. He is the author of Reviving Our Republic: 95 Theses for the Future of America and the host of YouTube channel Reviving Our Republic with Mike Bedenbaugh.
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