26 e lusive v ictories
available, moreover, prove to be of limited value for meeting certain
tasks. Again, peace-building comes immediately to mind. When
postwar goals require new habits of voluntary cooperation among erst-
while enemies, it does not matter that the United States has more
aircraft carrier groups.
Th e ruthless logic of wartime leadership is quite simple: a president’s
ability to shape outcomes or alter policy declines inexorably over the
course of a war. In the lead-up to the outbreak of fi ghting and in its
initial phases, a president demonstrates control or agency in dramatic
ways. He pushes Congress to expand the size of the military, deploys
troops in a manner that might invite an enemy attack or make it hard
to back down from an armed confrontation, sends aid to an embattled
ally so as to make American intervention more likely, enlists allies in a
coalition to add to the legitimacy of a military solution, guides or orders
military staff in planning the opening campaign(s), asserts emergency
powers to overcome real or presumed obstacles and threats, and deter-
mines how many troops to commit. He also explains to the American
people and a global audience the purposes for which the United States
has decided to fi ght.
Key choices that a president makes at the outset, though, constrain
what he can do later. For example, unless he has committed the nation
to total war and full-scale mobilization, the resources for prosecuting
the war will be limited. Yet if he defi nes the struggle as indispensable to
national security, one in which defeat would imperil the American way
of life, he also removes disengagement from being one of the possible
options should things go badly. Other elements serve to tie a president’s
hands, including the course of the war itself and the desire of the public
to return to domestic concerns once the enemy is defeated. We should
note that the decline of presidential agency is not neatly linear. Wars
can also create opportunities or generate possibilities not present at the
outset. (Th us the counterinsurgency warfare methods used as the basis
for the 2007 troop surge in Iraq had been rediscovered over the pre-
vious three-plus years.) But nothing can reverse or long forestall the
larger trajectory of reduced presidential fl exibility and control over
events.
Diminishing freedom of action shapes how well presidents accom-
plish the six core tasks of wartime political leadership. With great