352 e lusive v ictories
complained that presidents have amassed enormous military power
and exploited national security crises to increase their executive
authority. My analysis suggests, however, that presidents have too
little power , not too much. Lest conservatives draw from this the
wrong conclusion—that presidents should be given even broader
unilateral executive authority—I would emphasize that the power
defi ciency cannot be solved by giving the occupant of the Oval Offi ce
greater resources. No increase in the size of the military, no new
weapons system, no assertion of a new executive prerogative can alter
the wartime power paradox. It boils down to this: the kind of power
that presidents command does nothing to preserve their freedom of
action over time. Th is is not a matter of how a president approaches
his role as military commander in chief. Whether he adopts the
objective control approach or the hands-on style, his freedom of
action will diminish over the course of a war.
In war, time is a president’s true enemy. At the beginning of a
confl ict, he exercises agency over a broad range of choices. He defi nes
national objectives including the kind of peace he seeks, chooses his
military commanders, decides how many troops to commit, defi nes or
approves strategy, and forges international coalitions. But each choice
necessarily forecloses other possible paths and each one makes it more
costly and perhaps impossible to reverse direction. For Bush, the
decision to invade Iraq with a small force left too few troops on hand to
cope with the disorder and insurgency that followed. Decisions made
by subordinates also constrain a president’s freedom of action. Roos-
evelt discovered how low-level offi cials could skew his plans before the
United States entered World War II when the bureaucracy imposed its
own interpretation of a strategic embargo on Japan. Bush had too few
troops to cope with an Iraqi insurgency because Rumsfeld insisted on a
light invasion force.
By the end of a war, a president tries to lead with his hands tied. If
he has not yet set in place the elements of a postwar settlement, he will
fi nd his path blocked, with the American people demanding attention
to domestic concerns, Congress reasserting its role and denying him the
resources he seeks for postwar commitments, and allies pursing their
own national interests. Time, then, is the one foe he cannot defeat by
military prowess, artful diplomacy, or forceful rhetoric.