At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the delegates had created. Franklin reportedly replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

And we had, for over two centuries.

To be sure, Americans experienced moments that seemed poised to tear the country apart, and at least once actually did — the American Civil War.

But each time, the balance was restored. It is possible, however, that 9/11 and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) that it spawned may do irreparable damage to the republic — unless we act to stop it.

If that seems overwrought, consider just the impact that the GWOT had on the system of checks and balances, particularly as it pertains to the war-making authority.

The Constitution clearly established the primacy of the legislature over the executive branch. The most crucial instruments of power were placed in the hands of those individuals closest to the people, including those who were required to stand for office every two years. Article I, Section 8 explicitly vests the power to declare war, raise and support armies, and maintain a navy, with the Congress. The president’s authority, as spelled out in Article II, included repelling sudden attacks but was not generally understood to involve initiating the use of force. For most of the nation’s history, when foreign dangers loomed, Congress voted both to declare war, and to fund the military necessary to wage and win it.

The last such war declaration, however, pertained to World War II. At the close of that conflict, the U.S. military remained in some of the territories taken during the war, including in Japan, Germany, and Korea. In late June 1950, when forces from North Korea charged across the 38^th parallel dividing the Korean peninsula, U.S. troops came under fire, fell back, and were then reinforced and went on the offensive. President Harry Truman called it a police action. Congress never voted.

In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, U.S. presidents waged military operations in the Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Grenada, and Panama, and mostly without congressional oversight. Even the exception, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that authorized the use of force in Vietnam, revealed Congress’s relative weakness, given the suspicious circumstances surrounding the precipitating incident, and Lyndon Johnson’s ability to dramatically expand the war without ever having to return to Congress.

Though the process of power gravitating from the Capitol to the White House was well in train in the latter half of the 20th century, Congress retained its power to check presidential abuses, and occasionally exercised that authority. It passed the War Powers Act over President Richard Nixon’s veto in November 1973. Nixon resigned from office under the threat of impeachment the following year. Congress withheld funds for the war in Vietnam, and blocked Gerald Ford’s bid to arm insurgents in Angola. And when National Security Council officials acted illegally to thwart similar restrictions with respect to an insurgency in Nicaragua, it precipitated the Iran Contra affair, the worst scandal of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Nothing like this seems possible in the Congress of today. Though the House of Representatives twice impeached Donald Trump for abuse of power, the Senate refused to convict both times. The critical juncture marking the transition from a balance of power between the two branches, to the imperial presidency that the famed historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. warned of in 1973, might have been the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and their aftermath.

Following those horrific incidents in New York, at the Pentagon, and on Flight 93 over Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Congress acted swiftly. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed on September 18, 2001, granted the president the authority “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” 

Notably, the AUMF included no sunset provision, no expiration date. It was similarly vague with respect to who exactly would be targeted.

In his address to a joint session of Congress and the American people two days after the passage of the AUMF, President George W. Bush declared “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

Over the course of the next seven years, the Bush administration launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It apprehended known and suspected terrorists in dozens of countries. It also initiated a targeted killing campaign, aided by new drone technology that allowed operators to identify, observe, and then eliminate suspected terrorists, from thousands of miles away.

In other words, though Congress was involved in the early stages of the GWOT, and even passed a separate AUMF for the Iraq War, the Bush administration also capitalized on the fear of terrorism, and the imprecision of the AUMF’s invocation of what would come to be known as “associated forces” of al Qaeda, to grow the president’s power — especially with respect to the use of force.

This only accelerated under Presidents Barack Obama and now Donald Trump.

Obama’s expansion of executive power under the guise of combatting terrorism included a drone campaign at least 10 times larger than Bush’s. Gene Healy, a leading expert on the growth of executive power, noted that in a single Labor Day weekend in 2016, the U.S. “government launched nearly 70 airstrikes across six countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.”

But perhaps the most creative assertion of unilateral executive power deriving from the post-9/11 powers was Obama’s campaign against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya in 2011. When this non-war — administration lawyers dubbed it “a kinetic military action” — dragged on from weeks into months, it risked bumping up against the War Powers Act, which required presidents to terminate “hostilities” within 60 days in the absence of a formal authorization by Congress.

So, Obama simply declared that what was happening in Libya weren’t hostilities at all. In a report to Congress issued 90 days after the conflict began, he explained that since it did not involve “U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof,” the War Powers Resolution didn’t apply.

As Healy noted acidly, this “bizarre doctrine” amounts to “it’s not war if you’re only killing foreigners.” But, Healy predicted, “as U.S. remote-warfare capabilities increase, the precedent Obama set will prove useful to future presidents of any stripe.”

And so it has. During his first term, Donald Trump expanded the air campaign against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria, and directed strikes against other suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia. None of these military operations were voted on or otherwise approved by Congress.

In his second term, Trump employed force in at least seven countries in his first 12 months in office, including a major bombing campaign against Iran in June 2025 focused on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. Starting in September that year, the Trump administration conducted a series of strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific off the coast of South America. In a novel twist, Trump declared the suspected drug smugglers “terrorists” and the drugs that they were carrying “weapons of mass destruction,” hearkening back to a phrase invoked in the earliest days of the GWOT.

Then, in early January 2026, U.S. special forces stormed into the presidential compound in Caracas, Venezuela, seizing Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Under testimony before Congress, Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized the raid as a criminal justice operation — yet another “bizarre doctrine” obfuscating what, by any reasonable standard, amounted to an act of war.

Now, however, 25 years after Congress handed the president the power to wage an open-ended war against undefined enemies, members of that body are facing the consequences. The Iran War, which the Pentagon dubbed Operation Epic Fury, may have awakened Congress from its slumber.

Once again, a U.S. president had initiated a major war without informing Congress ahead of time, and without even the pretense that Congress should have a say in such matters. And for the first few months, congressional leaders, at least, seemed to agree. But as the war’s costs have mounted, and its record unpopularity among the American people has only grown, some in Congress are finally considering ways to stop it. In June, nearly four months after the start of the conflict, and after nine previous attempts, the Senate finally passed a War Powers Resolution. And yet, the war grinds on.

The imperial presidency seems firmly established. That legacy of 9/11 and the GWOT will not be easily undone.