event

Collision Course: U.S. Democracy and the Changing Nature of War

Thu. February 24th, 2022
Live Online

Today, war is on the rise. But with an increasing number of cyber attacks, the use of drones, manipulation of refugee populations, and the introduction of powerful nonstate actors, defining acts of war and who perpetrated them has become an increasingly complex challenge—one that authoritarian regimes are quick to use to attack democracies while maintaining plausible deniability.

These alterations to warfare are on a collision course with the degradation of democracy in the United States. For decades, Congress, the sole body with the constitutional power to declare war, has ceded this authority to the president. But fears of presidential overreach are now being joined with concerns about how the changing nature of warfare might make congressional control still more difficult. Is it possible and desirable to restore congressional power given the new shape of warfare? If not, what structure of government would enable the United States to maintain its democratic values at home while contending with changes in warfare and related threats abroad?

To strengthen our democracy, it’s time for a conversation on how the control and conduct of war can grapple with the changing nature of warfare.

Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
event speakers

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar

President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, he has served three U.S. presidential administrations at the White House and in federal agencies, and was the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford University, where he held appointments in law, political science, and international affairs and led the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Oona A. Hathaway

Nonresident Scholar, Global Order and Institutions Program

Oona A. Hathaway is a nonresident scholar in the Global Order and Institutions Program at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

Joshua Kleinfeld

Joshua Kleinfeld is a professor of law and (by courtesy) philosophy at Northwestern University. His work focuses on the nature and practice of democratic government, both as a matter of first principles and in diverse areas of law, including legislation, constitutional and statutory interpretation, and criminal law.

Rachel Kleinfeld

Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program

Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, where she focuses on issues of rule of law, security, and governance in democracies experiencing polarization, violence, and other governance problems.

Leslie Adrienne Payne

Leslie Adrienne Payne is a political scientist in the RAND Corporation’s Santa Monica office in the Defense and Political Sciences Department. Her research primarily focuses on civilian-military relations, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and the intersection of emotional intelligence and security decisionmaking.