Taiwan and the Cult of the Presidency

It is not the president’s decision to intervene in the event of an attack on Taiwan.

The most hardline China hawks don’t even pretend to pay lip service to the Constitution on matters of war. Here’s Matt Kroenig on Biden’s Taiwan error:

I would argue that at this point the reason doesn’t really matter. In the event of a war, it would be up to the president to decide whether to intervene, regardless of the formal policy.

It is a measure of how much presidential warmaking has distorted the common understanding of war powers that Kroenig just takes for granted that it’s up to the president to decide whether the U.S. goes to war for Taiwan. The president does not have the authority to decide this on his own.