In his seminal book Bomb Power, author Garry Wills argues that America’s use of the atomic bomb against Japan marked a critical turning point in global politics. With the advent of enormous nuclear stockpiles and the seemingly endless Cold War, the Pentagon argued that the President of the United States would simply not have the time to officially consult Congress to ask for a formal war declaration if actual hostilities with the USSR were to break out.

The desire to offensively position nuclear weapons – and the rapidly advancing technology to deliver them – meant that events on the ground were changing too rapidly to allow for such a ‘formality.’

Wills writes: “For the first time in our history, the President was given sole and unconstrained authority over all possible uses of the Bomb. All the preparations, protections, and the auxiliary requirements for the Bomb’s use, including secrecy about the whole matter…”

The Manhattan Project provided the institutional impetus for the national security state we have today.

Most important of all, the potential for global destruction had to be a closely-guarded secret in order to prevent the potential for catastrophic mistakes. Thus, the dictatorial, highly compartmentalized powers that General Groves built around the Manhattan Project had to be transferred directly to the executive branch. As a result there was a pressing need for the creation of a robust national security apparatus which could more effectively serve the needs of the president in such a dangerous age of nuclear proliferation.

The arrangement served to greatly enhance the power and prestige of the President, allowing the concept of the ‘Imperial Presidency’ to evolve over time. This permitted subsequent presidents to bypass the need to consult Congress on crucial military interventions including Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia and Grenada among others.

The creation of the National Security State has served to greatly weaken democracy in America by transforming the presidency into something akin to a monarchy, enjoying almost dictatorial powers and obstructing any effective checks and balances from Congress – especially post 9/11. For the last sixty-plus years, America has lived in a continuous state of emergency, brought on by one crisis after another.

After World War II came the Cold War; and we are currently in the midst of the fallacious ‘War on Terror.’

With the power to use nuclear weapons resting solely with the president, the system of checks and balances among the three branches of government is severely compromised. “In the atomic era, the President as Commander in Chief has taken on a mystique that makes him a power apart,” Wills writes. This new power has given the White House free rein to act with impunity in other areas as well, such as indefinite detention and warrant-less surveillance.

From Harry Truman’s “police action” in Korea to George W. Bush’s use of torture – from Clinton’s cruise missiles in Libya to secret ‘rendition’ and global detention camps under Obama – it can be argued that presidential authority has over-stepped its intended constitutional limits on many occasions. This scenario includes the squandering of billions of federal dollars – formerly the exclusive domain of Congress.

Starting with the Manhattan Project, presidents have illegally used the U.S. Treasury to pay for clandestine projects, including but not limited to the overthrow of governments in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran.

Wills accuses former President Obama of maintaining the same unconstitutional practices as his predecessor, George W. Bush. He was disappointed that Obama showed no interest in investigating the previous administration’s illegal acts.

There is no room for objections or other interpretations of what he calls the “covert activities and overt authority of the government we now experience.” He offers a strident denunciation of modern-day presidents, saving particular scorn for the Bush-Cheney years.

[The author must look upon the current regime with abject horror…]

Wills shows that presidential power has expanded greatly during the last 4 decades. The existence of nuclear weapons has contributed to this trend. He views the evolution of presidential authority with deep suspicion. The Manhattan Project provided a template for usurpation of power across the entire spectrum of so-called ‘national security.’

The War Powers Resolution [WPR] of 1973 was an attempt by congress to rein in some of the extra-constitutional powers assumed by modern presidents. The resolution requires that congress be informed within 48 hours of any military engagement. He then has sixty days to withdraw or ask congress for thirty more days to complete the mission. No president has since followed these meager conditions.

Despite Congressional attempts such as the WPR, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Church-Pike Committees, attempts to reform the imperial presidency remained feeble, with the Cheney/Rumsfeld ‘axis of evil’ leading a “counter-revolution” against the congressional attempts.

Secrecy and presidential power feed off one another. The Kennedy administration’s Cuba policy in 1962 used extensive secrecy – not just to deceive Fidel Castro, but to mislead congress. When Kennedy denounced the Soviet Union’s installation of missiles on the island – calling them an offensive threat he was concealing the CIA’s plans to attack Cuba – which gave the missiles a legitimate defensive use.

The standoff was broken only when Kennedy secretly agreed to remove American missiles from Turkey in return for the removal of the Russian warheads from Cuba. Even this facet of the deal was cloaked in secrecy: JFK trusted Khrushchev to remain silent about the compromise so the administration could pretend it wasn’t going soft on communists. Wills’ conclusion is damning: Kennedy’s generals had risked nuclear war to keep the country’s secrets – not from his Russian foes, but from the American people.

The Cuban missile crisis fits nicely into Wills’ overall thesis, which ties the growth in presidential power to the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. He argues that the massive infrastructure required to build the bomb in total secrecy required its own – unconstitutional – logic.

Hidden from Congress and even then vice-president Harry Truman, the Manhattan Project necessitated a chain of command that circumvented regular military channels and this provided a precedent for the kind of executive action infamously used in the Bay of Pigs, Watergate, the bombing of Cambodia, the Iran-Contra fiasco, and the current ‘drone strike’ controversy.

The President’s authority over the country’s nukes has also had a powerfully symbolic effect on our society. The fact that he alone has access to The Button has given the office a kind of ‘magical glamour.’ The President’s role as Commander in Chief has taken on a new, more sinister kind of potency. The Chief Executive’s exclusive control over the bomb enhances his authority over everyone and everything on the planet.

Wills quotes former Vice-President Dick Cheney from a December 2008 Fox News interview, in which the outgoing VP supported the concept of the ‘unitary executive’ on the grounds that when deciding whether or not to push the button the president “doesn’t have to call the Congress; he doesn’t have to check with the courts.”

If presidential power flows from the bomb, it is a consequence of technological advancement and therefore it is irreversible. The genie cannot be placed back into its bottle. Wills recognizes this himself when he states, “Perhaps in the nuclear era, the Constitution has become quaint and obsolete.”

In the end, nuclear deterrence is an ideological issue, not a technological one. The Bomb has the power we give to it, not the other way around.

We have the power to banish nuclear weapons forever; but it won’t happen in this lifetime. If we make it that far.