ZadekpediaChris Preble is a foreign-policy scholar who appeared as a guest on The Bob Zadek Show. Bob Zadek introduced him as Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute, the author of three books on foreign policy and some 150 articles, a former teacher of history at St. Cloud State University and Temple, and a US Navy officer who served aboard the USS Ticonderoga from 1990 to 1993 War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013). In a later episode Zadek described him as Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at Cato, author of The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap, and A Dangerous World: Threat Perception and National Security, holder of a PhD in history from Temple, and a writer at War on the Rocks On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019).
On the show
3 appearances, 2013–2022.
- 2013-05-11 · War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? · 82:02 — War as a political tool to bypass constitutional safeguards.
- 2019-05-30 · On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? · 51:55 — History and Principles of US Foreign Policy.
- 2022-02-07 · Chris Preble on Ukraine · 52:29 — US Foreign Policy Principles and the Ukraine Crisis.
Their books discussed on the show
- Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy (2019) — discussed 2019, 2022
- A Dangerous World: Threat Perception and National Security (2014) — discussed 2019
- John F. Kennedy and the Missile Gap (2004) — discussed 2019
- Terrorizing Ourselves (2010) — discussed 2013
- The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (2009) — discussed 2022
War as a rationale for extra-constitutional power
Zadek opened the 2013 episode by arguing that politicians have discovered that once they invoke the word “war” they give themselves a free pass to undo constitutional safeguards, and that no politician ever declares such a war won, because doing so would mean surrendering accumulated powers. He listed the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Immigration and War on Terrorism as examples of wars on a noun War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013).
Preble identified the two most important post-9/11 statutes. The first was the USA PATRIOT Act, which he said allowed for a range of surveillance and other investigatory powers handed to the federal government under the guise of preventing future terrorist attacks, and which he said shifts the burden of proof from the government to the individual, eroding the classic principle of innocent until proven guilty. The second was the Authorization to Use Military Force, the original authorization to go into Afghanistan, which he described as fairly specific to the events of 9/11 and to the individuals involved in planning and executing that attack. More than eleven years on, he said, individuals who were seven or eight years old at the time of the attacks were somehow being targeted under that authority; his preference was for it to be sunsetted after combat operations in Afghanistan drew to a close, with a year or two allowed for winding down. He also mentioned the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, calling it at best a mixed bag and citing a former colleague, David Rittgers, who wrote a paper for Cato calling for abolishing it War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013).
Preble said no one disputes the President’s authority to defend the country in the event of an imminent attack, and that this had always been the case. He said the Cato Institute had handed out or sold something like five million copies of the Constitution. To the argument that the Constitution was designed for a different era when threats were different, he agreed — but inverted it: the threats were much greater when the Constitution was created in 1787, and the threats of today pale in comparison. He added that he served in the US Navy in the waning days of the Cold War, that the threat posed by the Soviet Union was serious and legitimate, and that the country managed to defend itself without a wholesale violation of civil rights and civil liberties; the real excesses of that period, he said, are looked back on as a great mistake and a stain on our history War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013).
Zadek read into the record a quotation from the US Supreme Court case Reed v. Covert, saying the Court rejected the idea that when the United States acts against citizens abroad it can do so free of the Bill of Rights, that the United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution, and that Americans do not lose their rights when they travel to Canada War – A Rationale For Extra-Constitutional Power? (2013).
The Founders, war powers, and the isolationism label
In the 2019 episode, Zadek framed Preble’s book Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy as both a history of American foreign policy focused on the instrument of war and an application of that history to current affairs. Preble said the Founders saw the ideal US foreign policy as one in which Americans were encouraged to interact with others around the world through trade as much as possible, while occasions for actually resorting to war would be quite rare. They put the war powers in the hands of Congress rather than the executive, he said, because they believed decisions closer to the people made war less likely. They also limited the president’s power by maintaining a small navy and really no permanent army: if you needed a military to go to war, you had to raise the army to go to war, an additional restriction on how often the country waged war. For the first hundred years or so, he said, the United States fought relatively few wars; the wars along the interior against Native American peoples and a few wars against Mexico were declared by Congress, which raised the necessary forces, accomplished their objectives, and then stood the forces down On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019).
Preble said the term “isolationism” is used deliberately as a pejorative. It was first deployed against critics of US imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century, he said, and became in vogue after World War II, when the attitude of many Americans toward involvement in the war was cast as isolationism, so that anyone who was a critic of warfare was an isolationist. He called that fundamentally wrong, noting that the 1930s also brought restrictions on foreign trade and severe restrictions on immigration that tried to create a much more isolated America. He argued it is short-sighted to say the best way for the United States to interact with the rest of the world is by force: if American ideas are as good as Americans say, they should not have to be imposed by force, and privileging the military instrument over other instruments of American power ironically undermines American influence and generates resistance, including resistance to ideas of liberty, over the last twenty years On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019).
Preble said that when the United States created a constitutional order in which the people were the power and the government served the people’s interests, that was a fairly new concept, and that over the ensuing hundred and fifty years a number of countries wanted to emulate the United States because it grew prosperous and powerful and demonstrated by example that the model delivered benefits to a greater number of people. On trade, he said the United States eventually became an advocate of freer trade, seeing the benefits both to human prosperity and as an instrument of peace, because people who trade with one another build up trust, reducing the likelihood of conflict when people are buying and selling things rather than taking them by force On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019).
Across episodes
The 2013 and 2019 episodes both turn on the same question — how the war power is allocated and how the word “war” expands government authority — and the episodes show no development between them: in 2013 Preble traced the post-9/11 statutes and the burden-of-proof shift, and in 2019 he traced the Founders’ design of congressional war powers and the pejorative use of “isolationism,” with Zadek supplying the framing in both. The 2022 episode on Ukraine introduces Preble again, describing him as co-director of the New American Engagement Initiative at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and citing The Power Problem and Peace, War, and Liberty, but the excerpt breaks off before the discussion of principles begins Chris Preble on Ukraine (2022).