CHARLIE SAVAGE2026年3月6日Since World War II, presidents of both parties have found ways to hollow out the Constitution’s constraints on their power to order military attacks. President Trump’s unilateral decision to launch a war against Iran threatens to gut nearly all of what little remains.自第二次世界大战以来，两党的美国总统都各显神通，架空了宪法对其发动军事攻击的权力的约束。特朗普总统单方面决定对伊朗开战可能将抹去最后仅存的那一点约束。It is supposed to be a foundational principle of American democracy that unless the United States is under attack, the power to declare war is vested in Congress. But especially since the start of the Cold War, presidents of both parties have chipped away at that by claiming a right to order the military into various limited hostile situations.美国民主的一项基本原则是：除非美国遭受攻击，否则宣战权属于国会。但两党总统——尤其是自冷战开始以来——都通过宣称有权下令军队进入各种有限的敌对状态逐步削弱了这一原则。Some lawmakers complained. But as an institution, Congress acquiesced. Consistently paralyzed by competing impulses — party loyalty, support for the policy goals of various deployments or fear of being accused of undercutting troops already in harm’s way — lawmakers let presidents get away with serial power grabs.一些议员表达了不满。但作为一个整体机构，国会选择了默许。出于党派忠诚、支持各项军事部署的政策目标，或是害怕被指责损害本已身处险境的部队，议员们任由总统一次次攫取权力。Successive administrations built on their predecessors’ innovations, a one-way ratchet expanding the circumstances in which presidents had claimed and demonstrated that they could by themselves deploy troops into combat. As precedents accumulated, the split between how the founders clearly intended decisions about initiating war to be made and how the country was governed in practice kept widening.历届政府在前任的创新基础上继续推进，出现了一种单向棘轮的效应，总统们在越来越多的情形下声称并用实际行动证明，他们可以单方面决定动用军队投入战斗。随着先例不断累积，治国先贤们在发动战争方面做出的意图清晰的决定，与现实中国家治理方式的裂痕持续扩大。Even so, the prospect of attacking Iran, absent a literally imminent threat of attack by the country, had stood apart as a textbook example of what would seemingly still require congressional authorization. The potential for rapid spiraling — of retaliatory strikes on U.S. citizens, troops and allies in neighboring countries, of escalation into a bloody regional conflagration with global economic consequences — seemed too extreme a risk for any one person to decide to take on.即便如此，在没有直接、迫在眉睫的攻击威胁的情况下进攻伊朗一直被视为一个仍需国会授权的典型例子。局势迅速升级的可能性——对邻国美国公民、军队和盟友的报复性打击，升级为造成全球经济后果的血腥地区大战——对任何人来说都是过于极端的风险。Asked to detail its legal analysis, the White House provided a brief statement that described decades of misdeeds by Iran, claiming that Mr. Trump “exercised his authority as commander in chief to defend U.S. personnel and bases in the region.”在被要求详细说明法律分析时，白宫发表了一份简短声明，列举了伊朗数十年的不当行为，声称特朗普“为保护该地区美方人员及基地而行使了最高统帅权”。Process is no guarantee. Some presidentially ordered operations have gone smoothly, while the congressionally authorized wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are widely considered fiascoes. But given such risks, the question is who the founders thought should decide, and whether that still means anything.程序并不能保证结果。一些总统下令的军事行动进展顺利，而国会授权的阿富汗战争和伊拉克战争却被普遍认为是一场灾难。但考虑到此类风险，问题在于治国先贤们认为应当由谁来做决定，以及如今这样做是否仍有意义。The House on Thursday rejected a resolution directing Mr. Trump to cease the war without congressional authorization, and the Senate defeated the same measure a day earlier in a nearly party-line vote. Even if it had passed both chambers, the president could have vetoed it.众议院周四否决了一项要求特朗普在未经国会授权的情况下停止战争的决议；参议院在前一天以几乎完全符合党派分野的投票结果击败了同样的措施。即便该决议在两院获得通过，总统仍可将其否决。Regardless, Mr. Trump has already established a new precedent. His Iran war expands the scope of the kinds of “major combat operations” that presidents in the modern era have demonstrated they can start on their own authority. Executive branch lawyers will be able to cite this moment as support for blessing future unilateral presidential war-making.无论如何，特朗普已经确立了一个新的先例。他的伊朗战争扩大了现代总统已证明可自行授权开展的“重大作战行动”的范围。行政部门的律师将能够援引这一时刻为未来总统单方面发动战争的合法性背书。A remnant of a line remains uncrossed for now: While Mr. Trump briefly sent ground forces into Venezuela in January, accepting the risk of U.S. casualties, he has yet to put boots on the ground in Iran. It appears his plan is to avoid doing so.目前仍有一条底线尚未被跨越：尽管特朗普今年1月曾短暂派遣地面部队进入委内瑞拉，接受了美军出现伤亡的风险，但他尚未在伊朗投送地面部队。看起来他的计划是避免这样做。Still, in a letter notifying lawmakers two days after he started the war, Mr. Trump warned that while he “desires a quick and enduring peace, it is not possible at this time to know the full scope and duration of military operations that may be necessary.”尽管如此，在他发动战争两天后通知议员的信中，特朗普警告称，虽然他“渴望迅速而持久的和平，但目前尚无法预知可能需要的军事行动的范围和持续时间”。Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said Mr. Trump’s unilateral launch of the Iran war may be remembered as the death of any pretense that law and executive branch lawyers can be counted on to meaningfully constrain a president who wants to use military force on his own.哈佛大学法学教授、乔治·W·布什政府时期司法部高级官员杰克·戈德史密斯表示，后人可能会将特朗普单方面发动伊朗战争作为这样一种观念的终结：即可以倚仗法律和行政部门律师去对想要自行使用武力的总统施加有意义的约束。“By using the military on such a large and dangerous scale with foreseeable U.S. casualties, this operation kills the idea of any effective legal constraint on the president’s use of force,” he said. “It’s been very close to dead for years, I think.”“通过以如此庞大而危险的规模动用军队，并预见会造成美军伤亡，这次行动扼杀了总统在使用武力方面受到任何有效法律约束的观念，”他说。“而我认为，这种观念多年前就已经非常接近死亡。”Iran and Escalation伊朗与局势升级 Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesIn 2007, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued in a presidential candidate survey that presidents have no legitimate power to bomb another country without congressional authorization, unless the United States is about to be attacked. Senator Barack Obama said the same thing. But executive power can look different from the vantage point of the Oval Office.2007年，小约瑟夫·R·拜登参议员在一次总统候选人调查问答中表示，除非美国即将遭到攻击，否则总统无权在未经国会授权的情况下轰炸另一个国家。While Mr. Trump’s open indifference to law and norms of self-restraint has pushed presidential war-making powers to a new extreme, he is also extending a path that the country was already on. For generations, presidents in the modern era have steadily eroded constraints on their power to initiate military actions.虽然特朗普对法律和自我约束规范的公开漠视将总统发动战争的权力推向了新的极端，但他也是在延长一条美国早已踏上的道路。几个世代的现代总统都在稳步削弱对发动军事行动权力的限制。In 1950, President Harry S. Truman took the country into the Korean War without going to Congress. He pointed to authorization by the new United Nations Security Council, but that did not matter for the domestic law question of who had the rightful power to decide whether the United States would participate.1950年，哈里·S·杜鲁门总统在未征求国会意见的情况下将国家拖入朝鲜战争。他援引了新成立的联合国安理会的授权，但这对于“谁拥有合法权力决定是否让美国参与”这一国内法问题并无影响。No president had ever launched such a war effort without seeking congressional permission, but Congress did not impeach him.此前从未有总统在不寻求国会许可的情况下发动过这样的战争，但国会并未弹劾他。In 1973, after bipartisan recognition that the Vietnam War had been a disaster, lawmakers sought to regain their constitutional role in deciding whether to go to war. They enacted, over President Richard M. Nixon’s veto, the War Powers Resolution.1973年，在两党一致认识到越南战争是一场灾难之后，议员们试图重新夺回他们在决定是否开战方面的宪法角色。他们不顾理查德·M·尼克松总统的否决，通过了《战争权力决议》。The act established mechanisms by which Congress could, in theory, end unauthorized deployments. And it laid out a limited vision of when presidents could deploy troops into hostile situations on their own — essentially, only if the country was under attack.该法案建立了一些机制，理论上可让国会结束未经授权的军事部署。它还规定了总统可自行将部队投入敌对局势的有限情形——基本上，仅限于在美国遭受攻击时。For the three largest wars since then — the Persian Gulf War and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — presidents went to Congress for authorization. They also serially stretched the Afghanistan war law, which targeted Al Qaeda, by interpreting it as approval to battle other militant groups with Qaeda links in countries like Syria and Somalia. Congress acquiesced.自那以后，对于之后的三场最大规模的战争——海湾战争以及阿富汗和伊拉克战争——总统们都去国会寻求了授权。他们还相继将针对“基地”组织的阿富汗战争法进行延伸，称该法允许在叙利亚和索马里等国家与其他有“基地”组织联系的激进组织作战。国会默许了。The new Iran war appears likely to be the most aggressive and significant military operation undertaken since 1973 without any claim of congressional approval.新的伊朗战争可能是1973年以来在没有任何国会授权主张的情况下采取的最具侵略性和最重大的军事行动。It is not clear whether the administration’s internal legal analysis relies on any claim that Iran posed an imminent threat of attack. Neither the White House statement nor a letter Mr. Trump sent to Congress said it did.目前尚不清楚政府内部的法律分析是否依赖任何关于伊朗构成迫在眉睫的攻击威胁的说法。无论是白宫声明还是特朗普发给国会的信中，都没有这样说。But in public statements, Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser, have invoked that phrase. Mr. Trump went on to say it would be intolerable to allow Iran time to develop a nuclear weapon and long-range missiles — apparently relying on a very elongated view of what counts as imminent.但在公开声明中，特朗普和同时担任国家安全顾问的国务卿马可·鲁比奥都使用了这一表述。特朗普接着说，允许伊朗有时间发展核武器和远程导弹将是不可容忍的——这显然依赖于对“迫在眉睫”的含义进行大幅延伸。Chipping Away逐步蚕食Republican and Democratic administrations have interpreted the War Powers Resolution narrowly. Since it was enacted, every president has deployed troops into limited hostile situations that went beyond the act’s narrow parameters, like trying to rescue Americans in places like Cambodia and Iran; peacekeeping missions in places like Lebanon, Somalia and Bosnia; and NATO air wars in Kosovo and Libya.共和党和民主党政府都对《战争权力决议》作了狭义解释。自该法案颁布以来，每位总统都将部队部署到超出该法案狭窄界定的有限敌对局势中，例如在柬埔寨和伊朗等地试图营救美国人；在黎巴嫩、索马里和波斯尼亚等地的维和任务；以及在科索沃和利比亚的北约空袭。2011年，贝拉克·奥巴马总统在萨尔瓦多举行的新闻发布会上谈及在利比亚的军事选项。 Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesBlessing such operations as lawful, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has argued that the president has constitutional power to deploy troops into hostile situations in the national interest, so long as the anticipated intensity, scope and duration fall short of “war” in the constitutional sense.司法部法律顾问办公室宣称这些行动合法，辩称总统拥有宪法赋予的权力，可将部队部署到符合美国国家利益的敌对局势中，只要预期的强度、范围和持续时间未达到宪法意义上的“战争”程度。Executive branch lawyers have produced a series of memos blessing unilateral deployments by pointing to various factors that they said meant what the president wanted to do met that standard. But the pattern over time has been that when subsequent proposed deployments lack such factors, the Office of Legal Counsel has found ways to approve them, too.行政部门律师搬出了一系列备忘录，通过指出他们认为总统意图采取的行动符合该标准的各种因素，来认可单方面的军事部署。但随着时间的推移，这种模式已演变为：当后续的拟议部署缺乏这些因素时，法律顾问办公室也会找到批准它们的方法。Professor Goldsmith said that while law has been revealed as toothless as an internal executive branch check on unilateral presidential war-making, there was still politics.戈德史密斯表示，虽然法律已被证明作为一种行政部门内部的制衡手段，对总统单方面发动战争毫无约束力，但还有政治这条路可走。“Courts can’t do anything, there is clearly zero internal check and that literally means that all that is left is Congress and the people,” he said. “That might amount to nothing, but it’s literally all that is conceivably left.”“法院无能为力，而内部制衡显然不存在，这实际上意味着剩下的只有国会和人民，”他说。“也许最终都是徒劳，但这确实是理论上仅存的东西了。”Charlie Savage为时报报道国家安全和法律政策。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。