“Invitation to Struggle”

Edition label: 2026-10

Definition: The canonical mid-20th-century constitutional-theory formulation of the structural relationship between the President and Congress on foreign policy and national security, originating with Edward S. Corwin’s The President: Office and Powers (1940; 5th rev. ed. 1984).¹² The formulation:

“[T]he Constitution, considered only for its affirmative grants of powers capable of affecting the issue, is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy.”³

— Corwin et al., The President: Office and Powers, 1787-1984 (5th rev. ed. 1984), p. 201.⁴

Overview

Corwin’s formulation establishes that the U.S. constitutional architecture does not pre-determine which branch should have substantive authority over foreign policy and national security; instead, the architecture creates a structural incentive for inter-branch conflict that is resolved (when resolved at all) through political and institutional processes rather than through clear constitutional text.⁵ The “invitation to struggle” is descriptive — it does not prescribe an outcome, only a structural feature of the inter-branch relationship.

The formulation provides a constitutional-theory baseline for modern intelligence-oversight literature:

• Bruemmer (1992) adopts Corwin’s formulation as the framing for his argument that both President and Congress should decline the “invitation to struggle” and proceed by cooperative reorganization (President proposes; Congress approves up-or-down).⁶
• Harold Koh, The National Security Constitution (1990) offers “fast-track approval” as a model for foreign affairs legislation; according to Koh, the Iran-Contra scandal demonstrates that the “deeper systemic flaws” exposed by Vietnam and Watergate were never remedied.⁷
• Glennon, Double Government (2014) expressly invokes Corwin, arguing that the apparent balance among the branches is not the outcome of the struggle Corwin described: all three Madisonian institutions (the courts, Congress and the presidency) have lost effective authority to the Trumanite bureaucratic network.⁸
• The temporal-evaluation problem in Cormac et al. (2022) may be compared to an “invitation to struggle,” but this is an analogy made here; Cormac et al. do not invoke Corwin or an interbranch-struggle framework.

Analytical significance

One possible interpretation applies Corwin’s formulation to the executive-counter-mobilization pattern described by Olmsted (1996) and Kitts (1996), with related evidence in McCormick & Smith (1987): when constitutional architecture invites struggle but supplies no decisive resolution mechanism, the executive branch’s greater institutional resources, faster decision-making, and control of classified information may give it an advantage in contests over intelligence reform.⁹

Bruemmer, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) General Counsel writing in private practice and expressing his own views, recommends cooperative procedures using the Defense Base Closure model while favoring presidential leadership.¹⁰

Related Entities

• Edward S. Corwin — formulator
• Russell J. Bruemmer — modern adopter in intelligence-reorganization scholarship

Related Concepts

• Executive-branch counter-mobilization — executive responses to congressional investigation
• Declassification monopoly — control of classified information
• Security commission pattern — executive investigative commissions

Source References

• Bruemmer, Intelligence Community Reorganization (1992) — quotes Corwin’s 5th revised edition at pp. 201 and 255¹¹
• Cormac, Rory, Calder Walton, and Damien Van Puyvelde. “What Constitutes Successful Covert Action? Evaluating Unacknowledged Interventionism in Foreign Affairs.” Review of International Studies 48, no. 1 (2022): 111–128. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210521000231.
• Corwin, Edward S. The President: Office and Powers, 1787-1948: History and Analysis of Practice and Opinion. 3rd rev. ed. New York University Press, 1948.
• Glennon, Michael J. “National Security and Double Government.” Harvard National Security Journal 5 (2014): 1–114.
• Kitts, Kenneth. “Commission Politics and National Security: Gerald Ford’s Response to the CIA Controversy of 1975.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 1081–1098.
• McCormick, James M., and Steven S. Smith. “The Iran Arms Sale and the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980.” PS 20, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 29–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/419267.
• Olmsted, Kathryn. “Reclaiming Executive Power: The Ford Administration’s Response to the Intelligence Investigations.” Presidential Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 725–737.

Open Questions

• Does Corwin’s “invitation to struggle” formulation account for Glennon’s observation that the courts, Congress and the presidency have all lost effective authority to the Trumanite network,¹² or does the framework need revision to account for that network? Would such a revision change the predicted outcomes of executive counter-mobilization?
• Does Corwin’s formulation explain declassification monopoly, the Intelligence Coordinating Group, the security commission pattern, the “rogue agency” narrative, and National Security Decision Directive 286 (NSDD-286) plus Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1991 (IAA-1991) as mechanisms of executive counter-mobilization?
• Given Bruemmer’s preference for presidential leadership and a secondary congressional role,¹³ how does his Defense Base Closure proposal relate to executive counter-mobilization?
• Does executive-branch conduct following Bruemmer’s 1992 proposal show that structural pressures override individual reform preferences, and what evidence would distinguish that explanation from competing accounts?
• Did the first edition of Corwin’s The President: Office and Powers already contain the “invitation to struggle” passage?