Michael O’Hanlon is “chair in defence and strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of \u2018To Dare Mighty Things: US Defense Strategy Since the Revolution\u2019.”<\/p>\n
He writes for the FT<\/a>: “Congress must not give Trump a blank cheque for the Iran war”<\/p>\n \u201cBlank check\u201d is doing a lot of work here. It is not just about money. It is about control over tempo, scope, and accountability.<\/p>\n Elites despise unbounded discretion in someone else\u2019s hands. The objection in this essay is not that the Iran war costs money. Everyone in that world accepts that wars cost money. The objection is that a $200bn authorization collapses the feedback loop. It removes the need for periodic justification. It turns Congress from an active constraint into a passive enabler. Once that happens, the executive branch no longer has to return for permission. That is the real issue.<\/p>\n So \u201cno blank checks\u201d is really shorthand for three deeper elite instincts: First, preserve iterative control. Elites prefer funding in tranches because it forces repeated interaction. Each request is a moment where coalitions can renegotiate terms, extract concessions, or shift narrative framing. A blank check eliminates those bargaining points. Second, maintain visibility. Regular appropriations create information. Hearings, estimates, revisions. These are not just procedural steps. They are how elites monitor whether reality is aligning with the story being told. A large upfront authorization reduces the need to explain what is happening in real time. Third, hedge against downside blame. If things go badly, elites want a record showing they exercised caution. Smaller, time-limited funding packages create a paper trail of conditional support. A blank check ties them to the outcome in a way that is harder to distance from later.<\/p>\n \u201cBlank check\u201d is the institutional version of removing reciprocity enforcement. In repeated games, cooperation is sustained because contributions are monitored, defection is punished, and future interaction is expected. A blank check breaks all three: monitoring weakens, punishment is delayed or impossible, and future leverage disappears.<\/p>\n So elites react the way any coalition would when reciprocity enforcement collapses. They resist. What looks like fiscal prudence is coalition maintenance. You see this pattern across domains:<\/p>\n In academia: Large unrestricted grants are rare at the top levels. Funding comes with milestones, reporting requirements, renewal cycles. Not because scientists cannot be trusted, but because institutions want continuous leverage over direction and output.<\/p>\n In journalism: Editors rarely give open-ended mandates with no oversight. Even star reporters operate within cycles of pitch, approval, revision. Control is exercised through iteration, not one-time authorization.<\/p>\n In corporate governance: Boards hate giving CEOs unconstrained capital allocation authority without checkpoints. Even visionary founders get staged approvals for major expansions. Again, not about distrust alone. It is about preserving the board\u2019s ability to intervene.<\/p>\n In law: Judges dislike overly broad injunctions for similar reasons. Narrow rulings preserve the court\u2019s ability to revisit and refine. A sweeping, open-ended order is a kind of judicial blank check, and it reduces future control.<\/p>\n So when elites say \u201cno blank checks,\u201d they are expressing a general principle: Power should be leased, not transferred. Leasing means periodic review, conditional renewal, and ongoing dependency. Transferring means autonomy, reduced oversight and loss of leverage. That is what they fear.<\/p>\n The interesting twist is that at the very top, this concern fades. Once you reach actors who cannot realistically be checked by the existing system, the language disappears. They no longer need to argue against blank checks because they effectively operate with them.<\/p>\n Moral language about prudence and oversight is heavily used in the middle tiers where coalition enforcement still matters. At the very top, the mechanism becomes invisible because control has already been consolidated.<\/p>\n So the phrase \u201cblank check\u201d is less about dollars than about jurisdiction. Who gets to decide, for how long, without having to come back and ask.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Michael O’Hanlon is “chair in defence and strategy at the Brookings Institution and the author of \u2018To Dare Mighty Things: US Defense Strategy Since the Revolution\u2019.” He writes for the FT: “Congress must not give Trump a blank cheque for … Continue reading