Longtime readers of my blog know that I have long recommended a book entitled National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon, professor of law at Tufts University and former counsel to the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. Glennon's thesis, to which I subscribe, is a simple but ominous one: The U.S. national-security branch of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — control the federal government. The other three branches, while permitted to have the appearance of being in control, actually operate in deferential support of their master, the national-security establishment.

Glennon's thesis was recently on full display when the members of Congress added a small provision to the 1000-page Defense Authorization Act that prevents a president from withdrawing from NATO without approval from two-thirds of the Senate or an act of Congress, two things that are virtually impossible to achieve given the control that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have over Congress.