War Powers Research Articles

Establishing the Imperial Presidency: The War of 1812, John Lowell, and the Specter of Perpetual War

Contemporary attention to presidential war power focuses on the possibility of ”perpetual war.” This essay contextualizes that controversy by returning to the nation’s first international crisis - the War of 1812 - to consider the ways James Madison’s rhetoric established precedents that empowered presidents to act with rhetorical impunity in international affairs. Analyzing an overlooked but influential anti-war pamphlet written by John Lowell reveals public concerns about Madison’s War and the dangers presidential rhetoric poses to the constitutional order. In doing so, this essay revises contemporary thinking about the imperial presidency, the rhetorical presidency, and the nature of perpetual war.

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

Duterte's “War on Drugs” Rhetoric

Seamus Heaney’s Prisoners

This article focuses on the role that prisoners play in the poems of Seamus Heaney. From the time of the introduction of internment in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, Heaney’s poems frequently touch on prisoners, the conditions in which they are held, and how they might be conceptualized. This article discusses how these poems reflect contemporaneous political discourse regarding prisoners. It also shows how Heaney’s engagements with prisoners are refracted, characteristically, through his earliest memories, and through his knowledge of literature. In particular, Second World War POWs and Heaney’s knowledge of Russian authors, including Osip Mandelstam and Anton Chekhov, provide significant contexts for his engagements with Troubles-era prisoners. Drawing on materials from the Heaney Literary Papers held in the National Library of Ireland, this article demonstrates how the conditions in which internees were held shaped ‘The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream’ in North (1975). Finally, it discusses the roles Nelson Mandela, and the prisoners of conscience campaigned for by Amnesty International, play in his work. This paper concludes that, although Heaney was resolute in not promoting violence, his attitudes towards those who perpetrated it, and were imprisoned for it, were complex and changing.

Taking the “modern system” to sea: The past and future of naval power in industrial war

This article applies Stephen Biddle’s “modern system” to naval war in the industrial era, c. 1860–1918. Biddle doubts his model’s transferability beyond continental/land warfare. A historical perspective suggests otherwise. Beginning in the 1860 s, navies—even earlier than armies—confronted industrial firepower and adapted accordingly. Submarines, torpedo boats, cruisers and eventually aircraft all relied on the “modern system” principles of cover and concealment, maneuver and combined arms to survive and perform useful missions. Today, concepts like “distributed lethality” have precedents in a “maritime modern system”—one undercurrent in naval history that is increasingly relevant.

Sarah Burns. The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Pp. 328. $30.00 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewSarah Burns. The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Pp. 328. $30.00 (cloth).Dave BridgeDave BridgeBaylor University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Political Thought Volume 11, Number 2Spring 2022 Published in association with the American Political Thought organized section of the American Political Science Association and the Jack Miller Center Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/719261 Views: 5Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Review: People’s Diplomacy of Vietnam: Soft Power in the Resistance War, 1965–1972, by Harish C. Mehta

Review: <i>People’s Diplomacy of Vietnam: Soft Power in the Resistance War, 1965–1972</i>, by Harish C. Mehta

Concerning United States Constitutional War Powers

Concerning United States Constitutional War Powers

The geontological time-spaces of late modern war

Attending to connections between serious health conditions (cancers and congenital disorders) and weapons residues in Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza, this article develops a geographical agenda for examining power in late modern war from the perspective of the ground and the life it sustains. A case is made for understanding the time-spaces of war as not compressed, vertical or remote but enduring, terranean and proximate in which violence emerges through processes (carcinogenic and teratogenic) that transcend boundaries between ‘life’ ( bios) and ‘nonlife’ ( geos). Such are the geontological time-spaces of late modern war that geographers – in both ‘physical’ and ‘human’ sub-fields – are uniquely equipped to examine.

Legislative war powers in time: a historical institutionalist approach to the Turkish Parliament’s weight on foreign policy making

ABSTRACT On 1 March 2003, the Turkish government’s war power motion failed in Parliament even though most legislators had voted in favour of it, keeping Turkey out of the war in Iraq. This outcome reflected the anti-war sentiment among the Turkish public but confounded Turkish-American relations. The Turkish case shows that, contrary to one of the main assertations of the actor-specific perspectives, parliaments can play an important role in foreign policy decision making. How can Turkish legislative war powers be explained? This study argues that the distinct position of the Parliament can best be analysed by exploring the historical evolution of war powers across the constitutions since the late Ottoman period, focusing on several critical junctures during a long path that turned Parliament into a key veto player in foreign policy making, capable of frustrating the executive’s intention to join a war.

At War with Congress: War Powers Disputes during the Trump Administration

ABSTRACT During his four years in office, Congress made historic challenges to President Donald Trump’s authority as Commander in Chief, twice invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution. The first resolution, passed in 2019, expressed disapproval of the U.S.’ logistical and material support for Saudi Arabia’s campaign against the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen. The second challenge occurred in 2020 after Trump authorized a drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qassam Soleimani. In response, Congress passed a WPR that stipulated that any future military action against the regime would require express legislative authorization. Using a case study approach, this essay examines why Congress chose to employ the WPR as a policy tool after decades of dormancy. Ultimately, I argue that a confluence of factors compelled majorities in both chambers of Congress to use the War Powers Resolution to make a powerful rebuke of the administration’s policy. Drawing on a wealth of existing literature about the factors that impede or compel Congressional activism in use-of-force debates, I find that in both cases, members of Congress faced strong moral, legal, and strategic incentives to act, with few attendant political risks. As such, while the passage of two wars powers resolutions represented an important milestone in interbranch relations, it likely does not presage a new era of Congressional assertiveness in war powers. Keywords: U.S. foreign policy; Donald Trump; Congress

Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War. By MichaelJonas. Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. X + 231 pp. £28.99

Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War. By MichaelJonas. Bloomsbury Academic. 2020. X + 231 pp. £28.99

The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism

The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism

Legalizing a Political Fight: Congressional Abdication of War Powers in the Bush and Obama Administrations

AbstractFor decades, presidents and members of Congress have actively shifted the separation of powers to provide the executive branch with more room for unilateral action in the realm of war. While this imbalance is clearest when presidents decide to act without the consent of Congress, it is still present and arguably more dangerous when Congress does provide authorization. By examining the legal language used in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the subsequent Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), I demonstrate how members of Congress crafted documents that were not designed to ensure presidential accountability and this allowed for the execution of poorly designed policy. Drawing on the work of scholars who emphasize the positive ends of constitutional grants of power, this essay establishes a metric for evaluating congressional deliberations on military operations. I apply this metric to deliberation about the 2003 war in Iraq and the military operation against ISIS in 2014. Neither operation compelled deliberation about the merits of action from Congress or ensured accountability from the executive after the fact.

Biden Administration Relies on Constitutional Authority and Unwilling or Unable Theory of Self-Defense for Airstrikes in Syria

On February 25, 2021, the United States conducted a strike targeting Iranian-backed militia group facilities in Syria. The strike, which came in response to a February 15, 2021 attack on U.S. interests in Iraq, marked the Biden administration's first known exercise of executive war powers. As domestic authority for the strike, President Joseph Biden, Jr. cited his authority under Article II of the U.S. Constitution and did not rely on the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMFs). For international legal authority, Biden relied on individual self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, stating that Syria was “unwilling or unable” to prevent further attacks on the United States by these non-state actors within its territory. The strikes garnered mixed reactions from Congress, where efforts are underway to repeal or reform extant AUMFs as well as the War Powers Resolution (WPR). The Biden administration is also undertaking a review of current U.S. military policy on the use of force, and during this process, it has prohibited drone strikes outside of conventional battlefields, absent presidential approval.

Blueprint for interracial solidarity: C. L. R. James’sMariners, Renegades, and Castawaysas prison writing

Trinidadian thinker and activist C. L. R. James penned a criticism of Herman Melville’s work, Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways, while incarcerated in Ellis Island, New York, in the early 1950s. I investigate how the contradictory claims on labour and race, literary analysis, and communism in the last chapter come from what I call the prison–detention continuum: a historical continuity allocated to prison and detention facilities despite an overt difference between the two. The distinction survived so as to maintain racial classification and labour force from the times of slavery and plantation to the Cold War era. The physical statuses of those incarcerated were insecure when the McCarran–Walter Act legalized ideological surveillance and accelerated racism inside and outside the carceral spaces. In his book on Melville, James clarifies the difference between prison and detention by emphasizing labour’s role in Ellis Island. He situates his personal experience of maltreatment of his ulcer as a structural issue, produced by the way the officers obey their authorities without any principle. To foreground the docile individuals in the totalitarian society, he compares the inmates and officers on Ellis Island with the shipmates of the Pequod in Moby Dick. Furthermore, he regards that if labour is racialized, it will necessarily culminate in revolt. I argue that James’s reference to the Korean War POWs on Koje Island prefigures an interracial solidarity that becomes visible after the Bandung Conference of 1955.

Book Review: Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War

Book Review: Scandinavia and the Great Powers in the First World War

Testimony of Professor Rebecca Ingber on War Powers Reform, to the House Rules Committee

Professor Rebecca Ingber testified before the U.S. House Committee on Rules hearing on Article I: Reforming the War Powers Resolution for the 21st Century, on March 23, 2021.

Reclaiming Congressional War Powers: Opening Statement

In this opening statement for a House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing on Reclaiming Congressional War Powers, I address three matters: First, I explain why I think it is wise to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force in Iraq. Second, I outline what I see as key priorities in the effort to repeal and replace the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Third, I speak about top priorities for war powers reform more generally.

The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism

The Politics of War Powers: The Theory and History of Presidential Unilateralism

Did Theresa May Kill the War Powers Convention? Comparing Parliamentary Debates on UK Intervention in Syria in 2013 and 2018

ABSTRACT This article asks whether Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to bypass the House of Commons and order military action in Syria in 2018 killed the UK’s nascent War Powers Convention, established most visibly when MPs vetoed an essentially similar operation under Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013. It finds that the War Powers Convention survives, but in a weakened state, subject to new caveats that significantly narrow its scope. What happens next depends on the dynamic, unpredictable interaction between what future prime ministers believe, what strategic questions arise and what MPs will accept.