cover image Making War: The 200-Year-Old Battle Between the President and Congress Over How America Goes to War

Making War: The 200-Year-Old Battle Between the President and Congress Over How America Goes to War

John Lehman. Scribner Book Company, $24 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-684-19239-0

This selective history of the struggle between the President and Congress over control of military power deals mainly with events of the last 20 years: the quest for strategic arms agreements, and military initiatives in Grenada, Libya, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama and the Persian Gulf. Former Navy Secretary Lehman reviews the 1972 War Powers Act, the first Senate attempt to define the President's wartime authority under the Constitution. In discussing U.S. efforts to end the arms race, he argues that interaction between the president and Congress was ``far more important'' in the treaty process than was Washington-Moscow diplomacy. His focus in this instance is on the debate over the Tomahawk cruise missile. Lehman reviews Washington's relationship with Manuel Noriega and the 1989 intervention in Panama, offering this incident as a cautionary tale about the interplay among the executive, legislative and judicial branches in making war and formulating foreign policy. This study of the relationship between military adventures and American politics is closer to a civics textbook than a work for general readers. (June)