The Foreign Service Journal, October 2013

58 OCTOBER 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL spelling out U.S. commit- ments to Israel, and his call for Tel Aviv and Washington to form a defense pact. In the case of Korea, President Truman went around Congress by fram- ing U.S. action in terms of supporting a “police action” under the aegis of the United Nations. That strategy gave him a freer hand to act in the short term, but it also eroded popu- lar support for a war that ended in an armistice and still does not have a formal peace treaty 60 years later. Kalb’s analysis of the VietnamWar is praiseworthy for its breadth, no doubt enhanced with input from his brother and former State Department spokesman, Bernard Kalb. Readers who served in Vietnam during that period, or who faced possible assignment there (such as this reviewer), will profit from a close reading of the history of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Along the way, Kalb offers valuable insights about the challenges Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford faced in dealing with the leadership of South Vietnam, and Henry Kissinger’s ever-expanding diplomatic role. As decision-making power has migrated from Congress to the White House, presidents have accumulated vast power to make national security com- mitments using an array of instruments. True, Congress has retained its power over the purse strings and has sometimes exercised it effectively to frustrate presi- dential priorities overseas. But in general, it tends to acquiesce, abdicat- ing its constitutional respon- sibilities for national security and foreign policy. One exception to this trend is the 1973 War Powers Act, but it is so poorly drafted and vague that every president has felt free to ignore it. As a result, over the past four decades presidents from both parties have taken military action in Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan, and made numerous other defense commitments, without any congressional action. Kalb correctly observes that this situa- tion is undesirable for many reasons, not least of which is the potential for a lack of continuity between administrations. At the same time, he gives his media col- leagues low grades in carrying out their responsibility to inform the public about the extent and ramifications of presiden- tial defense commitments. The Road to War certainly stands on its own merits. But speaking as someone who had the pleasure of reviewing Kalb’s last book, Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama (Brookings, 2011) in the January 2012 issue of the Journal , I would close by encouraging readers to study both volumes. n Aurelius (Aury) Fernandez, a Foreign Service officer with the U.S. Information Agency for 30 years, was posted to Santiago, Bucharest, London, Vienna, Paris and Washington, D.C. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he served on the AFSA Governing Board and Foreign Service Journal Editorial Board. Kalb documents the degree to which national security decision-making power has migrated from Congress to the White House, and what that means in practice. Watch for Education Supplement Coming in December! Offering You a World of Ideas About Your Child’s Education Online at: www.afsa.org/schools_ supplement.aspx