Printing is for personal, private use only. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted without publisher's prior permission. Violators will be prosecuted. While presidents from Truman through Reagan faced the continuous challenge of containing the Soviet threat during the Cold War, new presidents discover that campaign promises are difficult to implement in reality given budget constraints, public opposition to certain policies, and policies already put in place by their predecessors. Congress has also tried to assert more control over presidential war-making through acts like the War Powers Act, though presidents still find ways to circumvent congressional restrictions on deploying troops overseas.

1. Printin g is for p erso n al, p riv ate use o n ly . No p art of this
b o o k rray b e rep ro d u ce d o r1 ran sm i tt ed with o u t p
u b lish er's p rio r p en n issio n . Vio lato rs will b e
prosecuted.
8 Cli ApT E R 4 CAN Tlie UNi T ed STA T E S LE A d Tlie
Wonld?
Why was there considerable continuity ? M ost obviously, the
Cold
War p osed the same basic challenge to all p residents from
Truman
through Reagan; the Soviet threat could not be ignored.
Next,
camp aign rhetoric is one thing, reality quite another. It is easy
for a
challenger to denounce an incumbent for not doing enough,
ignoring
problem areas, or failing to develop new technology. Once in
the White
House, though, the new p resident discovers that things are
not so
simple. Did Barack Obama suddenly p ull U.S.forces out oflraq?
It could
produ c e even worse chaos that might envelop e the whole
region. What
deficit A feder al budget that sp ends
more than it takes in.
entitlements Required federal
expenditu r es , such as Social Security
and Medicare, to large classes of U.S.

2. citizens.
constraint A limit on decision-making.
a candidate wants to do may win votes, but reality ofren refuse
s to coop erate afrer the election. New
presid en ts , however much they may dislike it, are trap p ed
by the policies of their p redecessors.
Another factor is the U.S. federal budget deficit, which under
President Obama reached a
staggering $2 trillion, much of it related to the costs of the Iraq
War and economic recovery from
the financial meltdown. (In total, the Iraq War will cost well
over a trillion dollars.) Deficits-
which automatically turn into the national debt at the end of
the fiscal y ear--constrain further
sp ending. Congress balked at major new outlay s.
Entitlements dominate the budget, and
p oliticians fear voter anger at cutting Social Security or M
edicare or raising taxes. Presidents face
numerous constraints; they are not free to do every thing they
originally thought they could.
Resuming military conscrip tion, for examp le, would require a
major crisis and act of Congress.
Americans have never liked the draft; y oung men during
Vietnam esp ecially disliked it. Nixon
defused student anger in 1973 by ending the draft and going to
the all-volunteer army (AVA), the
DipLOMAC y
PRESIDENTS AND THEIR ·"DOCTRINES"
During the Cold War, most U.S. presidents articulated

3. p olicies that journalists quickly dubbed their
"doctrines." The policies were seldom that simple, and
calling them "doctrines" tends to make them sound
more clear-cut than they were. Nonetheless, they are
convenient handles to help us remember who stood for
what. Notice that all these doctrines are just variations
on the first, the Truman Doctrine, sometimes called the
"containment" p olicy , from George Kennan's 1947
article (see Chapter 2). The overall goal of U.S. foreign
policy did not change much: Stop communism. Only the
intensity and costs changed.
President Years Doctrine
Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon
Ford
Carter
Reagan
Contain the expansion of communism, presumably every where.
Use nukes and spooks to prevent Communist or other radical
takeovers.
Respond flexibly to communist expansion , especially to
guerrilla warfare.
FoUo w through on Kennedy Doctrine by committing U.S.
troops in Vietnam.
Supply weapons but not troops to countries fighting off
communism.
Continue Nixon Doctrine.
Make clear to Soviets that Persian Gulf is a vital U.S. interest.
Sponsor anticommunist guerrillas who are trying to overthrow

4. pro-Soviet regimes.
1945-1953
1953-1961
1961-1963
1963-1969
1969-1974
1974-1977
1977-1981
1981-1989
mdestin
Highlight
mdestin
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PRNlED BY: Printin g is for p erso n al, p riv ate use o n ly .
No p art of this b o o k rray b e rep ro d u ce d o r1 ran sm i tt
ed with o u t p u b lish er's p rio r p en n issio n . Vio lato rs
will b e prosecuted.
59 A CoNTR A R Y CoNGR ESS
case ever since. The AVA is highly trained and effective but
relatively
small. From a high of 3.5 million active-duty military p

5. ersonnel
in 1968 (the Viemam p eak), total U.S. troop s in all services
fell to
1.4 million in the 1990s and is now up to only 1.5 million. As
Iraq
dragged on, it became difficult to recruit enough qualified
soldiers.
Some recruits now have not finished high school or have
criminal
recor d s; they are harder to train and discip line.
The U.S. military is overstretched. M uch of the Army's
and
M arine Corp s's active-duty combat forces are overseas, most
in Iraq.
Some soldiers-even reservists--got three and four tours there.
Few
are available for new missions. Service abroad is hard on
marriages
dove Favors peace, a noninterven-
tionist.
Pentagon Defense Department main
buildi ng.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of
top generals and admirals.
War Powers Act The 1973 congres-
sional ti me li mit on president's use of
troops in hostilities.
and families. Sp irited U.S. forces quickly crushed the Iraqi
regime but then had to keep order in a
hostile Iraq. M any said their job was done and wanted to
return home. The Army 's top general,
Eric Shinseki, warned of p ursuing a "twelve-division strategy

6. with a ten-division army ."
Some critics sp eak of the "military mind" and assume that
generals are eager for war. This is far
from the case; often the biggest doves in an administration are
the Pentagon chiefs. It is their
p eop le, after all, who get killed. Top U.S. generals often
caution and restrain p residents about
dep loy ing overseas. They know they are overstretched and
how rap idly p ublic and congressional
op inion can change when casualties mount. Ignoring the
warnings of the Joint Chief s of Staff
about Iraq and Iran, President Bush 43 and Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld earned the anger and
resignations of several top officers.
A CoNTRARY CoNGREss
The p recise role of Congress in foreign affairs has never been
defined. Rather, it has changed over
the y ears, mostly declining. A nagging ambiguity came
with the Constitution, which say s
Congress declares war but also say s the p resident is
commander in chief. Which p ower overrides?
M ust the p resident wait until Congress p asses a declaration
of war before using troop s overseas?
The p roblem had come up before, but with Viemam it surfaced
with a vengeance.
As we discussed in Chap ter 3, that war was never formally
declared. Instead, President
Johnson used a joint resolution of Congress that emp owered
him to stop Communist aggression.
The senators and congressp ersons did not fully understand that
p assing (nearly unanimously ) the
1964 Tonkin Gulf Resolution gave the p resident a blank

7. check.Even after it was rep ealed, Nixon
argued that the p resident's p ower as commander in chief
allowed him to conduct the war and even
exp and it into Cambodia. Rage grew in Congress because they
were essentially help less sp ectators
to a p resident's war-making whims. To try to remedy this
imbalance, in 1973 Congress p assed (over
President Nixon's veto) the War Powers Act, giving the p
resident only 90 day s to use troop s
overseas without congressional ap p roval.
No p resident, Rep ublican or Democrat, has liked the War
Powers Act. They claim it usurps their
prerogative as commander in chief, and they have easily
circumvented it. The p resident simply doesn't
rep ort to Congress that hehas sent troop s into "hostilities or
situations where hostilities are imminent."
In 1982, when President Reagan sent U.S. M arines into Beirut,
he carefully noted that they were
"p eacekeep ing" forces and thus not involved in hostilities.
Congress allowed him 18 months to use the
M arines for p eacekeep ing, even though the situation was
dangerous. Congress ignored its own War
Powers Act. Then a suicide truck bomber killed 241 sleep ing
M arines in their barracks, and the
p resident ordered all troop s withdrawn. At no time, however,
did he admit they were in hostilities.