Syria - USA

The Syrian crisis is having an effect on the politics of the USA - President Obama won't have the military support of Britain, thanks to a recent vote in the House of Commons. Rather interestingly, he is trying to get a vote in Congress to support military action. The Independent makes the link between Obama's action and Cameron's failure to get a similar vote in the House of Commons, which I think is a bit of a stretch. The BBC's Mark Mardell has a piece about it here.

As A2 G & P students will know (or they will find out when they get to it in the syllabus), the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces in the USA, and doesn't need permission from anybody to send troops anywhere. There is a tension between this and Congress's power to declare war (last done after Pearl Harbor), and the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Presidents generally get permission for longer military engagements at some point, as President George W Bush did in 2002 in Iraq, but Obama did not in Libya in 2011 (although he claimed action there was legal because it was done through NATO and the US relationship with NATO was long-standing).

The vote (probably going to happen on 9th Sept) should certainly be a good example for any G & P student contemplating Presidential power and foreign policy, a regular topic in the Unit 4C paper.

Fox News has a blog post about Presidential power over foreign policy here.

[Picture - The Economist]