This book explores the culture of deference by the legislative branch to the executive branch on foreign policy issues, particularly regarding the George W. Bush administration's rush to war in Iraq in 2003. By authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq at his own discretion in its October 2002 resolution, the 107th Congress abdicated its constitutional responsibility and its members failed to honor their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Although the «war powers are constitutionally those of Congress, historically presidents have engaged in war making and Congress has with limited success attempted to curb such war making. This book traces how this culture of deference to the chief executive on war making evolved and how, especially in the case of Iraq, it has adversely affected the interests of the nation, its constitutional framework, and its position in the world. This book will serve as an excellent text for courses on U.S. foreign policy, U.S. diplomatic history, and the role of Congress.

This book, a concise examination of U.S. policy in contemporary Africa, delineates various aspects of the role that the U.S. played in exacerbating and/or resolving violent conflicts in postcolonial Africa and provides a succinct historical overview of these armed conflicts. F. Ugboaja Ohaegbulam devotes considerable attention of four specific conflicts in Ethiopia-Somalia, the Western Sahara, Angola, and Rwanda and to the Clinton administration's African Crisis Response Initiative and its sequel under George W. Bush. The book concludes that lack of congruence between local forces in conflict in Africa, as well as U.S. aims in those conflicts, was only one of the constraints on the United States in its attempts at conflict resolution. America's counterproductive Cold War policies also defined relations with African states for far too long. Hence, the conflicts in postcolonial Africa became part of the legacy of those policies even as African problems continued to be low-priority concerns for the U.S. government. Libraries, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and professors, of African studies, as well as the general reader, will find this book useful.