Presidential decisions to declare war examined by BGSU historian

BOWLING GREEN, O.--The struggle faced by American presidents in making the decision to engage the nation in war is the subject of a new book by Dr. Gary Hess, Distinguished Research Professor of History at Bowling Green State University.

"Presidential Decisions for War: Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf," published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, looks at the effectiveness of presidents Harry S Truman, Lyndon Johnson and George Bush in their respective crises.

A widely known expert on the Vietnam War, Hess also is the author of "Vietnam and the United States: Origins and Legacy of War," and "The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asia Power, 1940-1950."

In "Presidential Decisions for War," Hess analyzes the threat to national security, how well the three presidents worked with the United Nations and the country’s allies, and the level of popular and Congressional support in each case.

He also appraises Truman, Johnson and Bush in terms of their success as Commander-in-Chief in defining the country’s objectives in "limited wars," their relations with military leaders and their responsiveness to opportunities for peace.

"I had done some earlier work on World War II and Vietnam and the role of the presidents in those wars, which is what drew me to looking at the three wars the United States has been involved in the last 50 years. I was interested in trying to understand all the factors a president has to juggle going into a crisis situation, and how successful they are at defining American security needs and in lining up international support and support at home," Hess said.

"Fifty years ago, the Americans were thinking we’d wind up fighting World War III against the Soviets. But these wars were all against relatively minor countries America didn’t think of as its enemies, and they all had a limited objective, unlike World War II, and a limited commitment in terms of American resources."

And yet, limited in scope as the three conflicts were, the presidents involved faced "terrible consequences" in making the decision for war, Hess said.

There are lessons to be learned from the three experiences, he noted. Though he said he thinks Truman’s decision in favor of war in dealing with the Korean crisis was correct, the president made a mistake in not getting advance Congressional approval for the action.

Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, didn’t "pay enough attention to the fact that he had almost no international support for waging the war, and to the number of people at home telling him it was a bad idea."

President Bush did "learn a great deal from the mistakes of the other two" in making the decision for the Persian Gulf War, Hess said. He had both international and domestic support for the war and eventually won the approval of Congress.

"He did an effective job and was mindful of the limits of his authority, especially in not imposing a government on Iraq, which he had no authority to do," according to Hess. If there was a flaw in his oversight of the action, Hess said, it was perhaps in ending the war a bit too soon, which led to Iraq’s minorities later being subjected to a devastating defeat at the hands of the Iraqi army.

"Presidential Decisions for War" is Hess’s seventh book. It is part of the America’s Moment series of the Johns Hopkins University Press, which is edited by BGSU alumnus Stanley Kutler of the University of Wisconsin, a 1956 Bowling Green graduate.

The book retails for $49.95 in hardback and $17.95 in soft-cover.

Hess, a four-time Fulbright Scholar/Lecturer in India, is a past president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and has served on the board of editors of Diplomatic History. A frequent speaker at national and international conferences, he is a member of the American Historical Association and the Ohio Academy of History.