December 1, 2017
From Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo to the War on Terror, presidents have gathered more and more authority to start and conduct wars on their own. In a “War Powers Edition” of Truth, Politics and Power, Host Neal Conan asks how the commander in chief acquired that authority, why Congress has surrendered its constitutional role and whether there are any checks and balances on President Trump’s ability to launch a nuclear first strike on North Korea.
GUESTS
BRUCE BLAIR
ROSA BROOKS
D. ROBERT WORLEY
Bruce Blair is a Research Scholar at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. Much of his research is working toward the verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons. He’s the founder of the World Policy Institute where he established the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporter. From 1972 – ‘74 he served as a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile launch control officer in the Air Force. Among the books he’s authored is **The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War.**
Rosa Brooks is a law professor and Associate Dean at Georgetown Law School where she teaches courses on national security, as well as International and constitutional law. She also writes a weekly column for Foreign Policy. Professor Brooks served as Counselor to the Undersecretary of Defense Michelle Flournoy during the Obama Administration. Her most recent book is **How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon**.
D. Robert Worley is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University and is an expert in national security strategy. Morley is a former Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam. He’s the author of **Orchestrating the Instruments of Power, a Critical Examination of the US National Security System**.
SUGGESTED READING
Click on Titles to Link
BY BRUCE BLAIR
[The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War]
The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War analyzes the danger of nuclear inadvertence lurking in the command and control systems of the nuclear superpowers. Foreign policy expert Bruce G. Blair identifies the cold war roots of the contemporary risks and outlines a comprehensive policy agenda to strengthen control over nuclear forces.
BY ROSA BROOKS
[Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon
“A dynamic work of reportage” (The New York Times) written “with clarity and…wit” (The New York Times Book Review) about what happens when the ancient boundary between war and peace is erased.
BY D. ROBERT WORLEY
Orchestrating the Instruments of Power, a Critical Examination of the US National Security System
National security, a topic routinely discussed behind closed doors by Washington’s political scientists and policy makers, is believed to be an insider’s game. All too often this highly specialized knowledge is assumed to place issues beyond the grasp—and interest—of the American public. Author D. Robert Worley disagrees. The U.S. national security system, designed after World War II and institutionalized through a decades-long power conflict with the Soviet Union, is inadequate for the needs of the twenty-first century, and while a general consensus has emerged that the system must be transformed, a clear and direct route for a new national security strategy proves elusive.