Blog Post #7

For this post I want to evaluate under what conditions the United States government  can  declare war and what the limits of the president's powers are in this regard. In my opinion, we have a very unstable president who has tested many relations with other countries by displaying his emotions on Twitter. After doing some research, fortunately  I have found that the president of the United States CANNOT  single-handedly declare war on another country. According to the constitution, only  Congress is allowed to declare war.  The Constitution also states that the president of the United States is the commander-in-chief of all branches of the U.S. military, and during times of war, his powers are greatly expanded. This is one of the reasons why Congress is very hesitant to declare war. In order to prevent the president using military action to force the congress to get approval to declare war, Congress approved the War  Powers Act which gives he president the power to oversee military action against another country for up to 60 days before asking Congress for a declaration of war. Although there must be a valid reason for the president to launch a full scale military action against another country. If the president does not have a legal reason to use the military action, he or she could be accused of abusing the authority of the office which may lead to impeachment. I  think the current system is good with policies on declaring war and America can sigh a breath of relief that we don't have to worry about our president bending the rules in order to declare war.