Political Science News - News

**Une version française suivra**

The International Political Science Association associates with the Raoul Dandurand Chair at the Université du Québec à Montréal for the presentation of an international conference on american politics titled "Who decides in Washington". IPSA is proud to count a great number of representatives from the Chair as its members, and puts great efforts in promoting political science to a broader audience.

The international conference is organized by the Center for United States Studies at the Raoul Dandurand Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal

March 26th, 27th, 2015

Marriott Springhill Suites
445 rue Saint Jean-Baptiste, Montréal, QC H2Y 2Z7
Champ-de-Mars or Place-d'Armes Metro

Simultaneous translation will be available troughout the conference.

Presentation

Events such as the United States' decision of this Fall to go after ISIS in Iraq, or "leadership from behind" stance in Libya in the spring of 2011 and the decision to order the assassination of Bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011 seemed to reveal a President comfortably settled into his role as Commander in Chief and capable of conducting a hard-knuckled foreign policy while accommodating the isolationist mood of post-Bush public opinion. To that end, Barack Obama has maintained and expanded two controversial Bush-era programs, on the advice of his predecessor: early in his presidency, he approved the development of cyberweapons (most notably Operation Olympic Games, a veritable cyberwar waged against Iran) and the use of armed drones. Indeed, he went further than Bush, claiming that he did not need the approval of anyone, including Congress, to carry out drone executions and centralizing decision-making on drone attacks in the Oval Office (through the famous Kill List). At the same time, however, U.S. policy on Ukraine, Syria and Iraq under Obama has been marked by inconsistency, prevarication and about-faces.

Has the President demonstrated firmness or weakness? In the case of Syria, did he turn to Congress on a foreign policy issue as a ploy, knowing Congress would be divided and hoping to avoid shouldering the blame for another intervention in the Mideast powder keg? Did he really blunder in talking about a "red line"? Was he trying to extricate himself by passing the buck to Congress, knowing he would never win in the House? Did he simply make a political miscalculation? Or did he cave in to pressure from his advisors, from lobbies, from foreign powers?
 

For more information, and the upcoming registration and program, please visit the Raoul Dandurand Chair website: http://dandurand.uqam.ca/evenements/evenements-a-venir/1233-who-decides-...

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