About the Event: It has long been a presumption that the president enjoys vast powers with respect to decisions to intervene with military force abroad: the United States has an “imperial presidency”. This book challenges this conventional wisdom by arguing that this is more illusion than reality. Presidents have to operate in the shadow of Congress: they realize that if they act absent sufficient political cover from lawmakers, they leave themselves highly exposed should the use of force end poorly. Introducing a new measure of congressional sentiment toward the use of force, this book shows that while presidents frequently use force without formal approval from Congress, they are virtually always doing so pursuant to Congress’s informal support and urging. Moreover, it demonstrates that presidents are actually unwilling to undertake the largest interventions (full-scale war) absent the formal imprimatur of the legislator. Lastly, it shows that allies and adversaries pay close attention to domestic constraints on the president, yielding implications for deterrence and alliance reassurance. While in reality substantially constrained politically by Congress, presidents intentionally project a facade of imperialism in order to caution adversaries and hearten allies.

About the Speaker: Before coming to CISAC, Patrick was a Research Fellow with the International Security Program at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He completed his Ph.D. in political science at the University of California San Diego in May 2023, and his J.D. at the UCLA School of Law in 2017. For the summer of 2022, Patrick was a Summer Associate with the RAND Center for Analysis of U.S. Grand Strategy, and for the 2020-2021 academic year he was a Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame International Security Center.

Patrick’s research and teaching interests include congressional-executive relations in U.S. foreign policy, constitutional law, deterrence theory, and the U.S.-China relationship. He is especially interested in the influence of Congress in use of military force decisions, as well as the role of legal constraints in international security.

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