Lecturer: Keith E. Lee Jr., Ph.D., Fulbright scholar, Valdosta State University

The Constitution vests the power to wage war in Congress. Yet when President Trump ordered strikes on Iranian targets in 2026 and then threatened that Iranian civilization would "die tonight, never to be brought back again," Congress did not stir — not because it lacked the tools, but because it lacked the will. The question Larry Dodd raised at the end of his career — whether "subtle biases in congressional politics are paving the way to dictatorship" — now feels less like a scholarly provocation and more like a diagnosis.

This lecture argues that Congress's failure on war powers is not a story of institutional incapacity. It is a story of political abdication. Drawing on foundational scholarship on congressional development, democratic erosion, and the imperial presidency, it traces how polarization, capacity decline, and institutional fragmentation have disabled the branch most responsible for checking executive war-making. Yet the historical record also suggests that American democracy has faced such crossroads before — and that how Congress responds may determine whether abdication becomes permanent. For an international audience, the question is both analytical and urgent: what does democratic governance look like when the institution constitutionally designed to check executive power in matters of war voluntarily retreats from that role?