As the lawmaking arm of the federal government, Congress is authorized by the Constitution with crafting policy for the country. This applies to both domestic and foreign policy — at least this is how our government is designed to function.
Through its control over the appropriations process, Congress can pull the plug on overseas military interventions whenever lawmakers deem an operation to be unnecessary or counterproductive to national security interests. By simply cutting off funding, Congress can legally force the president to redeploy U.S. troops from a conflict zone and terminate the mission.
Increasingly, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have largely ignored their own power over American foreign policy. As a result, the president’s authority as commander in chief once conflict is initiated has expanded so quickly and so broadly that you can forgive the public for thinking the president can freely mire U.S. military forces into tertiary conflicts, regardless of whether or not Congress has approved the deployment. U.S. intervention in the civil war in Yemen, which is considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis (and one that has incubated the very terrorists the United States supposedly aims to combat), fits the description perfectly.
Then-President Barack Obama’s decision in March 2015 to offer critical logistical, refueling, and intelligence assistance to the Saudi-United Arab Emirates-led coalition against Yemen’s Houthi rebels was an unauthorized, unilateral abuse of power from an executive branch that, regardless of administration, has sent U.S. troops wherever it sees fit with no path to victory. Resistance in the halls of Congress came from several constitutionalists — lawmakers such as Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; and Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich.; and Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; who tried to light a fire underneath their colleagues to reclaim their own constitutional war power.
Few in Congress have followed their lead. But after four years of doing absolutely nothing to extricate U.S. forces from a war that undermines U.S. interests, lawmakers appear to be learning an important lesson: Unauthorized wars like our intervention in Yemen are unconstitutional abuses of power. They are completely at odds with the founders’ explicit instructions for how the federal government should work. Just as important, these unauthorized wars are extremely dangerous distractions to more realistic foreign policy concerns, most notably an emerging era of great power competition in regions of the world (like the Asia-Pacific) that are far greater strategic challenges than Yemen to America’s geopolitical position and economic prosperity.
Votes in both houses of Congress this year utilized the 1973 War Powers Act to unconditionally remove the U.S. military from the Yemen conflict — the first time in history this law has been used to remove American forces from an unapproved overseas conflict. This suggests lawmakers are slowly coming around to the realization that the Constitution was designed to ensure our entire nation engages in a clear, honest conversation about the costs and benefits of a proposed military action before sending U.S. soldiers into a combat zone.
The honest truth, however, is that these war powers votes were delayed far longer than the Constitution requires. Four years of U.S. intervention in an unconstitutional, peripheral civil war with no direct U.S. national security interests at stake is four years too many. It took a monumentally catastrophic blunder by Saudi Arabia (the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a diplomatic facility) for lawmakers to finally exert their constitutional power beyond words of condemnation and tweets of righteous indignation. By elevating political self-interest above the national interest and constitutional obligation, Congress enabled a U.S. policy toward Yemen best characterized as counterproductive, morally unconscionable, and strategically bankrupt.
Legislators were sent to Washington by their constituents to vote on critical issues, including on U.S. national security and how the United States engages in the world. Congress was designed to serve as more than a peanut gallery of gripers, spectators, and armchair pundits. Congressional action was not supposed to be limited to generic requests for information, certification requirements, and mandatory reporting provisions (some of which the executive branch ignores with impunity). Congress is the branch authorized to set the direction of foreign policy. To fulfill its duty, it would employ (and protect from the executive branch) all the constitutional powers granted to it. That would also help prevent reckless wars of choice that entrap America’s limited defense resources, and it could help forestall calamitous mistakes in the future.
The public are clamoring for a realistic foreign policy that engages productively in the world, primarily through economic and diplomatic means; keeps U.S. national security and economic interests front of mind; uses military only as a last resort; and through it all, prudently connects means with appropriate ends to wisely steward U.S. taxpayer dollars to keep the country safe. The disconnect between lawmakers and their constituents is troubling and a major reason why U.S. foreign policy is so far off track. Congress would better serve the United States by listening far more to everyday people.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
