Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Monday evening about the possibility of a new congressional war authorization following a deadly ambush on U.S. troops in Niger.
The 5 p.m. open hearing with top administration officials about replacing 9/11-era legislation with a new authorization for the use of military force, or AUMF, allowing the Trump administration to fight terrorist groups, comes as questions swirl over how an Islamic State-affiliated group surprised U.S. military advisers in West Africa and killed four soldiers.
The Foreign Relations Committee has wrestled for months over a new AUMF, which the White House has argued it does not need. But the Oct. 4 Niger ambush has ratcheted up urgency for a debate on Capitol Hill about the legal basis of the global war on terrorism, according to numerous lawmakers.
“We know the [ISIS] caliphate is shrinking in Iraq and Syria, but does that now mean we’re going to see more of the Niger situation development in more countries around the world,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., the ranking Democrat on the committee.
The ambush, which is still being investigated by U.S. Africa Command, has shined a spotlight on the military’s advise-and-assist operations outside of Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, and again raised the question of whether Congress should weigh in on President Trump’s war authorities 15 years after the last AUMF was passed.
About 6,000 U.S. troops are deployed to dozens of countries across Africa, and about 800 of those are in Niger where local groups have been aligning with ISIS and al Qaeda.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the committee chairman, said the debate over war authorizations could range far outside of Niger and even include North Korea.
“I think it’s going to be much more expansive than originally thought,” Corker said. “So, we are going to take our time just not walking through the AUMF for ISIS but also to walk through other things that a White House can do without congressional authority.”
Mattis and Tillerson briefed the committee behind closed doors for hours in August about the administration’s position on a new AUMF. On the same day, the State Department sent Corker a letter saying the administration believes it has all the authorities it needs to fight terror groups in the existing AUMFs, which specifically allow pursuit of al Qaeda-linked groups around the world.
Two members of the committee, Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced a new AUMF bill this year that defines the specific groups the U.S. is fighting, gives Congress discretion over where military operations are waged, and requires an update after five years.
Kaine, who said he will attend the hearing, was among senators briefed Thursday by the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff on the circumstances of the Niger ambush and afterword said he was “disturbed” by the scope of the presidential powers and the current counterterrorism operations around the world.
“I think the extent of the operations, the number of countries, would be surprising to people,” he said. “I don’t think Congress has necessarily been completely kept up to date, and the American public.”
