You’d think that the U.S. would be tired of military interventions by now. But with John Bolton in the White House, there’s still plenty of appetite for sending troops to enact Washington’s will abroad, and the obvious target right now is Venezuela.
The country is clearly in crisis. Nicolás Maduro’s corrupt regime has resulted in food shortages, lack of access to medicine, infrastructure failure amounting to a spiraling economic and humanitarian disaster.
[Read more: Juan Guaidó: Nicolás Maduro has ‘no diagnosis’ for deadly Venezuela blackout crisis]
It might be that there are legitimate reasons for U.S. intervention in a modern application of the Monroe Doctrine. It is also likely that the idea of a quick hit to turn the military against Maduro would instead result in an unpredictable bout of military adventurism that exacerbates regional tensions and leaves the U.S. embroiled in yet another forever war.
Either way, that decision must fall to lawmakers as stipulated in the Constitution, even if in recent years decisions about military intervention has been handed off to the executive.
Thankfully, lawmakers seem to finally be wising up to the problems of abdicating their authority on sending troops abroad. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.R. 1004, preventing the use of funds for military intervention without approval from Congress. Of course, lawmakers aren’t seeking to cripple the president’s ability to respond to emergencies, so the bill does including reasonable exceptions for statutory authorization or an attack on the U.S. or its forces.
That legislation should have clear support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers. Instead of sitting on their hands and waiting for another potential intervention for the public to sour on, lawmakers shouldn’t shy away from their responsibility to decide when the U.S. goes to war.
