U.S. MUST AVOID DRIFTING INTO A MAJOR WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
BY
ALLAN C.BROWNFELD
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There is growing danger that, without any action by Congress, the U.S. may be drifting into a major war in the Middle East.
In December, for the second time in a month, the Biden Administration bypassed Congress to provide emergency weapons to Israel. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Congress he had made a second emergency determination in less than a month, covering a $147.5 million sale of equipment to Israel. The Secretary notified Congress that he had exercised his delegated authority to determine an emergency existed necessitating immediate approval of the transfer.
This means that a requirement for a congressional review for foreign military sales has been bypassed. We have been hearing from top Biden administration officials that it is time for Israel to move to a lower intensity conflict and to stop the mass bombing and mass deaths of civilians. Yet, without congressional authorization, they are selling to Israel the exaction munitions it needs to conduct its high intensity campaign.
Bypassing Congress with emergency determinations for arms sales is an unusual step that in the past has met resistance from members, who formally have a period of time to weigh in on proposed weapons transfers and, in some cases, decide to block them.
American involvement in Middle East conflicts is growing. A U.S. Navy ship has intercepted missiles launched by Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen. Two American bases in Syria have come under fire. In Iraq, drones and rockets are fired at U.S. forces. The U.S. has deployed two carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran and its allies, Syria and Hezbollah, from opening new fronts against Israel. Two thousand U.S. Marines are on hand for deployment in the region. CNN reported that, “It all amounts to this: the U.S. is careening closer to the very real possibility of direct involvement in a regional Middle East war.”
A report issued by the Cato Institute warns that, “The U.S. is barreling toward another war in the Middle East. The conflict between Israel and Hamas is rapidly escalating across the region and risks dragging the U.S. directly into the fray…President Biden and his team have repeatedly warned Israel against making the same mistakes the U.S.made following Sept. 11, 2011, but it would appear Washington has yet to learn from our own errors of the past two decades.”
In Cato’s view, “If the administration does not want another war in the Middle East, it needs to prevent the conflict from pulling in additional actors from across the region. The way the war is being fought at present seems to make that outcome more likely, not less….After Oct. 7, the U.S.significantly increased its military presence in the Middle East—-we deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups with roughly 7,500 personnel on each, two guided missile destroyers and nine air squadrons to the East Mediterranean and Red Sea region…The Biden administration needs to square up to the fact that a broader war in the Middle East would be ruinous for the U.S. in the region. It should be clear from the past several decades that throwing money, weapons and military assets at the region often has profound negative consequences. Washington is risking further escalation, and even direct U.S. involvement in a region-wide war.”
While the Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, the last time Congress declared war was after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Since then, we have gone to war in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and other places strictly on the basis of executive action——something which the Framers of the Constitution never anticipated.
During the administration of Lyndon Johnson, at a time when ever increasing numbers of American troops were being dispatched to Vietnam, the Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told the Congress that in popular terms the U.S. was “clearly at war” but defended the administration’s refusal to seek a formal declaration. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Katzenbach said that Congress had authorized President Johnson “to use the armed forces of the United States in whatever way was necessary when it passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in August 1964.” It later turned out that Congress supported this resolution based on false information provided by the administration.
Testifying before a Senate committee, Dr. Ruhr Bartlett of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University said that the assumption by American presidents of more and more authority in foreign affairs “leads in the direction of an authoritarian state.” Much of the erosion of the Congressional role, he pointed out, resulted from the broad , general grants of authority in the Formosa Resolution of 1955, the Middle East resolution of 1957, and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964.
At one time there was little question about the clear-cut authority of Congress in the matter of declaring war. In the widely read textbook written just prior to World War I, “The American Plan of Government,” Professor Charles W. Bacon stated that, “The framers of the Constitution turned over an ample measure of the powers of war to Congress because Representatives and Senators are delegates of the people and States of the United States whose commercial interests must be staked upon the issue of every conflict. The people pay the bill. Therefore, their representatives in Congress are of right the proper persons to control military affairs…The war making power, according to the decision in the case of Perkins v. Rogers, is by the Constitution vested in Congress and…the President has no power to declare war or conclude peace, except as he may be empowered by Congress.”
We are now distant from the Constitution’s mandate about how we are to go to war. In his study, “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon notes that, “Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectations that the Senate and people would submit to slavery provided that they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”
At the present time, we are pursuing policies in the Middle East that may draw us into a costly and unnecessary war, in which our own national interests are difficult to discern. It is long past time that we returned to the Constitution’s mandated path by which we are to go to war. President Biden has been in public life for many years and has lived through many wars. In all of his time in the Senate, he was never asked to vote on a declaration of war. If he thinks our nation should go to war, he should make a public case for doing so and ask for a vote of Congress. He should not drift into war which, sadly, his administration now seems to be in the process of doing.
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