ANALYSIS
When Sen. Bernard Sanders late last year withdrew his resolution to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, it marked one more defeat in a years-long struggle by Congress to curb executive war powers. Despite his past pledge to stop backing the Saudis, President Joseph R. Biden has more or less continued the policy of the previous administrations – Trump and Obama – even though that foreign meddling in Yemen’s civil war has produced massive human suffering.
Why is Congress unwilling or unable to check the power of the “imperial presidency”? It wasn’t supposed to be this way, not in the original Constitution and not after the Vietnam War, when in 1973 Congress passed the War Powers Resolution after the abuses of the Johnson and Nixon administrations in waging war in Southeast Asia.
In this episode of History As It Happens, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel discuss the intractable problems with the 1973 legislation as well as the forces underpinning U.S. militarism. In the half century since Congress reinforced its authority to end “endless wars,” U.S. administrations still managed to intervene in foreign conflicts often with disastrous consequences. The law has never been used to end an overseas military adventure.
“One of the challenges is people presume a certain deference to the president on issues of war,” said Mr. Suri, an expert on foreign policy at the University of Texas at Austin. “Our entire rhetoric around war and foreign policy presumes that, when in fact in a democracy it is not supposed to work that way.”
Since the law’s passage in 1973, different presidents have made the same potent argument about the danger of Congress tying their hands when American soldiers are in harm’s way, said Mr. Engel, who teaches presidential history at Southern Methodist University. “Not only taking away [the president’s] authority under the Constitution, you are also limiting my capability as commander-in-chief to prosecute America’s conflicts and keep America’s soldiers safe.”
For all the legitimate concern nowadays about the fate of American democracy and strength of our governing institutions, there is relatively little attention paid to the conflict between Congress and the executive branch over war powers, which may be the most consequential powers exercised by any government and which lie at the heart of America’s system of checks and balances.
Listen to Mr. Suri and Mr. Engel discuss the history of the War Powers Resolution and why it doesn’t work, by downloading this episode of History As It Happens.
