Senator Webb: "Humanitarian Interventions" Must Have Congressional Approval

Press Releases
Senator Webb: "Humanitarian Interventions" Must Have
Congressional Approval

"The most important constitutional challenge facing the balance
of power between the Presidency and the Congress in modern times"

May 9, 2012

Washington, DC--Senator Jim Webb today announced he will introduce
legislation to require Congressional approval before the
President could take military action for so-called "humanitarian
interventions," where U.S. armed forces might respond to crises
abroad but American interests are not directly threatened. The
legislation would require the President to obtain formal approval
by the Congress before using military force, and would also
require that debate begin within days of such a request and that
a vote must proceed in a timely manner.

Senator Webb, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign
Relations Committees, has repeatedly voiced concerns over the
Administration's evolving policy of humanitarian intervention
since the lead-up to U.S. involvement in Libya. In June 2011, he
introduced a Joint Resolution with Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) to
require the Administration to justify its actions in Libya, to
prohibit U.S. troops on the ground, and to call for Congressional
authorization of continued operations. More recently, he has
raised similar concerns regarding possible U.S. intervention in
Syria.

"Year by year, skirmish by skirmish, the role of the Congress in
determining where the U.S. military would operate, and when the
awesome power of our weapon systems would be unleashed has
diminished," said Senator Webb, who served as a combat Marine in
Vietnam, a journalist covering the U.S. military in Beirut and
Afghanistan, and an Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary
of the Navy. "In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, especially
with the advent of special operations forces and remote bombing
capabilities, the Congress seems to have faded into operational
irrelevance.... We have now reached the point that the
unprecedented - and quite frankly contorted - Constitutional
logic used by this Administration to intervene in Libya on the
basis of what can most kindly be called a United Nations standard
of 'humanitarian intervention,' was not even subject to full
debate or a vote on the Senate floor.

"The legislation that I will be introducing will address this
loophole in the interpretation of our Constitution," said Senator
Webb. "It will serve as a necessary safety net to protect the
integrity and the intent of the Constitution, itself. It will
ensure that the Congress lives up not only to its prerogatives,
which were so carefully laid out by our founding fathers, but
also to its responsibilities."





FULL TEXT OF SENATOR WEBB'S SPEECH TODAY ON THE FLOOR OF THE
SENATE:

I rise today to address perhaps the most important constitutional
challenge facing the balance of power between the Presidency and
the Congress in modern times, and also to offer a legislative
solution that might finally address this paralysis.

It is an issue that has, for far too long, remained unresolved.
And for the past ten years the failure of this body to address it
has diminished the respect, the stature, and the seriousness with
which the American people have viewed the Congress - to the
detriment of our country and to our national security.

The question is simple: When should the President have the
unilateral authority to decide to use military force, and what is
the place of the Congress in that process? What has happened to
reduce the role of the Congress from the body which once clearly
decided whether or not the nation would go to war, to the point
that we are viewed as little more than a rather mindless conduit
that collects taxpayer dollars and dispenses them to the
President for whatever military functions he decides to
undertake?

We know what the Constitution says. Many of us also know the
difficulties that have attended this situation in the years that
followed World War Two.

We are aware of the debates that resulted in the War Powers
Resolution of nearly forty years ago, in the wake of the Vietnam
War, where the Congress attempted to define a proper balance
between the President and this legislative body. I have strong
memories of the policy conflicts of that era, first as a Marine
infantry officer who fought on the unforgiving battlefields of
Vietnam on which more than 100,000 United States Marines were
killed or wounded, and later as an ardent student of
Constitutional law during my time at the Georgetown University
Law Center.

But it was in the decades following Vietnam that our
Constitutional process seems to have broken apart. Year by year,
skirmish by skirmish, the role of the Congress in determining
where the U.S. military would operate, and when the awesome power
of our weapon systems would be unleashed has diminished. In the
aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, especially with the advent of
special operations forces and remote bombing capabilities, the
Congress seems to have faded into operational irrelevance.
Congressional consent is rarely discussed. The strongest debates
surround the rather irrelevant issue of whether Congress has even
been consulted. We have now reached the point that the
unprecedented - and quite frankly contorted - Constitutional
logic used by this Administration to intervene in Libya on the
basis of what can most kindly be called a United Nations standard
of "humanitarian intervention," was not even subject to full
debate or a vote on the Senate floor. Such an omission, and the
precedent it has set, now requires us to accept one of two
uncomfortable alternatives. Either we as a legislative body must
reject this passivity and live up to the standards and the
expectations regarding Presidential power that were laid down so
carefully by our Founding Fathers, or we must accept a
redefinition of the very precepts upon which this government was
founded.

This is not a political issue. We would be facing the exact same
Constitutional challenges no matter the party of the President.
In fact, unless we resolve this matter, there is no doubt that we
someday will.

The conflict in the balance of power between the President and
the Congress has always been an intrinsic part of our
Constitutional makeup. Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution
provides that the Congress alone has the power to declare war.
Article Two, Section 2, of the Constitution provides that the
President shall serve as Commander in Chief. In the early days of
our Republic these distinctions were clear, particularly since we
retained no large standing army during peace time, and since
Article One Section 8 also provides that the Congress has the
power to "raise and support armies," a phrase that expressed the
clear intent of the framers that large ground forces were not to
be kept during peace time, but instead were to be raised at the
direction of Congress during a time of war.

Our history confirms this, as our armies demobilized again and
again once wars were completed. Only after World War Two did this
change, when our rather reluctant position as the world's
greatest guarantor of international stability required that we
maintain a large standing military force, much of it in Europe
and in Asia, ready to respond to crises whose immediacy could not
otherwise allow us to go through the lengthy process of
mobilization in order to raise an army, and because of that
reality made the time-honored process of asking the Congress for
a declaration of war in most cases obsolescent.

But any logical proposition can be carried to a ridiculous
extreme. The fact that some military situations have required our
Presidents to act immediately before then reporting to the
Congress does not in and of itself give the President a blanket
authority to use military force whenever and wherever he decides
to, even where Americans are not personally at risk and even
where the vital interests of our country have not been debated
and clearly defined. This is the ridiculous extreme that we have
now reached. The world is filled with tyrants. Democratic systems
are far and few between. I don't know exactly what objective
standard should be used before the United States government
decides to conduct a "humanitarian intervention" by using our
military power to address domestic tensions inside another
country, and I don't believe anyone else knows, either. But I
will say this: no President should have the unilateral authority
to make that decision, either.

I make this point from the perspective of someone who grew up in
the military, and whose family has participated as citizen
soldiers in most of our country's wars, beginning with the
American Revolution. I was proud to serve as a Marine in Vietnam.
I am equally proud of my son's service as a Marine infantryman in
Iraq. I am also deeply grateful for having had the opportunity to
serve five years in the Pentagon, one as a Marine, and four as
Assistant Secretary of Defense and as Secretary of the Navy.

And I have benefited over the years from having served in many
places around the world as a journalist, including in Beirut
during our military engagement there in 1983, and in Afghanistan
as an embedded journalist in 2004. As most people in this Body
know, I am one of the strongest proponents of the refocusing of
our national involvement in East Asia, and was the original
sponsor of the Senate resolution condemning China's use of force
with respect to sovereignty issues in the South China Sea.

The point is that I'm not advocating a retreat from anywhere. But
this Administration's argument that it has the authority to
decide when and where to use military force without the consent
of the Congress, using the fragile logic of "humanitarian
intervention" to ostensibly redress domestic tensions inside
countries where American interests are not being directly
threatened, is gravely dangerous. It is a bridge too far. It does
not fit our history. To give one individual such discretion
ridicules our Constitution. It belittles the role of the
Congress. And for anyone in this body to accept this rationale is
also to accept that the Congress no longer has any direct role in
the development, and particularly in the execution, of foreign
policy.

There are clear and important boundaries that have always existed
when considering a President's authority to order our military
into action without the immediate consent of the Congress. To
exceed these boundaries - as the President has already done with
the precedent set in Libya - is to deliberately destroy the
balance of powers that were built so carefully into the
Constitution itself.

These historically acceptable conditions under which a President
can unilaterally order the military into action are clear. If our
country or our military forces are attacked; if an attack,
including one by international terrorists, is imminent and must
be pre-empted; if treaty commitments specifically compel us to
respond to attacks on our allies; if American citizens are
detained or threatened; if our sea lanes are interrupted, then -
and only then - should the President order the use of military
force without first gaining the approval of the Congress.

At least until recent months, the Congress has never accepted
that the President owns the unilateral discretion to initiate
combat activities without direct provocation, without Americans
at risk, without the obligations of treaty commitments, and
without the consent of the Congress. The recent actions by this
Administration, beginning with the months-long intervention in
Libya, should give us all grounds for concern and alarm about the
potential harm to our constitutional system itself. We are in no
sense compelled - or justified - in taking action based on a vote
in the United Nations, or as the result of a decision made by a
collective security agreement such as NATO when none of its
members have been attacked. It is not the prerogative of the
President to decide to commit our military and our prestige into
situations that cannot clearly be determined to flow from vital
national interests.

Who should decide that? I can't personally and conclusively
define the boundaries of what is being called a "humanitarian
intervention." Most importantly, neither can anybody else. Where
should it apply? Where should it not? Rwanda? Libya? Syria?
Venezuela? Bangladesh? In the absence of a clear determination by
our time-honored Constitutional process, who should decide where
our young men and women, and our national treasure, should be
risked? Some of these endeavors may be justified, some may not.
But the most important point to be made is that in our system, no
one person should have the power to inject the United States
military, and the prestige of our nation, into such
circumstances.

Our Constitution was founded upon this hesitation. We inherited
our system from Great Britain, but we adapted and changed it for
a reason. One of our strongest adjustments from the British
system was to ensure that no one person would have the power to
commit the nation to military schemes that could not be justified
by the interests and the security of the average citizen.
President after President, beginning with George Washington, have
emphasized the importance of this fundamental principle to the
stability of our political system, and to the integrity of our
country in the international community. The fact that the
leadership of our Congress has failed to raise this historic
standard in the past few years, and most specifically in Libya,
is a warning sign to this body that it must reaffirm one of its
most solemn responsibilities.

I have been working for several months to construct a legislative
solution to this paralysis. This legislation would recognize that
modern circumstances require an adroit approach to the manner in
which our foreign policy is now being implemented. But it would
also put necessary and proper boundaries around a President's
discretion when it comes to so-called humanitarian interventions,
where we and our people are not being directly threatened. My
legislation requires that in any situation where American
interests are not directly threatened, the President must obtain
formal approval by the Congress before introducing American
military force. This legislation will also provide that debate on
such a request must begin within days of the request, and that a
vote must proceed in a timely manner.

I would remind the leadership on both sides of this Body that
despite repeated calls from myself and other Senators, when this
Administration conducted month after month of combat operations
in Libya, with no American interests directly threatened and no
clear treaty provisions in play, the Congress of the United
States, both Democrat and Republican, could not even bring itself
to have a formal debate on whether the use of military force was
appropriate, and this use of military force went on for months
and was never approved. The Administration, which spent well over
a billion dollars of taxpayer funds, dropped thousands of bombs
on the country, and operated our military offshore for months,
claimed that "combat" was not occurring, and rejected the notion
that the War Powers Act applied to the situation. I am not here
to debate the War Powers Act. I am suggesting that other
statutory language that covers these kinds of situations must be
enacted. The legislation that I will be introducing will address
this loophole in the interpretation of our Constitution. It will
serve as a necessary safety net to protect the integrity and the
intent of the Constitution itself. It will ensure that Congress
lives up not only to its prerogatives, which were so carefully
laid out by our founding fathers, but also to its
responsibilities.