Repealing endless war authorizations will not suffice. Defund the Pentagon, too
Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°69 | 1 March 2021
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Situation
The airstrike President Biden authorized in Syria was almost certainly illegal. Some members of Congress and anti-war commentators were quick to point this out, and its (il)legality has since formed the basis of the policy response: Repeal the outdated endless war authorizations (AUMFs).
In its statement, the White House didn’t cite statutory authority (AUMFs) to defend its use of military force in Syria. Instead, the Biden administration appears to have invoked constitutional authority (Article II/War Powers Resolution) by claiming the strikes were to protect US military personnel and ‘partners.’
AUMFs can be used in self-defense claims, too (see Trump administration’s justification for the Soleimani assassination), but regardless of its legal basis, the political basis of Biden’s Syria strike was the US military’s presence in Iraq. So if we’re interested in stopping Biden from doing the same thing again, our central focus should be on what’s allowing him to make such global ‘self-defense’ claims in the first place. Answer:
^US military footprint, via USA Today using DOD data. Dot sizes refer to the number of US personnel at each (country-based) location.
Repealing endless war appropriations must accompany repealing endless war authorizations (defund the Pentagon)
After the 2017 ambush in Niger that left four US troops dead (I have no idea how many others, I only looked at US media sources), then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis testified before the Senate on the legal authorizations pertaining to the incident and the state of AUMFs, generally. Near the end of his opening statement, he told Congress that if they disagree with how the Trump administration was using AUMFs, “[t]he power of the purse remains firmly vested in your hand[s].” Basically: If you don’t like what we’re doing or what legal authorities we’re using to do it, defund us, I dare you.
There are two main ways to defund the Pentagon in the name of ending endless war. The first is to target specific operations in which the US is participating. When the Obama administration intervened in Libya in 2011 without congressional approval, a bill was introduced that would have prevented the Department of Defense from using any of its money in support of the NATO mission in Libya. So that’s one option.
The second method looks at function instead of geography. The DOD budget is broken up into different accounts that do different things. A popular defunding candidate is the OCO account, which used to be called the ‘Global War on Terror’ fund before Obama renamed it, but those funds eventually go into the main accounts.
…Like the Operations & Maintenance account, which funds ongoing operations and the global presence of the US military (also the largest); and the Procurement account, which funds military equipment purchases (and, ultimately, bad politicians/think tanks):
^This is a projection for FY2022 based on DOD data, although I suspect it will be a radical underestimate (contrary to some reports, there is zero indication that Biden has any intention of reducing the military budget).
Thanks for your time,
Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)
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