By Walter Russell Mead
There’s a tough issue that humanitarian interventionists need to take
into account when it comes to Syria. There is really no good way to
read the Constitution that gives the president an unlimited unilateral
power to order US forces into combat for humanitarian missions, and it
is even harder to find justification for a unilateral power to order
retaliatory strikes.
As commander in chief the president has a widely recognized and long
established power to take emergency action to deal with military and
security threats. And the president also has the power to deploy the US
military on non-combat operations for humanitarian purposes—for example,
when the US Navy responded to the Indian Ocean tsunami. But acts of war
against an enemy that does not directly threaten the United States of
America or its treaty allies must pass a tougher test.
If the president really can launch discretionary military attacks on
humanitarian grounds around the world at will, we have an elected
dictatorship, not a system of limited powers. Is the President of the
United States to be the judge, jury and enforcer of international law
even when nothing in either US or international law gives him these
powers?
As a practical matter, one can see circumstances (a fast moving wave
of genocidal violence while Congress is out of session, for example) in
which a president could responsibly substitute consultation with
Congressional leaders for a full and formal vote. But what President
Obama wants in Syria is a retaliatory strike. He is not intervening
rapidly to stop a wave of chemical attacks. He is acting at leisure,
with reviews of evidence, international consultation, reports from
observers. It seems to make little difference whether he acts on it
today or tomorrow or next week. There is, evidently, no practical reason
for failing to consult Congress; the President himself has chosen to
postpone any military action until Congress acts on the matter. In such a
case it seems very hard to create a sound constitutional argument
justifying presidential action if Congress rejects his proposal.
This is a problem for humanitarian interventionists. Such
interventions are generally unpopular. Poll after poll going back many
years show that most Americans don’t like having US troops put in harm’s
way to stop one group of foreigners from doing bad things to another
foreign group. (Drone strikes and bombs are less problematic from the
standpoint of public opinion, but given the real potential in some
cases, like Syria, that bombing raids could set off a chain of events
that led to escalation, the debates over such actions are likely to be
serious and the opposition will be strong.) It is easier to bounce a
president into a humanitarian war than to bounce both houses of
Congress, and humanitarian interventionists don’t want a bunch of grubby
congresspersons getting their stubby fingers all over their beautifully
designed humanitarian wars.
Humanitarian interventionists are stuck with two tough problems: it
is always going to be hard to get the US to use force in such
circumstances, and it is going to be even harder to develop reliable
methods for getting it done by international organizations or even
coalitions. Congress could delegate some powers to the executive here;
it could, for example, pass a law authorizing presidents to use force
against belligerents or governments that violated certain international
conventions, such as the one banning the use of chemical weapons. But to
our knowledge, it hasn’t and, most probably, it wouldn’t.
Ironically, it would be easier both politically and constitutionally
for the President to bomb Syria if he credibly invoked national security
as the primary justification and used Assad’s atrocities as a secondary
reason. Under US law, the President’s power to defend this country from
enemies is much broader than his power to enforce moral norms on a
global basis. If US citizens in Syria were in imminent danger either
from chemical weapons attacks or from other actions by the Assad
government, his justification would be even stronger.
During his time in the White House, President Obama has repeatedly
demonstrated a style of decision making that gets him in trouble.
Especially when the stakes are high and the issue is complex, the
President overthinks himself and tries to split the difference between
tough policy choices. He comes up with stratagems that work beautifully
on paper and offer well reasoned, moderate alternatives to stark
choices. Unfortunately, they usually don’t work all that well in the
real world, with the President repeatedly ending up in the “sour spot”
where his careful approaches don’t get him where he needs to go.
This style of strategy is what’s boxed him in and tied him in knots
over Syria. He didn’t want to intervene (too risky) but he didn’t want
to ignore the carnage completely (too heartless) so he split the
difference and proclaimed a red line. He didn’t lay the political
preparations for war before the red line statement; again, too risky and
too warlike. Instead, he split the difference once again: he made a
threat without ensuring that he’d have the backing to carry it out.
Once the red line was indisputably crossed (after some more strategic
hedging on his part when the red line was ‘sort of ‘ crossed),
President Obama then faced another decision: to bomb with or without
Congress. Once again, intense reflection on his part led to
split-the-middle decisions that made his life harder. He would bomb, but
not bomb hard enough to make a real difference on the ground. That made
his policies harder to defend for those who favored serious military
action against Assad without doing much to build support from those who
didn’t want military action at all.
But even then the President wasn’t finished splitting hairs. Bombing
without Congress was too unilateral and too politically risky; but what
would he do if Congress wouldn’t sign a permission slip? It must have
seemed like a brainwave in hair-splitting Cloudcuckooland: he announced
first that he was definitely going to bomb, then that he was going to
ask Congress before bombing, then that he wasn’t necessarily bound by
what Congress votes. Eerily, it’s the same kind of blooper George W.
Bush made by going to the Security Council for a second Iraq resolution
and then going to war anyway when he didn’t get it.
As a result, President Obama finds himself in the biggest and ugliest
public mess of his career, with a total policy meltdown playing out on
the front pages and cable TV studios of the world. It is like a slow
motion Bay of Pigs, unrolling at an agonizing, prestige wrecking pace
from day to day and week to week. It is almost impossible to defend
whatever policy he actually has in mind at this point, yet the
consequences of a congressional vote that opposes him are grave.
We’re hoping the Good Foreign Policy Fairy comes along and waves her
magic wand over this Syria mess and somehow helps the administration
avoid the disaster it has struggled so hard to produce. Otherwise, it’s
hard to see anything good coming out of this epic policy meltdown
beyond, perhaps, a useful reminder to future presidents that the
Constitution does place limits on executive power, and that regular
consultation with Congress about important foreign policy problems is
probably a good idea.
If there really is a special providence for drunks, fools and the
United States of America, this would be an excellent time for it to put
in an appearance.
RELATED:
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'We Must Attack Syria, 'Cuz, Like, Um, Ya Know, Because...'
Syria, 'Red-Lines,' and Obama's Feckless Foreign Policy
Postcards From Syria (Photo Essay)
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