Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

You are here: Home / Archives for New National Security

Senate Committee on Foreign Relations passes authorization of use of force against ISIL

Earlier today, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations passed the Senate Joint Resolution 44 – Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) by a party-line roll-call vote of 10 to 8.

The resolution authorizes the use of force in Iraq and Syria while rejecting ground combat operations already ruled out by the President.  However, it includes exceptions to the prohibition of troops on the ground large enough to drive a battalion through: except when necessary to protect U.S. military personnel or U.S. citizens whose lives are directly endangered by ISIL, and other specific circumstances. Additionally, the president must report to Congress at least once every 60 days on specific actions taken Iraq and Syria. The enemy is identified as “associated persons or forces” with ISIL, meaning “individuals and organizations fighting for or on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or a closely-related successor entity.”

The legality of Obama’s current campaign in Iraq and Syria is contested. The president has been using the out-of-date 2001 AUMF against Al-Qaeda, passed in the wake of the September 11th attacks, to justify military actions against ISIL, or as Secretary Kerry called it in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Daesh. The word ‘Daesh’ is a transliteration of the Arabic acronym for ISIL. Many Arabic-language media outlets prefer to use this term because it distances the terrorist organization from the practice of Islam.

In his testimony on December 19th, Kerry said he supports the three-year limitation proposed by Menendez, “subject to provisions for extension that [the Administration] would be happy to discuss.”

The Administration does not want to be hampered by any hard limitations on the duration of our involvement in the region, the ability to resort to combat operations if necessary, or an expansion of offensive actions to other countries.

The proposed AUMF against ISIL would repeal the 2002 AUMF against Iraq but says nothing about the 2001 AUMF.

During today’s hearing, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) spoke of the necessity to define unambiguously the enemy and the objectives of this war. He also spoke out against limiting the AUMF to three years, as proposed in the Act, suggesting that this would reveal to our enemies what we are willing and unwilling to do to defeat them, and for how long. In essence, he argued to give the President a blank check.

Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) argued, “A three-year authorization creates the greatest accounting to the Congress to come back, knowing that authorization can be renewed and may need to be.”

As Menendez suggested, sunsetting the authorization after three years would force Congress to revisit the AUMF and ensure the Act stays relevant to strategic realities.

On the point of sending U.S. ground troops back to the region, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed out, “massive amount of ground forces in the middle east ends up creating more enemies than it ends up killing.”

Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) highlighted the need for both a military and fiscal strategy, saying that it is “[his] hope that we will keep right in front of us how we will pay for [this] war [against ISIL.]”  He also called for the president to release a clear, in-depth strategy as to how he will degrade and defeat ISIL, how much it will cost, and the projected scope and duration of the war.

An amendment to constrain a U.S. campaign geographically was put forward by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). An amendment to limit the authority of the AUMF to one year was proposed by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and co-sponsored by Senator Paul. Neither amendment passed.

So Democrats, some of whom are skeptical about a new war in Iraq and Syria, voted to authorize the use of military force because the resolution included some limits to presidential action in the region. And Republicans who most support our military involvement voted against the resolution because they felt the president’s hands would be tied.

As Congress plans to adjourn in the next few days, Congress will most likely have to start all over against in 2015 on this or another measure.

The Vote:
Democrats for: Bob Menendez (NJ), Barbara Boxer (CA), Cardin (MD) Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Chris Coons (DE), Dick Durbin (IL), Tom Udall (NM), Chris Murphy (CT), Tim Kaine (VA), Ed Markey (MA)

Republicans against: Bob Corker (TN), James Risch (ID), Marco Rubio (FL), Ron Johnson (WI), Jeff Flake (AZ), John McCain (AZ), John Barrasso (WY), Rand Paul (KY)

Hearing Backfires for Iran Diplomacy Bulldozers Menendez and Corker

This was a bad week for adversaries of a comprehensive deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Wednesday entitled “Dismantling Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Next Steps to Achieve a Comprehensive Deal,” Senators Bob Menendez and Bob Corker presented their respective legislative proposals in opposition to the P5+1 and Iran negotiations. Both bills threaten to undo any progress that’s been made in Vienna on a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program.  

Menendez and Corker had a hand in selecting expert witnesses for the hearing: Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute, Gary Samore, president of United Against Nuclear Iran and of Harvard’s Belfer Center, and David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. Given past statements from all three, the deck should have been stacked in their favor. But things didn’t go according to plan.

Republican Senator Rand Paul expressed his optimism about the negotiations based off of Iran’s compliance with the interim deal to date.

“But to my mind [inspections of Iran’s nuclear program] would be better than no negotiations. It would be better than war with Iran. Once we have war with Iran there will be no more inspections. Once the first bomb drops, you’ll never have another inspection inside of Iran,” said Sen. Paul.

He also pressed Samore to concede that our allies would not support sanctions imposed unilaterally by Congress.

Panel

Menendez, for his part, would like to move “trigger sanctions” legislation that would automatically impose new sanctions on Iran in the event that the two sides can’t come to an agreement by March 2015. In the words of David Albright, however, this type of legislation is perceived “by the Iranians as putting a gun to their heads and leads them to put together I guess what I would call trigger advancements in their nuclear program…And so there’s worry about that, that the trigger sanctions could backfire.”

Albright suggests that if the U.S. plays its ace of harder economic sanctions, Iran will too. Smothering Iran with sanctions, then, could very well press it to renew its efforts to enrich uranium to a high enough level to build a bomb—the very last thing anyone interested in U.S. national security would want.

In July, Senators Corker and Graham sponsored a separate piece of legislation called the “Iran Nuclear Negotiations Act of 2014.” The bill, which would have forced the Senate to vote on a resolution of disapproval on any final deal with Iran, was ultimately scuttled by Congress. Responding to Corker’s bill, both Samore and Albright pointed to the disconnect between what the Administration and Congress view as the fundamentals of an acceptable deal.“As long as there’s such a divergence in terms of what would constitute an acceptable deal,” said Samore, “I think it’s difficult to come to an agreement on whether Congress should put itself in the position of approving an agreement.”

Of course Menendez, Corker and Graham aren’t the only ones on the Hill trying to derail nuclear negotiations.

At a roundtable discussion with reporters this week, Rep. Mike Pompeo belligerently said, “[in] an unclassified setting, it is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces.”

Senate-elect Tom Cotton added his own wild speculation to the mix, speaking on the possibility of Islamist extremists collaborating with Mexican drug cartels to cross the border. “They could collaborate on our southern border because it’s so porous and defenseless could easily be used by a terrorist to infiltrate and attack us,” he said.

Neither Pompeo nor Cotton backed their claims up with facts or rationale, but who needs those? Sen.-elect Cotton’s slippery attempt to tie in immigration to Islamic extremism speaks to a greater theme, a blatant Republican effort to stymie Obama’s potential foreign policy successes across the board. As James Carville points out in the The Hill this week, conservatives can’t stand the idea of a deal with Iran “because they know what Tessio says in ‘The Godfather’ is true, when he finds out Michael would be taking a different car: ‘Hell, he can’t do that; that screws up all my arrangements.’” If the Obama administration is able to strike a successful, verifiable deal (which is still no guarantee) the implications for 2016 could be huge.

A Congressional roadblock is not inevitable, however. Speaking at an event on the Iran negotiations at Brookings, Center advisory board member Ed Levine suggested Congress may be able to draft a sanctions bill tailored to the specifics of what the P5+1 is offering at the negotiating table. This would trigger sanctions only if Iran doesn’t sign on.  As it appears, Congress has room to redeem itself. But Ed points out, “That would be a very difficult piece of legislation for Congress because it would involve giving up on more maximalist goals.”

Ultimately, both sides of the debate want the same thing: to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Military action against Iran, as Sen.-elect Cotton suggests, is an irresponsible policy suggestion. Not only because the issue can (and hopefully will) be solved through diplomacy, but a unilateral attack would quickly snowball into yet another war in the Middle East. And additional sanctions, as evidenced by comments from both Samore and Albright, would likely not have the intended consequence of bettering our hand at the table. As much as Congress would like to intervene, or just hates the fact on its face, the most promise for success lies in ongoing negotiations.

Right now, it might be best for the rest of us to sit back and let the folks at the table do their jobs.

U.S. Leading the Way on Nuclear Weapons Conference

Today, the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation issued praise for the Obama Administration’s announcement that the U.S. will participate in the December 2014 Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons. This comes as a sign of renewed commitment on behalf of the President toward making good on his Prague promises of reducing the threat of nuclear weapons.

Panetta’s Loose Words Warrant Washing His Mouth Out With Soap

This month, former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta – he of minimal loyalty to his bosses — published his memoir “Worthy Fights,” in which he criticizes Obama’s national security strategies and in particular how the administration has dealt with Iraq and Syria.  

In his book, Panetta decries the “Red line” debacle of 2012 when President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria was a “red line for us.” Panetta suggests that Obama’s failure to enforce the red line, when chemical weapons really were used a year later, undermined U.S. credibility amongst Syrians and the rest of the world.

Ironically, Panetta’s book makes a serious semantic blunder of its own when Northeast Asian news outlets took a keen interest in this sentence:

“If North Korea moved across the border, our war plans called for the senior American general on the peninsula to take command of all U.S. and South Korean forces and defend south Korea – including by the use of nuclear weapons, if necessary.”

The sentence garnered attention from South Korean media and even prompted a response from Pyongyang, which promised to bolster their nuclear deterrent to counter the U.S. policies toward North Korea.

World order hanging in the balance of your every word is pretty difficult, isn’t it, Mr. Panetta?

The importance of rhetoric cannot be overplayed. Need you be reminded of the infamous “16 words” (“the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”) spoken by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address that were used to justify war in Iraq.

Or Ronald Reagan’s joke before a Saturday radio address: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Panetta’s words are alarmist. Threatening the use of nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional attack only heightens the importance of these weapons that should only serve as a nuclear deterrent.  

If there is a North Korean conventional attack on South Korea, the United States has ample non-nuclear means at its disposal to respond. According to Lt. General (USA, Ret.) Robert G. Gard, Jr., Chair of the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, U.S. conventional weapons would be sufficient to defend South Korea from North Korean forces.

Gard writes, “Stopping the attack of poorly trained and ill-equipped North Korean forces does not require the use of nuclear weapons.”

He goes on to say, “Should North Korea be able to bypass the demilitarized zone by moving some troops by air or through tunnels into South Korea, an option that has been threatened, they obviously would have to be killed or captured by conventional means. Employing nuclear weapons in densely populated South Korea brings to memory the parallel concept of destroying a city in order to save it. And since the war plan for defense of South Korea envisions invading North Korea and seizing Pyongyang, the capitol, attacking the North with nuclear weapons would endanger our own troops, as well as causing massive casualties on the long-suffering North Korean population.

“There is no justification for threatening to break the generally accepted barrier between the use of conventional high explosive munitions and nuclear weapons in the defense of South Korea. The only practical utility of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter their use by other nations against our vital national interests and, by extension, against our allies,” concluded Gard.

Perhaps Panetta’s ill-considered words deserve the old bar of soap to the mouth treatment a la Ralphie in “A Christmas Story.”