The Unthinkable: Repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Act
It is almost twenty-four years since the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States by Al-Qaeda which were planned from their sanctuary in Afghanistan. Soon thereafter, the U.S. began a global war that would unknowingly extend decades with remnant named operations underway today. Beginning soon after that infamous day to present, every U.S. president has exercised relatively unrestrained powers to execute what became known as the War on Terror. The U.S. military, in partnership with others, executed the will of the American people and took the fight abroad. Over time, the U.S. national security system, including the FBI, was optimized to hunt down terrorists almost anywhere on Earth. A generation of Americans conducted and endured our longest war, yet we seem less secure even with unprecedented Presidential power and ongoing counterterror operations.
This summer will mark the four-year anniversary of the pullout from Afghanistan, with an ever-strong Taliban regime once again promising sanctuary to terrorists who wish ill on the world. In the intervening years from initiating the war, much water has passed under the bridge, so to speak, yet the world remains a dangerous and unpredictable place. We have normalized permanent military presence across the Middle East to conduct opportunistic strikes to kill terrorists, which has not resulted in enduring security. Current operations are fueled by the inertia of path dependency entrenched over many years while the world evolved into a very different place and so did we. Looking objectively, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force 2001 (AUMF) is “the” sustaining social construction that prevents a necessarily critical relook at our approach to national security and the use of force to achieve political aims abroad.
Strategic Tragic Failures from Operational Success
What we say and importantly how we act in the world matters. Evidence shows that U.S. counterterror actions are often perceived as interventionist and may feed the jihadist narrative today more than two decades ago. In large measure, the persistent and favored use of special operations and remote air power has displaced well-framed, coherent, and transparent policy making, which too often has led to the misuse of military power. There is no doubt that the U.S. has proven itself capable of finding a terrorist anywhere in the world and killing them at a time and place of our choosing. However, thousands of successful tactical strikes have not scaled to strategic success. Stated another way, successful tactics without strategy ignore the ethical reflection needed to inform and achieve enduring policy outcomes. This is not to say we should not pursue efforts to disrupt terror safe havens abroad, rather we should reframe our thinking and align our efforts to maximize national power toward that goal. It also means being clear-eyed about the risks and gains of any given action. With the continuation of the AUMF, the current and subsequent Presidential administrations will prefer seemingly proven methods rather than embarking on novel approaches that have different risk-gain calculus and outcomes.
Although the U.S. military was slow to adapt and eventually found itself capable of non-state war, it now finds itself ill-prepared for large-scale combat or some hybrid derivative. More clearly, the civilian policy makers and senior military leaders have not demonstrated the reflective and critical choices needed to address the diversity of threats today. Using the wrong tool for new problems is not useful. The growth of the security bureaucracy encumbers agility, lethality, and strategic forethought. Operational and tactical success does not fill the gap of poor policy or strategy. The expansive drift from the intent of granted Congressional authority to address emergent challenges we face today and tomorrow lacks efficacy.
Although different in time, geography, and enemy, the counterterror war is similar to the American tragic strategic loss in Vietnam. Winning most battles and, in this instance, killing thousands of terrorists was and is irrelevant to winning wars when there is an incoherent and poorly crafted strategy. The Global War on Terror (GWOT) generation that made immense sacrifices for the nation must not be carried to the next. Both they and the American people deserve a more effective and resource-informed approach to national security. Toward that end, we must start anew to design a new approach to achieving our security at home and our interests abroad. This is a huge undertaking that will require structural change to overcome the path dependency of a large bureaucracy, which has proven itself unable to change itself. Today, there are some signals that the Trump Administration may move in that direction.
Unintended Consequences
A clear-eyed, objective assessment of the past five years of military combat operations will reveal a combination of legacy efforts that are now strategically disconnected from U.S. meandering policy aims. Success in achieving military objectives does not equate to desired outcomes. Defense programming is a “Frankenstein”, the aggregate of competing priorities among many stakeholders in and out of government. What does $800 billion buy us in terms of security? How many Americans or elected representatives have a clear sense of where the U.S. military is conducting operations under AUMF and associated authorities? Our service members are at risk while the average American is unaware. Our service members who courageously answer the call every day would benefit from increased awareness among our citizens and dispassionate debate in Congress about the consequences of our past choices.
One example of an unintended consequences is the 2017 ambush and tragic loss of U.S. personnel in Niger which surprised many members of Congress. The overreliance on outdated authority is a strong constraining and path-dependent force that has unwittingly created a narrow military playbook. Today’s military commanders rely heavily on existing authorities granted before many in uniform were in service. Despite the military’s attempts to achieve objectives, it is not working well. By many measures, we are not safer for adhering to operating models that are often perceived as successful despite the consistent pundit narrative, military posture statements, or Congressional hawks.
The Unthinkable – Repeal the AUMF
It is time to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against September 11 Terrorists (AUMF) and rebalance war powers between branches of government as intended by our founders. This is not to say there should not be a new set of strategic choices and authorizations by Congress. For many in the national security community, repealing the AUMF is unthinkable and thus tends to invoke strong opinions. We all should critically revisit the founding principles of our republic that ensure the American people get a voice about delegated war powers including limitations in scope, scale, and time.
The U.S. has long moved past the killings of Osama Bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Qasem Soleimani, all terrorists who had significant American blood on their hands. Some might argue that the original authority enabled the U.S. to combat terrorists “over there,” and thus prevented an attack on the homeland. There are common and strongly held beliefs on opposing sides of the political aisle to retain the AUMF because it would make us vulnerable – this is a fallacy. There is strong contrary evidence, however, that long-term overseas counterterror, including over-the-horizon strike, has not made us safer. The AUMF is an anchor that narrows perceived choices, creates opportunity costs, and prevents us from meeting emergent challenges.
Renewed Cooperation for National Security
The security environment we face is a dynamic phenomenon characterized by infinite interactions among many actors from the international, regional, national, and local levels. While the U.S. should judiciously use force to address threats, it must also balance those efforts with other elements of national power with a shared purpose. The DoD mission is to defend the U.S., and should do so in ways that conform to the world as it is, not as we wish it were. Repealing the AUMF is the first step to restructure our thinking and realign national security enterprise roles, responsibilities, and resources.
Alternatively, sustaining the status quo supports the argument for more DoD resources. Simply look at the desire by many to use special operations forces to combat drug cartels. What lessons are yet to be learned from our recent experiences? A plausible future is a new cycle of tactical military action without strategic outcomes. As Jennifer Kavanagh and Bryan Frederick wrote in Why Force Fails, every U.S. Administration in the past twenty years has increasingly demonstrated a bias for military intervention. Never in the history of the republic, including the Cold War, has the U.S. military sustained the scope and scale of combat or high-risk military operations as today. The prolonged use of force was never an expectation or intended outcome when granted by Congress.
Change by Design or By Circumstance
The repeal of the AUMF will bring a long overdue rebalancing of influence and relative power among all national security stakeholders and open the door to renewing the pursuit of statecraft informed by new perspectives. To expect a different result, we must first change what and how we think. This major disruptive step will create conditions for crafting new security policy approaches to advance U.S. interests in a time of sharpened competition, increasing episodes of crisis, and looming peer conflict. The landscape comprises multiple threat actors with different interests, ways, and means that require innovative approaches to national security unseen in our history. The American people deserve better from our government the security environment demands new approaches. The strength of our national power is the will of the American people, not just the few who are willing to serve in uniform. We must change by design, or we will be forced to change by circumstances of our own making.
