Libya

The Post-War on Terror Republican Party

Moammar Ghadafi’s death comes as just the most recent in a string of events putting the lie, conclusively, to the notion that Democrats are too weak, diplomatic, even-tempered, internationalist, or what-have-you to lead the American military. And every day the country survives without a terrorist attack counts as one more blow to the theory that Bush “kept us safe” because of, rather than in spite of, aggressive and quintessentially un-American tactics like torture. To their credit, Republicans seem to get it: throughout the series of increasingly hilarious Republican debates, I don’t think we’ve seen even one direct attack on Obama’s foreign policy from this angle — though it’s probably right to view the Palin/Romney argument that Obama doesn’t see America as an “exceptional” nation as some hybrid, taking the residuum of discredited national security talking points, mixing in a little bit of racism, and finishing it off with a layer of condescension.

Leave it to John Yoo then to explain how Obama is still — post-SEAL Team Six, the “war on pirates,” and the fall of Libya — an internationalist, UN sell-out. If only we’d attacked Libya sooner, and gone with a full-scale invasion, well the whole thing would’ve been over that much quicker!

But Obama does not get full credit, I think, because he took so long to intervene. Recall that the U.S. intervened only after the U.N. Security Council approved intervention. Obama chose to wait until Qaddafi had driven the rebels into a last holdout in Benghazi. He chose to restrain our operations along the lines set out by the Security Council, which forbade ground troops. This prolonged the ouster of Qaddafi into a full-blown civil war and resulted in more disintegration of the nation’s institutions than was necessary. To the extent that it is harder to get a new government to stand up and to collect and control Libya’s arms, part of the blame must also go to Obama’s delay because of his undue sensitivity to foreign opinion and the U.N.

It’s hard to say where Yoo’s faith in the virtue of unilateralism comes from. Certainly not results. Even accounting for the obvious reality that Libya stood in a far different state of affairs than Afghanistan or Iraq — which prevents me from arguing that Libya could’ve served as a template for those conflicts — thanks to Obama, Democrats can claim something that Republicans lack in the modern era: a foreign policy victory. True, Bush’s war toppled Saddam Hussein. But the Iraq War drained the treasury, creating the very deficit that Republicans today whine about; resulted in a new Iraq that America must either continue to prop up, or permit to implode; and its base price is measured in American lives, not missiles. In Libya, America managed to do some good, at a marginal price tag, and despite Republican opposition at every step. Call Libya a small victory, sure; but already, that’s more than Republicans can claim.

The American Concept in Libya

A few months back, The New Yorker attempted to set out a synthesis explaining the President’s foreign policy strategy, as applied to Libya, the “Arab Spring,” and beyond. They concluded that the administration was attempting to “lead from behind” — which David Remnick corrects to “leading from behind the scenes” — by pushing for American interests without leaving American fingerprints on the matter. Notably, this strategy doesn’t spring from a lack of belief in American ideals, or even a hesitancy to apply direct power when needed. It follows from an acknowledgment that some sectors of the world may bristle at American involvement, even while embracing American values. So we act indirectly. Like Bender’s God (YouTube), “when you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”

This is good strategy — if it’s strategy at all — but it’s one for which we remain rhetorically unprepared. For the left’s part, we’re too ashamed of fighting this new war in the first place to take pride in the fact that it’s being done well. And for the right, any intervention conducted without military fanfare, celebrations on carrier hanger decks, and premature proclamations of victory approximates a betrayal “American exceptionalism,” a surrender to a post-American age, or a decision to vacate the world stage.

Let’s stop and recognize what’s being done, and why. The “war on terror” brings us into conflict with a sector of the world where, for whatever reason, we find ourselves less able to effect real change than we have been in previous conflicts. This phenomenon needn’t be explained by reference to overwrought hand-wringing and existential doubt about “American decline” — it’s just a different challenge, and one that can’t be addressed by the talents we’ve developed in waging (and winning) prior wars. We cannot, for example, rely on European allies to provide bases, intelligence, and support — and we’ve simply never tried to create an ally, much less from such foreign materials.

Considering the circumstances, we shouldn’t be ashamed of approaching a new problem with a new solution. The invention here is realizing that “American exceptionalism” — the American concept — isn’t a means, and so has nothing to do with warfare. It’s an end, and has everything to do with trading authoritarianism for self-determination. This strategy of “leading from behind the scenes,” and with modesty where the situation demands it, is leadership still, and a triumphant vindication of American exceptionalism from a President who cares more about results than swagger. It’s about time.

Stuxnet: a Hypothetical on the Changing Face of Unilateral War Power Problem

On this site, we’ve spent a fair bit of time arguing about whether the current military action in Libya was “authorized” (no), whether it therefore becomes unconstitutional (no), and whether it should be unconstitutional (maybe). Here’s a variant on the theme. Can the President order a cyber attack on a foreign power, despite the absence of a declared war, which results in property damage and could result in the loss of life, without consulting Congress? Does it matter if the attack must remain absolutely secret to succeed? And does it matter if, should the attack be traced to the United States, it could result in an all-out shooting war?

Admittedly, this doesn’t fall easily within the traditional definition of a “war.” But neither do targeted missile strikes. Some background first.

The facts

Really, you should read the linked article (and other takes on the same). But for your convenience, Stuxnet was an extremely sophisticated computer virus, released late in the last decade, indisputably designed to target centrifuges at Iranian nuclear facilities and to wear them out at an accelerated rate, thereby delaying Iran’s development of a nuclear warhead. The nature of the facilities targeted, and the virus’ method of transmission, mean that the virus must have been introduced by hand into the facility. And, further, it must have been designed based on extremely high-level information. The coders had to know, for example, the software used by the centrifuge control computers, the number of centrifuges, their operating frequency, and more. Suffice it to say, the developers required (and obtained) a level of information that could only have been gathered two means: (1) insider knowledge, or (2) concerted and successful espionage.

On this basis, and some other clues, we suspect (but nobody knows) that either the United States, Israel, or both developed Stuxnet, and deployed it with the goal of dealing an untraceable but severe tactical blow to Iran’s nuclear program. We also don’t know how well the program succeeded. So to get to an interesting hypothetical, we have to make some things up.

The assumptions

For the purposes of the below, let’s make four assumptions. First, assume that the United States deployed Stuxnet. Second, assume that the property damage was severe, even irreparable. Third, assume that, since we are talking about nuclear physics, the potential for loss of life was present, if not severe. Even if Stuxnet clearly doesn’t check that third box, it proves we’re not far from a world where a virus could do just that. Fourth, assume a nontrivial (but still small) risk of Iran tracing the virus back to the United States.

To summarize: on the assumed facts, for this hypothetical Stuxnet represents the targeted, state-sponsored neutralization of physical military assets under the control of a foreign power.

The morality

On these facts, I think using the virus to forestall the threat of a nuclear Iran, and the consequences that would entail, is not only a moral act, but an imperative. Even at the risk of explosions and possible death, neutralizing a real threat the national security of America and her allies, posed by an implacable foe, without any initial risk to American lives, is a net good by my conception of statesmanship.  Although it risks war, Iran would not (and could not) fight on just this provocation. So, it’s essentially a costless tactical strike.

The law

As I see it, such strikes, even without express or implied Congressional approval, are not just moral, but fall squarely within the President’s commander-in-chief power. Stuxnet’s deployment clearly doesn’t qualify as anything near to a “war,” and the need for both secrecy and immediacy implicates the Federalist concern for the Executive’s “Energy.” Like Libya, no American lives are immediately risked, so the War Powers Act does not plausibly apply. And, this is the type of project we’ve typically relegated to the role of espionage. Bullets have long been traded between American and foreign agents without a declaration of war, and only on the Executive Branch’s say-so. Because Stuxnet is closer to espionage than an actual war, it’s not the type of event that even raises a War Powers Resolution issue.

The problem

But why? Notice how outdated the significant criteria listed above start to sound. We’re coming close to the day when a full, all-out “war” could be started and won inside of a day, and all electronically. Presumably a series of Stuxnet-type viruses could, triggered at once, decimate an undeclared enemy nation’s power grid. On my analysis — unless scale or likely result somehow matter to the legal analysis — the President could take that action, which would actually commit us to a war, on his own. Shouldn’t that be problematic?

Notice, too, that the President’s power to deploy a Stuxnet-type weapon feels like an easier case than Libya, and an easier case, even, than deploying Predator drones. Again — why? How different from Libya is a theoretical state-sponsored Stuxnet attack, anyways? Is it the actual death of enemy combatants in Libya that changes the character of the conflict? Or is it that missile launches look more like a traditional “war” than computer attacks? Here, too, these distinctions are decreasingly meaningful in a world where we can theoretically cripple foreign military assets without ground invasion and, now, without ever even firing a shot.

The face of warfare has changed. To a lot of us, Libya feels like a real constitutional problem; but if Stuxnet-type viruses see widespread adoption as weapons of war, the problem is going to get much worse before it gets better. To head off the developing difficulty, we should start to design a model for limiting unilateral warfare based on those values that actually matter to us. For me, at least, that means focusing on two factors: (1) the loss of American lives and, (2) the risk of large-scale geopolitical commitment.

I don’t think we can read values like this into the constitution, unless we acknowledge the the constitutional commitment of the “war” power to the legislature works only so long as “war,” as it’s commonly known, is a perfect proxy for the kind of international conflicts we want to all agree upon before starting. But I don’t think that assumption holds water anymore. What can we do about that?

Picking a Better Framework for Starting (and Maintaining) Wars

A while back, I argued that because the War Powers Resolution doesn’t treat anything less than a ground war as a war, Obama’s handling of Libya is, whatever else it may be, constitutional. I still think that’s true: the legislative history plainly contemplates restricting only the President’s right to start a ground war, and the text of the statute speaks in terms of American “forces.” A missile isn’t a “force”; so this isn’t legally a “war.”

This reading of the WPR doesn’t mean that Libya isn’t a “war” within the common parlance, or that a missile strike on American soil wouldn’t be the start of a “war.” It just means that, for the purposes of the statute, “war” becomes a term of art with a specific legal meaning.

Reading the WPR in this limited way might make it an artifact of its time. The kind of power-projection we undertake today, and the strategy implicated in Libya, is of a decidedly post-Cold War vintage. In the Cold War, we worried about limiting the use of nuclear weapons (which is provided for separately), and the unilateral commencement of a ground war (covered by the WPR). Missile- and drone-strikes on non-state actors, or for the purposes of disrupting the same, are new inventions, unique to the war on terror; plainly not something the drafters of the WPR would have considered important; and so, remain unregulated.

Maybe that’s not the way it should be. Unilateral missile- and drone-strikes are quite capable of starting an all-out war, ultimately requiring the commitment of ground forces, and endangering American lives. That fear isn’t present in Libya, so “as-applied,” this limitation to the WPR makes sense. But if Congress’ goal was to restrain the President’s ability to start, on his own say-so, an all-out shooting war, it doesn’t follow that the President can order strikes on any target, on his own authority. The WPR should, if it is to have any meaning, prevent the President from ordering missile strikes on France, say, or Russia, as both countries could (and would) retaliate, leading to an all-out war that couldn’t help but endanger American lives.

What the WPR should do, then, is to speak in terms of probabilities. It already does, to a certain extent. As written, the resolution asks the President to submit to report & review where “United States Armed Forces are introduced”  ”into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” 33 U.S.C. § 1543(a)(1). To close the enforcement gap, all that’s needed is a little more generality. The WPR should regulate situations where “United States military power is expended” in furtherance of “hostilities, or in situations where involvement in hostilities is a natural, intended, or probable result.”

But as of now, it doesn’t, meaning President Obama’s actions remain on the level. Technically.

The “Bush-Obama” View of Warfare

Joe Scarborough rightly tags a particularly absurd nascent media narrative: that the GOP’s opposition to President Obama’s Libya intervention constitutes “isolationism.” It doesn’t. First, to ascribe a particular ideological label to the Republican Party’s position here posits an actual, unitary, coherent worldview. Maybe that’s a reasonable assumption with other major political actors, but the Republican Party’s only worldview since 2008 has been opportunism. Functionaries perceive Obama as vulnerable on Libya, so they attack. There’s nothing more behind it, and certainly no principles in play.

Second, Joe is right that there’s substantial daylight between a principled opposition to the Libya intervention, and isolationism. But his description of a unitary “Bush-Obama style of warfare” demonstrates an unwillingness to apply that same scrutiny elsewhere. It should go without saying that beginning a small-scale intervention, without troop commitment and acting only with true international support, is distinct from the unilateral commencement of an all-out ground war (though we shouldn’t “forget Poland“). The two Presidents’ goals are similar: the reshaping of a region into something more favorable to American interests. But the difference between the means employed to that end speaks to a vast difference between the two men — one obvious anytime you look at the price tag of Bush’s adventure, both in lives and in dollars.

Libya proves that Obama shares with Bush a certain willingness to fight and, at an abstract level, comfort with deploying military force to protect American interests. But I don’t believe it speaks to any other similarity whatsoever. Not all military actions are created equal.

Are We At War?

Several House members — including America’s nonviolent Tom Zarek, Dennis Kucinich — will sue President Obama, to enjoin the ongoing fighting in Libya.

I hope I don’t have to tell you that this is going nowhere. The form of the law almost doesn’t matter, because the Court will simply punt based on the political question doctrine, or something similar. (They’ve done it before, when the ACLU attempted to enjoin the bombing of Cambodia.) And, if you think a federal court is actually going to stop a war, you’re crazy. They have, but they’ve always been reversed.

To the extent the law does matter, the War Powers Act necessarily poses a conflict between the Congress’ ability to “declare war,” Art. I, § 8, and the President’s commander-in-chief powers. But Congress’ war power is not implicated in this case, because what’s happening in Libya is not a “war” by any stretch of the imagination. Whether at the Founding or today, by “war” we have always meant a declared action, not an expenditure of military resources that, by virtue of the advance of technology, does not even implicate American lives. As the White House put it, “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.”

No-one has ever suggested that the President must seek Congressional approval to engage the American military, but not American lives. The WPA’s legislative history even speaks in terms of boots-on-the-ground — not resources, generally. Per H. Rept. 93-287, the reporting and ratification requirement applies “where there is reasonable expectation that American military personnel will be subject to hostile fire.”

Executive restraint is clearly a cause-of-the-moment for the right; it’s not something they actually care about, or actually exercise, when given the chance. Unsurprising, then, that they’re wrong here too.

Towards an “Obama Doctrine”: the Efficient Hegemon

I’ve recently acquired a decent respect for Joe Scarborough. He seems, to a certain extent, to defy easy labeling as another mouth of the hydra-headed, but uniformly extreme, Republican Party (e.g.). But that respect has its limits.

In a Politico op-ed, Scarborough asks where the liberal outrage is over Libya — he apparently reads neither the influential Greenwald, nor the indignant Sullivan — and wonders how we can morally justify the Libya intervention, but not the Iraq War.

While one can make the moral argument that countries can be attacked strictly on humanitarian grounds, that argument is laughable when it comes to Libya.

How can the left call for the ouster of Muammar Qadhafi for the sin of killing hundreds of Libyans when it opposed the war waged against Saddam Hussein? During Saddam’s two decades in Iraq, he killed more Muslims than anyone in history and used chemical weapons against his own people and neighboring states. [. . .]

If Obama and his liberal supporters believed Qadhafi’s actions morally justified the Libyan invasion, why did they sit silently by for 20 years while Saddam killed hundreds of thousands?

The article pays lip service to the painfully obvious distinction — as a military action, the Libya expedition is both fundamentally different from, and substantially smaller than Iraq — but doesn’t follow the logic to its conclusion. The decision of when to use military force for humanitarian reasons depends on two very different values: what we’d like to do, and what we can do. Scarborough’s point about liberal hypocrisy only materializes if we equate the two values. That methodology of conflict would partially explain the rush to war in Iraq, but it’s an odd way to plan foreign policy. In fact, it’s cheating: the political science equivalent of assuming a frictionless vacuum. To make an equally absurd point, why did Bush invade Iraq in 2003, when he could have “just as easily” invaded China and installed an American proconsul in Hu Jintao’s place, wiping out the national debt in the process?!?

Especially in war and foreign policy, moral calculus matters. To that point, it’s material to note that the price tag on the Libya expedition comes in, so far, at just 0.07757404% of the staggering bill for Operation Iraqi Freedom. And that’s using the conservative, February estimate, valuing the Iraq War at just $709 billion. That took math: comparing the cost in American lives is a considerably easier task. For any value of “x,” 0 is precisely 0% of x.

Asking what wars an invincible, fully paid-for military would fight is just a distraction. What Scarborough should ask is, is the President doing the best work possible with the military resources available to us? That’s a tough call. But at least it’s a useful question.

Neocon Support for Libya Bespeaks Caution: Clarifying War Powers

It’s charming to see ultra-conservative Mark Levin rush to Obama’s defense, against charges that the war in Libya was started illegally. And equally satisfying to see him get the justification so very wrong. Says Mark Levin, declarations of war are mere formalities, which can be dispensed with unless (and until) you need money to run the war:

When members of Congress vote to fund [non-defensive military action], they are giving their formal, official consent to the operations.  More than voting to declare war, they are actually voting to fund war — all kinds of war.  [. . .]  The declarations were not used as constitutional requisites for war, but to rally the nation and assert our resolve.  But once Congress has funded a military operation, and it funds virtually all of them, it is undoubtedly helping to make war for without the funds there can be no war.

This is a bridge too far, and makes a nullity of the textual requirement that Congress, and only Congress, can “declare” war. We’re presented with two textual commands on the subject of war. First, the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. This is a dead letter unless the President can turn on a dime without congressional say-so, to protect the United States or seize an important military opportunity. Second, we’re told that Congress alone can declare war. This affirmative grant of exclusive authority cannot reduce to nothing more than a restatement of Congress’ power to allocate funds. Neither courts nor commentators ever adopt a view of the Constitution that renders important language redundant.

Any meaningful analysis of the President’s war powers must be a synthesis of the two. I (and most reasonable persons) combine the two provisions to conclude that the President can engage in short-term military action, or deploy forces without starting a shooting war, but the President needs Congress’ permission to bring the nation into an extended actual conflict.  History supports this view: World War II was declared (Levin’s handwaving notwithstanding), and so was the “war on terror.” But the Cold War was not. Nor was Jefferson’s Tripoli action.

The Obama Administration has adopted the sensible middle ground on war powers, nothing more. We shouldn’t flip out; our enemies shouldn’t rejoice; and we should note that, yet again, the President has proved to the American people that he is neither the ideologue nor the weakling his opponents believe him to be.

Presidential Character Arcs: Executive Power

The National Review joins publications on both sides of the aisle nailing President Obama for breaking his promise to avoid undeclared, unilateral wars.

Two problems. First, on the indicated text, candidate Obama made no such promise. Nor would it have been responsible for him to do so. Second, query whether a promise to avoid undeclared, unilateral war is broken by engaging in an undeclared, multilateral enforcement action undertaken with the United Nations’ blessing, and essentially at its request. We liberals should be happy for the following: Obama’s decision to wait for an international consensus partially ratifies our response to the Iraq War. If you make a good faith effort to secure that consensus, sometimes you get it. If you don’t make the effort, well, maybe it’s because you know you don’t deserve it.

Separately, to the extent that the President’s opinions on the use of force have changed, well, shouldn’t we expect them to? It’s a general theme of this presidency, and most presidencies, that the job differs from even your reasonable expectations. Obama walked into the Office to close Guantanamo; but on finding himself bound by Bush’s blood-soaked handcuffs, stayed his hand. He walked into the Office to give Americans the option of a government-run healthcare plan; but a staggering and coordinated overreaction, backed by misinformation the likes of which I’ve never seen, prevented the same. He walked into the Office to avoid committing American arms without Congress’ informed say-so; but, well, it’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?

We should expect our Presidents to learn. Because when they don’t, and walk out of the Office again without having learned a damn thing and without believing themselves to have made a single mistake, we will have suffered for that lack of critical thought. I was under the impression we elected a man we could trust to make informed judgment calls (with some mild preference for “liberal” outcomes), rather than a partisan hack, like the man he replaced. Didn’t we?

As usual, The West Wing handles the problem elegantly. No-one expects war to be what it is.

War Powers

I’m baffled by a conservatism that proudly proclaims the righteousness of Bush’s war of impulse, yet denounces the current Libya adventure as “illegal.” Granted, the Iraq War was duly authorized — albeit on knowingly incomplete information, recklessly relied on — but this is the conservative movement that trumpeted Congress’ 9/11 authorization of the use of military force (AUMF) as sufficient to cover (1) torture, (2) indefinite detention, (3) domestic wiretapping, (4) congressional blacksites, and even (5) the Iraq War itself, making the separate congressional vote essentially a box-checking exercise. Truly, if you’re not disgusted by the empty and ad hoc nature of modern Republicans — to wit, “we’re for what they’re against, and nothing else” — you’re not paying attention.

It is a separate question altogether of whether Obama should have sought broader consultation before committing American firepower, if not American troops, to depose a dictator; and whether he’s broken a campaign promise. Regardless of the same, left and right ought to be able to agree on the following, and apply it equally to a conflict entered into by either “side”:

This sort of exercise, committing American arms but not American lives, is exactly the sort of thing the Constitution’s drafters had in mind when they crafted the Presidency. The President can and must respond with “energy” to protect American interests. Democracy in an otherwise hostile region is one such interest, as our honourable friends opposite would surely tell you, were the man behind the Resolute Desk not a Democrat.

Neither established law, nor history are to the contrary. The War Powers Act specifically authorizes the executive to conduct limited war without Congress’ involvement. Granted, the Act’s constitutionality is not entirely clear. I for one rather expect that we meant what we said, when we committed the power to declare war specifically to the Congress. But nor is this a war as Jefferson would’ve understood it. There are no boots on the ground, nor will there be any. Instead, missiles and planes represent precisely the kind of quick-strike force that the President has always had at his disposal, except here, the risk of lost American lives is even smaller than the one that Jefferson unilaterally undertook when attacking Tripoli. And although the President has greatly increased the chance of a shooting war, this is a risk that we entrust to him and his cabinet on a daily basis. What else is foreign policy?

Reactions on left and right demonstrate two things, respectively: the right will never trust this President, and the left will never fully trust presidential power (even when exercised pursuant to a United Nations resolution, diplomacy’s get-out-of-jail-free card). Both need to get over it.

Update: the National Review, per knee-jerk Ramesh Ponnuru, joins the Washington Times in calling the firing of some missiles unconstitutional.