AUMF mirage: Republicans still hawkish on war powers despite support for repeal
David Sivak
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Republicans, by and large, remain in favor of giving the president sweeping authority to use military force abroad despite a groundswell of GOP support for the repeal of two decades-old war authorizations.
The Senate will vote as soon as Wednesday on a bill to revoke the authorizations for use of military force, or AUMFs, that preceded the Persian Gulf and Iraq wars. Eighteen Senate Republicans joined Democrats on Monday to advance the measure, signaling Washington is ready to close the book formally on conflicts that ended multiple administrations ago.
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Yet debate surrounding the vote suggests there is little appetite in the Republican Party to take more than symbolic action to rein in the president’s war powers as the United States battles Iranian proxies in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere.
All but a handful of Republicans want to preserve that authority, with two-thirds of GOP senators voting last week for an amendment offered by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that would have replaced the 2002 Iraq War AUMF with language explicitly authorizing the president to target Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
A competing amendment by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to take repeal a step further and revoke the 2001 AUMF that launched the global war on terror only attracted four Republican votes. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), one of Paul’s GOP allies on foreign policy, did slightly better with an amendment to sunset all future war authorizations every two years, but the senator only managed to attract support from 12 Republicans, or a quarter of the GOP conference.
The amendments, each of which failed amid Democratic opposition, signal that the GOP has not shifted far from its foreign policy orthodoxy despite the emergence of a small but growing crop of Republican skeptics of military intervention inspired by the “America First” policy agenda of former President Donald Trump.
The rift that has developed within the GOP centers more on the message the repeal sends abroad than the substance of the bill itself.
The president would still have the authority to target Iran-backed militias in the Middle East without the AUMFs, both backers and opponents of the bill say, pointing to the Article II authority granted in the Constitution, as well as the War Powers Act.
President Joe Biden used that Article II authority to order airstrikes in Syria after a militia group killed an American contractor and wounded five service members in an attack last week.
Yet repeal sends a message of defeat to America’s adversaries abroad, defense hawks say, at a time when Iranian aggression must be checked in the region.
“We’ve created a narrative that we’re pulling the plug on Iraq,” Graham told the Washington Examiner. “The Iraqis are confused, and ISIS is emboldened. And you see what happened in Syria? You think it’s an accident?”
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a vocal defense hawk who has been absent from the Senate due to injuries he sustained in a fall earlier this month, issued a scathing statement on Tuesday voicing his opposition to “sunsetting” any war authorizations.
“Our terrorist enemies aren’t sunsetting their war against us. And when we deploy our servicemembers in harm’s way, we need to supply them with all the support and legal authorities that we can,” he said.
Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), the bill’s lead GOP sponsor in the Senate, took the opposite view, arguing the attack in Syria only underscores the need for repeal as the U.S. attempts to build a strong relationship with Iraq, a country that has traditionally served as a counterbalance to Iranian aggression.
He disputed the notion that voting against repeal takes a harder line on Iran.
“This is the hawkish vote, to support this,” Young told the Washington Examiner. “It demonstrates solidarity with the Iraqis and can serve as a form of deterrence at a time when you have Iran propagandizing about the existence of this AUMF: ‘Hey, these guys still want to go to war with you. They have it on the books.’ So, we’ll take that off the table.”
Defense hawks have nonetheless expressed misgivings that repeal would either harm the president’s ability to deter Iran or imply that the president no longer has the authority to launch attacks in Iraq.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) worries that presidents will fail to act without an authorization in place, he told the Washington Examiner. “They’ll argue they don’t have the authority to do it.”
The senator offered an amendment last week that would have halted the repeal until the administration certifies that Iran is no longer providing financial and material support to its proxies in the region, in effect killing its implementation.
Though the amendment failed, it attracted 30 GOP votes in the upper chamber. The Senate is voting on six more amendments on Tuesday ahead of final passage, three of which deal directly with Iran.
Among them is an amendment by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, clarifying that the 2002 Iraq War AUMF “is not independently required” for the president to target Iran’s proxies.
Meanwhile, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants the director of national intelligence to certify that repeal would not “degrade” the U.S.’s ability to deter Iranian aggression. Like the Cruz amendment, Sullivan’s would state that the president retains the authority to target Iranian proxies despite the AUMF repeal.
None of the GOP amendments are expected to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass, though Sullivan hinted to reporters that his amendment could attract significant support when it comes up for a vote on Tuesday.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), the lead Democratic sponsor on the bill, told reporters on Monday that while he views the Sullivan amendment as unnecessary, he does not consider it to be a “poison pill” like some of the other GOP amendments.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) indicated the vote on final passage would occur as soon as Wednesday, at which point it will head over to the House for consideration. Although Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said earlier this month that the bill stands a “good chance” of getting a floor vote, it must first clear the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The legislation has the support of McCarthy, as well as Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, both of whom voted against repeal just two years ago.
Kaine believes the bill will survive in Foreign Affairs even though the chairman, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), is “not 100% for it.” Should the bill make it to Biden’s desk, the president has indicated he would sign it into law.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), part of the insurgent crop of GOP lawmakers opposed to intervention abroad, said that despite most GOP senators opposing the AUMF repeal, the amount of GOP support it is expected to attract in the Senate is encouraging.
“The question is, what would the vote have been 10 years ago, and what is it today?” he told the Washington Examiner.
Vance cited the growing skepticism of Ukraine aid, which extends all the way up to McCarthy in the House, as part of a broader shift within the party.
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The next test of that shift will occur Tuesday evening when the Senate votes on a final amendment, introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), that would establish an inspector general to oversee the more than $100 billion in Ukraine aid that has been committed over the last year.
“I think the fact that you have a lot of Republicans who are very skeptical of continuing to provide a blank check here I think is a good sign,” Vance said.