U.S. Foreign Policy: Back to the Water's Edge by Donald M. Snow & Donald M. Snow & Patrick J. Haney & Patrick J. Haney

Author:Donald M. Snow & Donald M. Snow & Patrick J. Haney & Patrick J. Haney [Snow, Donald M.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781442268180
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2017-08-02T04:00:00+00:00

The War Powers Act

Congress was determined to construct a piece of procedural legislation that would help prevent future wars that drag on forever (Vietnam) as well as secret wars about which Congress is not informed (Cambodia). The resulting War Powers Act (WPA) was passed in 1973 over the veto of President Nixon; every president since has opposed the WPA to some degree, seeing it as an unconstitutional infringement on the powers of the presidency. Compliance with the requirements of the act has been, at best, imperfect—leading many to see the WPA as a failure; some point to some hidden successes of the act, however.

The WPA has three key provisions that specify when the president must consult with Congress, when he must report to Congress, and when he must terminate hostilities and withdraw U.S. armed forces. Much of the WPA is relatively noncontroversial, but the components that deal with introducing forces into hostilities are quite contentious.

The first WPA requirement is that the president consult with Congress before committing armed forces “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” Although the section’s intent is clear, translating that intention into executive conduct presents several problems. It is not entirely clear what presidents would have to do to satisfy the requirement to “consult with Congress.” Do they need to acquire congressional approval before acting? The WPA does not seem to go quite that far, but it does suggest a good bit more than mere presidential notification of impending moves. If the precise meaning of consultation is not entirely clear, neither is the precise identity of with whom the president must consult. The WPA does not stipulate who and how many members of Congress must be consulted to fulfill the spirit of the act. Finally, as the resolution’s language concedes, the president must consult with Congress “in every possible instance,” implying that in some instances prior consultations are exempted as impractical. For example, at the time of the Mayaguez incident in 1975, four key congressional leaders were in Greece, four others were in China, and others were scattered in their states and districts. With whom did President Ford have to consult in that case?

The resolution’s second key provision obligates the president to report to Congress within forty-eight hours anytime U.S. armed forces are dispatched (1) “into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances”; (2) into foreign territory while “equipped for combat”; or (3) “in numbers which substantially enlarge United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation.” Between these two provisions, the WPA should serve to prevent future wars from being kept secret from Congress and help protect Congress’s constitutional powers in a new era of undeclared wars.

The third and final key provision of the WPA deals with the termination of hostilities and the withdrawal of forces. The drafters of the War Powers Act were determined to prevent prolonged conflicts such as Vietnam in the future, so they rewrote the ground rules so that any protracted hostilities involving U.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.