The United States is now a full year into an unauthorized war in Iraq and Syria that many believe is illegal. This is just one part of a broader, global, endless war that Congress demonstrates no interest in evaluating, debating, or restricting. At the same time, the U.S. government’s attempts to anticipate global conflicts and prevent them before they happen have been met with congressional scrutiny and pushback that is overly prohibitive and counterproductive. The disparate treatment of war and peace is glaring, and exposes troubling hypocrisy in the U.S. Congress.
Take the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), for example. The APB is an interagency policy committee housed at the National Security Council, the idea for which came out of a set of bipartisan recommendations in December 2008 put forward by former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. It was launched by the Obama administration in April 2012. Given that it came into existence in the midst of ongoing crises in Syria and South Sudan – conflicts that critics of the APB often reference to, unfairly, denounce the structure – the APB found itself almost immediately under intense scrutiny from Congress.
{mosads}Although a congressional panel in June of this year unanimously passed a provision authorizing the APB, the authorization would sunset on June 30, 2017. This limitation would deny the APB the chance to more fully seep into the relevant portions of the U.S. bureaucracy – including the intelligence community, U.S. Agency for International Development, and Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, State, Justice and Treasury. Institutionalization will be a long process, but it is necessary if the U.S. government truly wants to set up a structure to prioritize prevention. The sunset clause threatens to undermine that process.
Compare this with Congress’ treatment of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). After its frantic passage immediately after September 11, this endless war authorization has endured unchanged for nearly fourteen years. What is arguably the most wide-ranging, limitless grant of executive war power in history has survived two presidential administrations, hundreds of members of Congress, and multiple outbreaks of warfare without a single attempt to review or sunset it. In fact, any efforts to give it a sunset date have been met with intense bipartisan opposition. One must ask – why should peace have an expiration date, when war is allowed to continue indefinitely?
As a practical example, recall the situation in Iraq exactly one year ago. With an ethnic minority known as the Yazidis trapped on Mt. Sinjar and violence raging against civilians, fears abounded about potential large-scale atrocities. Although the APB was used to help catalyze a swift initial response to the threat facing the Yazidis and to ensure prioritization on the prevention of further atrocities, militarism was predictably the first resort. Through the endless authorization for war represented by the 2001 AUMF, the U.S. government initiated airstrikes that have now gone far beyond the original purpose of protecting the Yazidis and will set back the work of peace-building for years to come – likely decades.
One year later, the airstrikes continue and the endless war rages on, with no evidence to suggest that it has been effective. How different might the global security situation be today if the U.S. had prioritized diplomatic and developmental tools to weaken the self-described Islamic State? Even proponents of military intervention must recognize – as many top military leaders have – the important role that long-term investments in diplomacy and development play in helping countries to break out of cycles of conflict. Yet it isn’t just the APB that Congress neglects – tools and resources like the Complex Crises Fund that are essential to carrying out the work of atrocities prevention are consistently underfunded or eliminated. How can that same Congress justify giving the President endless and unchecked approval for war, and pouring funding into a bloated Pentagon? It seems clear that there must be a new approach.
Rather than stamping a restrictive sunset date on the APB, Congress would do well to allow it to flourish and strengthen and to be utilized for its full potential. If they want to sunset an authorization, they should instead turn their attention to the failed endless war propped up by the AUMF. They should then recognize the clear causal connection between these two structures. The reason proponents of the APB push so relentlessly for its continued existence is because of its potential to mitigate the type of violence that seemingly necessitated the AUMF in the first place.
Neville-Morgan is the legislative associate for the prevention of violent conflict at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Beavers is the legislative associate on militarism and civil liberties at the Committee.