The Future of War (IV): What should replace the current authorization of force?

By the Future
of War team, New America Foundation


Best Defense office of the future

A pivot point for serious consideration of some of the issues
discussed so far in this series was provided by President Obama's speech at the National Defense
University in Washington in May, which was designed to lay the political
groundwork to wind down America's longest war: the war that began on 9/11. The
most significant aspect of the speech was the president's case that the
"perpetual wartime footing" and "boundless war on terror"
that has permeated so much of American life since 9/11 should come to an end.
Obama argued that the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict in which
the United States is engaged, saying, "We must define the nature and scope
of this struggle, or else it will define us." This is why the president
focused his speech on a discussion of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of
Military Force (AUMF)
that Congress passed days after 9/11 and that gave George W. Bush the authority
to go to war in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and its Taliban allies.

Few,
if any, in Congress who initially voted for the AUMF understood at the time that
they were voting for a virtual blank check that has provided the legal basis
for more than a decade of war. It is a war that has expanded in recent years to
other countries in the Middle East and Africa, such as Yemen and Somalia.

Some
argue that when U.S. combat troops finally withdraw from Afghanistan in
December 2014, the nation will no longer be at war, and the 2001AUMF should be
repealed -- or be deemed to have effectively expired. Others argue that the end
of the conflict in Afghanistan will not mark the end of U.S. efforts to use
military force against terrorists in other parts of the globe, and that we need
some sort of new AUMF to structure (and constrain) such future uses of force.

But what, if anything, should the United States replace the 2001
AUMF with?  There are a host of
nitty-gritty policy questions we can help address:

Both of the Special Operations raids against al Qaeda members
and allies in Libya and Somalia in early October were conducted under the AUMF.
How does one get congressional buy-in for a new legal framework that might
constrain such raids?




What should the United States do about the 40 or so prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay who are deemed "too dangerous to release," but are not
chargeable with a crime, and who would theoretically have to be released if the
present AUMF expired?




And how exactly would the end of the present AUMF affect the CIA
drone program, which is somewhat dependent on those authorities? 

Although a number of scholars and think tanks are looking at what
should come after the AUMF, much of this work is being done in a conceptual
vacuum. While the "Future of War" project will engage on the AUMF and related
immediate policy questions, our recommendations on these issues will be
grounded in our broader study of how warfare and the state are changing.

The Future of
War project is led by Peter Bergen, director of national security
studies at the New America Foundation, and the author of several books. This series was drafted by him and the
team's other members: Rosa Brooks, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Sascha Meinrath,
and Tom Ricks.