President Biden Needs to Go to Congress for Authorization on Yemen

The historical parallels are striking. A Democratic president with extensive Senate experience has amassed a formidable record of progressive domestic-policy achievements. But US military involvement and escalation thousands of miles away threatens to alienate his party’s base—and drag down his public approval. Meanwhile, the Republican front-runner in an election year is opportunistically criticizing the incumbent’s approach and attempting to position himself to the left of the president on this issue.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but, as Mark Twain is reputed to have observed, it often rhymes. We can still avoid the kinds of mistakes that marked the fateful 1968 election if we heed the lessons from the wake of Richard Nixon’s disastrous presidency. Fifty years ago, Congress was outraged by the catastrophic war that had spread across Indochina under Nixon’s tenure and by Nixon’s broken promises. In response, Congress took decisive, binding measures to prevent another spiraling conflict by enacting the War Powers Act of 1973.

I am the first member of Congress to succeed in passing a War Powers Resolution (WPR) to actually remove troops from hostilities since then. When I arrived in Congress, appalled by the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing of Yemeni civilians—a humanitarian catastrophe—I introduced a Yemen WPR with Senator Bernie Sanders. It invoked the 1973 law to end our unauthorized involvement in the ongoing Saudi-led war in Yemen. In a historic moment, our nation passed a WPR with broad bipartisan and bicameral support. President Biden explicitly embraced our position during his campaign for president, and we now have a tentative truce in Yemen between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis.

Despite this history, starting last week, we saw Biden launch US strikes against the Houthis in Yemen—the poorest nation in the world—without the approval of Congress. The latest round of US military strikes came in retaliation against the Houthis’ most recent attacks on commercial shipping vessels. The Houthis carried out these attacks in defiance of the previous US air strikes on January 11 intended to dissuade them. So far, these latest air strikes have failed to deter the Houthis, and they may deepen US military involvement in a regional Middle East conflict with serious implications for 2024.

Even Saudi Arabia, which for years conducted an aerial campaign with US support against Yemen’s Houthis and imposed a siege on the country, is now calling for US restraint. American policymakers should take note of how the Houthis only consolidated control over most of the country during the intense, Saudi-led bombardment. As commercial shipping routes in the Red Sea become even more treacherous as a result of intensifying hostilities, and oil prices creep up, we must pursue genuine diplomacy and de-escalation.

President Biden has both the constitutional obligation and a political imperative to seek congressional authorization for proposed hostilities.

Let me be clear: The Houthis are bad actors and their actions against commercial ships are unjustified, illegal, and immoral. They also have engaged in vitriolic threats against both the United States and Israel. But taking unauthorized military action against them is precisely the kind of escalation that the War Powers Resolution sought to prevent, consistent with the intent of the Constitution’s framers. James Madison wrote that “in no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.”

To be sure, the president is afforded the authority under the Constitution and the War Powers Act to repel a sudden Houthi attack on the United States, its territories, possessions, or its armed forces, in the narrow case where self-defense requires immediate action. But in the absence of such a national emergency, the president must seek authorization from Congress.

In this case, the self-defense argument clearly does not hold. Conducted with extensive planning and in coordination with five other countries, the multiple rounds of US air strikes in Yemen are retaliatory strikes for deterrence, not defense. And they clearly aren’t working as a deterrent. We were aware of hostilities for at least a month and the strikes required preparation time to launch. If there was time to work with allies like Australia and the UK, there was time to come to Congress.

Asking Congress for support would be straightforward even in a divided and dysfunctional Congress: An Authorization for the Use of Military Force would be privileged in both chambers, meaning that expedited procedures would be afforded for its full consideration in the House and Senate floors. It would be easier than passing the federal budget and consistent with what the president promised when he ran for office.