By Alison Broinowski
In a rare display of Congressional bipartisanship, Republicans and Democrats on 9 September voted to amend the War Powers legislation under which United States presidents have sent forces to the Middle East from 1991 to the present day.
Since the Vietnam War, when the War Powers Act of 1973 was passed, the United States Congress has progressively lost its power to reject wars requested by presidents. The US military budget has now reached $849.8 billion for 2025. Congressional restraint has also withered over Authorisations for Use of Military Force (AUMF), some of which have remained in place for three decades.
After the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, George W. Bush’s endless ‘war on terror’ began with the US invasion of Afghanistan. Congress in 2002 authorised the President to ‘defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq’, which he did by invading Saddam Hussein’s capital in 2003. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives later supported repeal of the AUMF for the Iraq War, but laws to give effect to it were not passed.
AUMFs enable presidents to bypass the Congress, which is handy for US presidents waging continuous war, on terror or whatever. The 2002 AUMF for the Middle East was used by President Barack Obama to justify airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014. President Donald Trump used it in his first term to kill Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike. President Joe Biden was pressed to revise the war powers and rescind AUMFs whose use-by date had passed, but he claimed to need them both in case the US was threatened in the future. President Trump, using AUMF, has gone on attacking Yemen and Iran.
While Russia attacks Ukraine and now Poland, and Israel demolishes Palestine, neither threatens to attack the United States. Americans’ weariness with these wars is now being expressed through its Congress-people. September’s move to amend the War Powers has gained the greatest support in years, passing with 261 votes to 167. It reflects concern in both parties about the huge costs and minimal benefits of US presidents’ forever wars.
But hopes for reform of the War Powers have been dashed before, and negotiations between the House and Senate continue on a compromise defense policy bill in which war powers is a small, though not minor, inclusion.
At least the US is considering such legislation. In Britain the Lords have proposed to legislate the convention that a proposal for war should be voted on by the Commons, but without success. Many other non-Commonwealth and non-aligned countries have inserted war powers conditions in their constitutions and laws. Reform for Australia has been advocated for years by Independents, Greens, Labor national conferences, and by AWPR, but after a long-promised inquiry ALP ministers in 2023 opted for the ‘status quo’. That means the Executive Government retains the power to decide to send Australia and Australians to war without a vote in the Parliament, let alone public consultation.
The US may set Australia an example, and not just on war powers reform: by rejecting AUKUS too. The current inquiry by Elbridge Colby may even recommend that. Whether it does or not, Australia needs such an inquiry too. If the US doesn’t abandon AUKUS and its current military buildup on Australian territory, our next war could be launched by the US from Australia, without impediment from our government. It could be against China, on which our economy depends.
A satrap nation is one that relies upon its great ally to make decisions that it will not. Rejecting AUKUS after our own independent inquiry, and reforming the war powers, may provide us with two areas where we can find common ground with the US Congress.
