UN Wars, US War Powers

Pressure on traditional notions of US sovereignty are nowhere clearer than in the area of national security. In a number of areas, such as arms control, the Clinton administration has sought to achieve US foreign policy goals through multilateral international institutions. Pursuing national security through international organizations confers certain advantages for US policymakers, such as allowing the United States to act under the aegis of multilateralism, which submerges the prominence of US national interests and allows for the use of collective military resources. Acting through such alliances, however, raises policy and constitutional difficulties that pose problems for US notions of democratic accountability and the separation of powers. This paper will address these issues by describing the impact of multilateral interventions, such as those in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Haiti, upon the US system of war powers. In none of these cases did the Clinton administration receive congressional authorization for the use of force abroad. While the administration has failed to issue a defense of the legality of the Kosovo intervention, President Clinton has claimed that he enjoys the constitutional authority under the commander-in-chief clause to use force without congressional consent Further, the President has justified these military interventions more often on the need to uphold our obligations to the United Nations ("UN") or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ("NATO"), than upon congressional approval. While he has often signaled that he would welcome congressional support, he also has made clear that he would implement his military plans without it. President Clinton has refused to acknowledge that the War Powers Resolution ("WPR") restricts his discretion. In fact, the Clinton administration's use of the military in these long-term interventions has rendered the WPR a dead letter. I. In recent decades, no President has used force abroad as much as President Clinton. In March 1999, President Clinton ordered 31,000 US servicemen and women to engage in air operations against Serbia, the largest and most powerful province of the former Yugoslavia, to prevent the "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians living in Kosovo. As part of an operation sponsored by NATO, 7,000 US ground troops then entered Kosovo on June 10, 1999, after NATO bombing had forced Serbia to withdraw its forces. It is unclear when they will be withdrawn, as NATO's goals include not just ending war but building a new nation in Kosovo. President Clinton never received congressional authorization for the use of force in Kosovo or Serbia, nor did Congress declare war. US troops engaged in hostilities well past the sixty-day time limit imposed by the WPR. US intervention was triggered by events in the spring of 1999.3 In early March, Serbian military forces began a broad offensive aimed at driving the Albanian population out of the province. On March 23, after the Clinton administration's efforts at negotiation had failed, the Senate passed a concurrent resolution authorizing the President to "conduct military air operations and missile strikes in cooperation with our NATO allies against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)."4 On March 24, US warplanes, in conjunction with other NATO forces, began attacking Serbian forces in Kosovo. In a nationally televised address, President Clinton argued that air strikes were necessary to protect innocent Albanians, to prevent the conflict from spreading to the rest of Europe, and to act with our European allies in maintaining peace.5 President Clinton declared that the military's mission would be "to demonstrate NATO's seriousness of purpose," to "deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo," and "to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo."6 When air strikes did not convince Serbia to withdraw its forces, NATO air and missile operations expanded beyond Serbian military units in Kosovo to military, strategic, and civilian targets within Serbia itself, such as air defense, electrical, communications, and government facilities. …