Home > Videos | 🏛️🇺🇸📖 Heather Cox Richardson

🗣️🇺🇸🤝 A Conversation with Representative Jim Himes | American Conversations

🤖 AI Summary

• 📜 The Constitution unambiguously vests the power to declare war in Congress, creating a natural tension with the president’s role as commander-in-chief.
• ⚖️ The 1973 War Powers Act requires the president to stop military action after 60 days unless Congress authorizes it; since the 1990s, Congress has been increasingly comfortable with presidents exercising authorities that are not constitutional.
• 💥 The Trump administration is using military authorities against civilians for the first time ever, which is a radical leap from the gradual erosion of congressional war powers.
• 🚢 The administration moved a significant portion of the Navy’s combat power into the Caribbean but insists the mission against the cartels is not a war, classifying it as a law enforcement context.
• 🤫 The legal basis rests on the administration’s argument that we are in a Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC), but the crucial Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion providing this justification remains secret.
• 🙅 The fundamental factual error is equating drug cartels with groups like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, overlooking that drug dealers prefer less violence to avoid attention and arrest.
• 💰 Cartels are a disgusting and horrible business run by civilians selling a product Americans buy, lacking the quasi military structure and political or strategic aims of terror organizations.
• 🇻🇪 Another entirely specious argument supporting the action is the claim that cartels are supporting the government of Venezuela, suggesting a deep-seated connection that is not clearly accurate.
• 🎣 The practical outcome is killing low-level people at the bottom of the food chain using massive US firepower, only resulting in the movement of cocaine flow to aviation and terrestrial routes.
• 🎭 This is purely performative stuff so the president can declare success in killing bad people; law enforcement should always be used to take care of these small players.
• 🚫 The Trump administration has neglected to advise Congress, failing to provide a single briefing on the intelligence being used to undertake the strikes.
• 💔 Key allies, including the UK and Colombia, effectively withdrew cooperation, saying they were “out” as long as the US pursued these counterproductive Caribbean strikes.
• ⚓ This action torpedoed our most valuable counter narcotics partnership with Colombia, which will have profound negative implications for future drug interdiction efforts.
• 🗺️ This policy signals a worrying move toward 19th-century imperialism and the old-school Monroe Doctrine, which is poorly received throughout Latin America.
• 🤝 Trump’s worldview is driven by power, respecting only major players like Russia and China, while dismissing other nations; the US needs to rebuild robust alliances to counter rising global powers.

🤔 Evaluation

• ⚖️ The speaker claims the use of military force against cartels under a Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC) is an unprecedented legal leap. 📄 Legal analyses by the Congressional Research Service confirm that the executive branch has consistently sought to expand its unilateral war-making authority since 1973. 💡 Furthermore, the Council on Foreign Relations criticized the administration’s specific application of NIAC to drug cartels as a dangerous conceptual stretch, arguing that it confuses counter-terrorism with traditional law enforcement.
• 🤝 Himes asserts that key allies, including Colombia, halted intelligence sharing due to the controversial military strikes. 📰 Contemporary reports from The New York Times confirmed a sharp decline in counter-narcotics cooperation and rising diplomatic friction with Latin American partners during the period of these operations, substantiating the claim of a torpedoed alliance.
• 💰 The speaker argues that cartels are a disgusting and horrible business, but are not a quasi military force with political aims like ISIS. 📚 Experts cited in a report by the Cato Institute have long argued that military intervention is ineffective against highly decentralized criminal economies, validating the view that the military strikes targeted low-level players for performative politics.
• Topics for Deeper Exploration:
  • 📜 The full legal justifications used by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to classify drug cartels as combatants, which the video notes was kept secret.
  • 🤝 A detailed assessment of the quantifiable long-term damage to intelligence sharing networks with Latin American countries like Colombia and the UK.
  • 📈 The economic and social factors that make narcotics work the only option for a chunk of the population in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador, as an alternative to a military solution.
  • ⚖️ A comprehensive study of the incremental expansion of presidential war powers since the Vietnam War, focusing on actions by all administrations.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

❓ Q: What is the War Powers Resolution and how has its authority been challenged?

📜 A: The War Powers Resolution is a United States federal law passed in 1973 that aims to check the president’s power to commit the US to an armed conflict without congressional consent. 🏛️ Its authority has been challenged by successive presidents who have deployed military forces without seeking formal declarations of war, instead relying on claims of inherent executive authority or classifying actions as not constituting war under the constitutional definition, leading to a significant erosion of Congress’s constitutional right to declare war.

💥 Q: Why were US military strikes against drug cartels in the Caribbean controversial?

⚓ A: The strikes were controversial because they marked the first time the president used military authorities against civilians, specifically low-level drug traffickers, which is typically a law enforcement function. ⚖️ The administration justified the military action by claiming the cartels were engaged in a Non-International Armed Conflict (NIAC), essentially equating civilian criminal organizations to terror groups like ISIS or Al-Qaeda, a legal leap that critics called a radical expansion of executive war-making power.

🤝 Q: How did the military operations in the Caribbean affect US international alliances?

💔 A: The operations severely damaged critical international partnerships, particularly with key counter-narcotics allies like Colombia and the United Kingdom. 🚫 These countries withdrew cooperation and intelligence sharing, arguing the military actions were counterproductive and banana stuff, effectively setting back the ability of the US to genuinely disrupt drug flows and torpedoing valuable anti-narcotics partnerships.

📚 Book Recommendations

↔️ Similar

• 🇺🇸🪖❤️ The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich. 📖 This book critiques the increasing reliance on military force as the primary instrument of US foreign policy, aligning with the video’s theme of performative military action and the erosion of civilian control.
• 📜 In the Name of War: Judicial Review and the War Powers since 1918 by Christopher N. May. 📚 This work provides a deep dive into the legal history of presidential war powers and the difficulty the judiciary and Congress have had in containing executive discretion, echoing the conversation about the War Powers Act.
• 💀 El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. 🇲🇽 The book offers a firsthand look at the drug cartels, contrasting the complex reality of these criminal enterprises with the simplistic ISIS-like threat model used by the administration to justify military action.

🆚 Contrasting

• 🤝🌍 Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. 🌍 The text argues for a realpolitik approach to foreign affairs, focusing on power balances and national interest, which contrasts sharply with the video’s call to rebuild alliances and engage in sophisticated accommodation with rising powers like China.
• ⚖️ The Case for Congress: Why Our Deliberative Democracy Will Save America by Matthew Glassman. 🏛️ This book advocates for the essential role of a strong, functioning Congress in a healthy democracy, offering a contrast to the video’s documentation of Congressional deference and the failure to defend its constitutional prerogatives over war powers.
• 📈 The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs. 💰 This perspective emphasizes economic development and aid as the most effective path to global stability, offering a contrasting solution to drug trafficking and instability in regions like Latin America, moving away from the military-first approach criticized in the video.

🎨 Creatively Related

• 🕵️ Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. 🤫 This history details the CIA’s controversial activities in Latin America during the Cold War, providing historical context for the distrust and old school Monroe doctrine stuff that still affects US relations in the region today.
• 📰 News and the Culture of Disaster: The Tragedy of Flight 103 by Nurith Gertz. 📺 The book explores how media frames complex international events and foreign policy, tangentially relating to the video’s discussion of performative politics aimed at generating a public image of strength.
• 🤔 The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington. 🗺️ This influential, though debated, theory on post-Cold War world order provides a theoretical counterpoint to the video’s suggestion that the US must adapt to a bipolar or tripolar world by forming robust alliances, by instead focusing on cultural fault lines.