US president who gave Congress its power back
AFTER the end of the Second World War, the US presidency amassed immense powers at the expense of Congress and the US people. It acquired these with the consent of Congress, which was persuaded to surrender the powers conferred by the US constitution by Cold War considerations. Harry Truman and his successors convinced Congress that the executive required a capacity for quick responses in a volatile world. By the time John F Kennedy assumed office in January 1961, critics could write convincingly about an imperial presidency, with the power to enmesh the US in armed conflicts in faraway places without reference to Congress.
The world nervously expected President Barack Obama to carry out his threat to attack Syria should Bashar al-Assad’s regime cross the “red line” of using chemical weapons. But even the initial pronouncements after August 21 indicated that conflicting counsels were being weighed in the White House. Secretary of State John Kerry’s strident voice and threats to punish Assad were not a faithful echo of Obama’s more measured philosophical approach. Kerry was compelled to restrain himself and tell his audiences that Obama had not yet taken the decision to launch a punitive strike.
Obama felt constrained by opinion polls indicating that 60% of the US people opposed military action against Syria. Even after intelligence briefings to the Senate and the House of Representatives, many members of Congress found the evidence they had been shown inconclusive. It would appear that the US’s European allies were also not convinced by the evidence Kerry presented. Many probably recalled Gen Colin Powell’s performance, with scale models of the mobile weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein was allegedly using, at the United Nations (UN) in 2002. Russia and China, the two members of the UN Security Council that have consistently opposed the US on Syria, could also argue that previous experience suggested that the US was once again misleading the international community.
Because this is his second term, Obama need not fear the US electorate punishing him even if he acted in open defiance of the views of the majority. But, as a former community activist, he is aware that marginal majorities, such as the 59% who oppose war, can grow into substantial majorities once mobilised. He preferred to seek the endorsement of Congress for any action he orders. He recognised that, should the intervention be disastrous, he would have congressional approval to cover his embarrassment.
The waters of the Syrian civil war have been irremediably muddied by many external players. In the region, Iran, led by a Shiite theocracy, is regarded as Assad’s principal supporter. Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s recently elected president, strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons, but stopped short of attributing them to the Assad regime. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we can deduce that Saudi Arabia pursues a two or three-track foreign policy — telling its interlocutors one thing in private, while making diverging pronouncements publicly, then acting in a manner that accords with neither. From its public posture and actions, we know that the Saudis would like to see Assad overthrown.
A weakened Assad government, embroiled in a civil war, can only rebound to Israel’s advantage. Should the conflict spill over into neighbouring countries and draw in Iran, even the Obama administration would find it difficult to exercise restraint — possibly launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear installations. Such an upshot would leave Israel, with its own nuclear and chemical arsenals, the dominant power in the region.
Putin’s intervention, to convince Assad to place his chemical weapons under international supervision, is motivated both by Russia’s desire to avoid further escalation of the war and hard-nosed reasoning that it could easily reignite ethnic conflicts, such as the one in Chechnya. Worse still, it could spill over into Turkey, Russia’s neighbour. Russia gave the Obama administration a way out of what could have been an awkward impasse. Congress was also saved a bruising clash with the presidency.
Obama’s opponents castigate him as indecisive and weak because he pulled back from the brink when the crunch came. Perhaps the more level-headed commentators in future will remember this as the moment when the powers of Congress were restored and US diplomacy made a dramatic comeback. Obama has reversed a 70-year-old trend by reining in the imperial presidency and achieving the US’s objectives without firing a single shot. US citizens should thank him for saving the lives of so many of their sons and daughters serving in their armed forces.
Rouhani’s address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday has hopefully taken the wind out of many a warmonger’s sails. While the world might justifiably continue being sceptical about Iran’s nuclear programme, his repudiation of nuclear weapons should not be dismissed as idle rhetoric.
Obama’s astute response to Tehran’s olive branch demonstrates a willingness to explore diplomatic solutions to hitherto intractable problems. His loony-right critics notwithstanding, Obama might one day be remembered as the president who restored Congress’s original powers and reinserted diplomacy as the preferred instrument of US foreign policy.
Jordan is a former arts and culture minister.