Reforming National Security Oversight in the Senate

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Self ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
Practical Recommendations ◽  
Over Time

This chapter challenges the efficacy of reform proposals currently circulating in Washington and makes practical recommendations for improving the capacity of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees in terms of oversight of national security. These recommendations look beyond consultation about the initiation of conflicts to generate a more robust review of the implementation of administration policies over time. The focus is on the underlying incentives that drive committee inquiries into the performance of the Department of Defense and the State Department, with an eye to the self-correcting mechanisms at the heart of the Constitution that balance relations between the branches. The chapter argues that well-functioning committees that promote the rule of law in foreign affairs through regular, predictable, and public deliberation make a revised war powers act unnecessary; in the absence of such regular order, new rules for consultation seem likely to fail.

Committee Goals and Oversight Strategies

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Strategic Choices ◽  
Committee Assignment ◽  
Armed Services Committee ◽  
Partisan Conflict ◽  
Armed Services

This chapter examines how the distinctive goals of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees led to strategic choices about how much attention to devote to oversight of national security, particularly in comparison to budget activity. It explains why divided government was not a consistent motivator for national security oversight and how indicators of long-term committee goals influenced both committees' stance toward the executive branch. It argues that the Armed Services Committee muted partisan conflict and deemphasized oversight in order to attend to funding the Defense Department, whereas the Foreign Relations Committee was a more active overseer of foreign affairs during periods of divided government. The differences between the two committees reveal how selection biases built into the committee assignment process affected the rule of law in national security and shed light on the inconsistent findings in the scholarly literature with respect to divided government.

Watchdogs on the Hill

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Humanitarian Mission ◽  
Noticeable Reduction ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
The Hill

An essential responsibility of the U.S. Congress is holding the president accountable for the conduct of foreign policy. This book evaluates how the legislature's most visible and important watchdogs performed from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The book finds a noticeable reduction in public and secret hearings since the mid-1990s and establishes that U.S. foreign policy frequently violated basic conditions for democratic accountability. Committee scrutiny of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the book notes, fell below levels of oversight in prior major conflicts. It attributes the drop in watchdog activity to growing disinterest among senators in committee work, biases among members who join the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and motives that shield presidents, particularly Republicans, from public inquiry. The book's detailed case studies of the Truman Doctrine, Vietnam War, Panama Canal Treaty, humanitarian mission in Somalia, and Iraq War illustrate the importance of oversight in generating the information citizens need to judge the president's national security policies. It argues for a reassessment of congressional war powers and proposes reforms to encourage Senate watchdogs to improve public deliberation about decisions of war and peace. It investigates America's oversight of national security and its critical place in the review of congressional and presidential powers in foreign policy.

Introduction

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Program Review ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Empirical Results ◽  
Armed Services

This book examines the formal hearing activity of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees from 1947 to 2008 to assess their efficacy in promoting due process and public understanding with respect to international affairs. In particular, it analyzes how much time the committees spent on public and secret hearings, what factors influenced their decisions to engage in oversight of national security, and how they allocated their efforts to routine program review compared to scrutiny of crises and scandals. The empirical results and case studies suggest that the Senate's national security committees had an uneven record over the sixty-two years of the study. The book uses these findings as a basis for rethinking the nature of national security oversight and proposing several reforms to promote public deliberation and education about U.S. foreign relations.

Guarding the Guardians through Oversight

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Armed Services Committee ◽  
Armed Services ◽  
Legislative Influence ◽  
Abu Ghraib Prison ◽  
Previous Scholarship

This chapter reviews previous scholarship about congressional scrutiny of the executive branch and about general patterns of legislative influence on foreign policy decisions. In the spring of 2004, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed public hearings regarding the conduct and objectives of the Iraq War. A month later, Senator John Warner, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, scheduled two days of hearings to investigate abuse of detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib Prison. The chapter examines the hearing activity of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees from 1947 to 2008 to assess the overall trends in oversight and identify similarities and differences in their behavior. It also considers what scholars know about congressional involvement in U.S. foreign policy, what they have concluded about oversight of national security more generally, and why these perspectives do not appear to fit together.

scholarly journals Techniques for Regulating Military Force

2019 ◽  
pp. 734-752
Author(s):  
Monica Hakimi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Research ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Military Force ◽  
War Powers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Over Time

This chapter draws on the five chapters that follow—each of which describes the war powers in a single country—to identify and analyze some of the techniques for regulating this area of foreign affairs and then to reflect on the value of comparative research on it. Three basic techniques are: (1) to establish substantive standards on when the government may or may not use force, (2) to divide among different branches of government the authority to deploy the country’s armed forces, and (3) to subject such decisions to oversight or review. There is considerable variation, both across countries and over time within particular countries, in how and with what effect each technique is used. Given that variation, comparative war powers research might be of limited relevance to national officials who make use of force decisions or to analysts who seek to explain them. Rather, the principal benefit of such research might be to bring into stark relief each country’s own national ethos—to shed light on how it defines itself and conceives of its relationship with the rest of the world

Human Rights and US Foreign Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah B. Snyder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Over Time

In its formulation of foreign policy, the United States takes account of many priorities and factors, including national security concerns, economic interests, and alliance relationships. An additional factor with significance that has risen and fallen over time is human rights, or more specifically violations of human rights. The extent to which the United States should consider such abuses or seek to moderate them has been and continues to be the subject of considerable debate.

Rethinking War Powers: By Law or by “Thaumaturgic Invocation”?

1989 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 766-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Franck
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Chief Executives ◽  
Imminent Threat

In matters of foreign relations and national security, Presidents believe they know best, because they, alone, possess the information, advice and range of means to meet an imminent threat. It follows that when the judiciary or the Congress seeks to second-guess the exercise of what Chief Executives now are pleased to call the “foreign relations and national security power,” they are regarded as gratuitous intermeddlers. This is nowhere more tenaciously asserted by Presidents than in matters pertaining to the deployment of U.S. armed forces for combat abroad.

Return to the Rule of Law in International Affairs

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legislative Oversight ◽  
Armed Services

This chapter examines normative political issues regarding the importance of legislative oversight in fostering the rule of law and public deliberation about foreign policy. Some observers of U.S. foreign policy argue that lawmakers ask too many questions and damage the nation's interests abroad with untimely inquiries. The performance of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees thus raises broader issues about whether public accountability in international affairs is desirable or even possible in the twenty-first century. The chapter first provides an overview of the paradox of public opinion and oversight of national security before suggesting that a major barrier to a more constructive role for lawmakers in international affairs is not the Constitution, but the large number serving today who have very limited legislative experience. It also discusses the risks to the presidency that result from asserting executive supremacy over national security.

Police Patrols and Fire Alarms in U.S. Foreign Policy

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Fire Alarm ◽  
Police Patrol ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Event Driven ◽  
Armed Services

This chapter examines partisan calculations about party reputations as influences on routine and event-driven public hearings, using the classic typology of police patrols and fire alarms. It considers committee choices regarding the content of national security oversight hearings by comparing routine inquiries to reviews of major crises and scandals. The chapter uses the unique characteristics of fine-grained coding of hearings to develop measures for police patrol and fire alarm oversight of national security. It also discusses expectations about committee behavior as well as the distribution of patrols and alarms for the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, particularly as they relate to changes in military casualties from 1947 to 2008. Finally, it explores crisis oversight as a form of committee review that is particularly important to democratic accountability.

Institutional Change and Senate Committee Hearings

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Fowler
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Panama Canal ◽  
Institutional Changes ◽  
Senate Committee ◽  
Public Hearings ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
Armed Services

This chapter examines long-term institutional changes in the Senate committee system that devalued committee work and negatively affected the total hearing activity of Armed Services and Foreign Relations. It begins with a review of expectations and measures regarding the influence of the shifting institutional context on Senate committee hearings in general and on Armed Services and Foreign Relations sessions in particular. It then analyzes the effects of various long-term changes on the frequency of public hearings first by Senate committees in the aggregate and then by the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. It also considers the influences on the frequency of executive hearing days by the two national security committees. Finally, it looks at the Panama Canal to illustrate the confluence of trends that created a watershed moment for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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