As former secretaries of defense, we understand the profound responsibility of deploying our men and women in uniform into harm’s way. It is critical that there be a clear objective, a strategy to achieve the objective and an endgame to bring our forces back home. The president, Congress and the American people should be unified when a country goes to war.
There are now over 50,000 troops stationed in the Middle East, with President Trump reportedly considering sending forces on missions to extract Iran’s uranium or to occupy Kharg Island. Both operations are very risky and could result in heavy casualties and prolong the war.
Because their lives are on the line, we owe it to these committed American service members and their families to be truthful about the risks involved and why we are at war. There was a case to be made that Iran had a history of threatening the stability of the United States, Israel and other nations in the Middle East. Its leaders’ support for terrorism, arming dangerous proxy forces, developing large numbers of missiles that could strike regional targets and efforts to develop nuclear capability represented a genuine threat to peace and stability in the region.
But it is also true that the 12-day war waged by Israel and the United States against Iran in June weakened Tehran and its proxies, damaged missile and airstrike capabilities and set back the project to develop a nuclear bomb. By July, Iran was no longer an imminent threat — a conclusion supported by our intelligence agencies.
Nevertheless, without informing the American people, Congress or our allies, President Trump decided to join Israel in a military campaign to kill Iran’s leadership and, he hoped, spark a popular uprising to bring down the Islamic republic once and for all. That did not happen. It was a terrible miscalculation. Since then, the president has offered conflicting objectives for why we went to war.
As former secretaries of defense and former members of Congress, we can personally attest to the problems that arise when our country engages in conflicts that drift without clear objectives and end points. They often become tragic, unwinnable wars that history does not remember kindly.
So when our president oscillates between stating that “the war is very complete, pretty much” and “we’re not ready to leave yet” within the space of roughly a week, it seems that we are repeating that history. It shows both our allies and our adversaries that impulsive and unilateral decisions are driving our foreign policy objectives. It also shows how the president’s decision to bypass Congress and the American people and defy democratic norms has profound consequences on our military, U.S. citizens and people around the world. The president’s war in Iran has created vast amounts of volatility and uncertainty — thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced — and has further undermined the credibility of the United States to maintain the rules-based international order that we helped establish after World War II.
America needs allies, trading partners and friends. But now, instead of working together with them to maintain a global system that has brought real geopolitical and economic benefit to us all, we are isolating ourselves. We are already seeing the consequences. In Ukraine, we have worked with our NATO allies over the past four years to combat the most serious threat to global peace and security since World War II, but the president’s recent decision to remove sanctions on Russian oil puts President Vladimir Putin of Russia in a stronger position, while Ukraine and our other allies doubt our commitment to their security. Among allies such as Canada, Britain and Germany, the war is reinforcing a growing sentiment that China is a more strategic economic partner and that those allies should look to new trade agreements with China instead of us — especially as China is already replacing the United States as their top trading partner.
Furthermore, with each unnecessary strike or death resulting from this war, we are cultivating anti-American sentiment among people in the Middle East and beyond, potentially fueling a new generation of terrorism that will haunt us and our allies, will increase the number of conflicts in the region and may ultimately compel our regional allies like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to kick U.S. military bases off their land to prevent future attacks.
We must change course if we want to avoid global isolation and preserve the era of prosperity and security that the world has witnessed in the last 80 years. These years have not benefited all countries and peoples. But more people today are free, educated and prosperous than ever in history.
This era was built on a bipartisan consensus on the strategic importance of both NATO and global trade. It is clear this president has no respect for that precedent. But America is a constitutional republic — not a monarchy — and Congress and the president have coequal constitutional responsibilities in all matters of government, including in matters of security and war. We must preserve this essential balance. The Congress is the people’s house. We need our lawmakers to step up and reassert their rightful role over war powers.
There are four actions that Congress should take. It should approve a war powers resolution authorizing the war, take the time to evaluate any request for additional funding for the war and hold hearings to fully explore the actions, objectives and strategies of the administration in taking military action. The president and the Congress should work together to determine what an endgame to this war, a conclusion that would bring our forces home, looks like.
The fast rate at which this conflict has escalated and destabilized the world is the direct result of a president acting alone without a strategy and of a politically divided Congress that has abdicated its responsibilities and failed to play its vital constitutional role of oversight in war. The lives of our men and women in uniform are on the line. As the 250th anniversary of our national founding approaches, we must not allow political divisions and political interests to undermine our support for the dedicated men and women who risk their lives for America’s security and future.
Chuck Hagel is a former secretary of defense and a former Republican senator from Nebraska. He was deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration under President Reagan and served in the Vietnam War alongside his brother Tom Hagel in 1968. Leon E. Panetta is a former White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, former director of the C.I.A., former secretary of defense, and former Democratic representative from California’s 16th and 17th Congressional Districts. He served as an intelligence officer in the army. Both are members of Issue One’s ReFormers Caucus.
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