According to a significant new analysis published late last week by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, U.S. armed personnel have been involved in unauthorized wars in far more nations than the Pentagon has revealed to Congress, let alone the general public.
Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Libya. According to the article Secret War: How the U.S. Uses Partnerships and Proxy Forces to Wage War Under the Radar, if you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the last 20 years, you would probably get this short list. But this list is inaccurate, missing at least 17 nations where the US has used ground forces, proxies, or airstrikes in armed conflicts.
According to the report’s author, Katherine Yon Ebright, “this spread of secret war is a very recent phenomena, and it is undemocratic and dangerous.” “The waging of covert hostilities in unreported nations violates the intent of our constitution. It invites a military escalation that the general public, Congress, and even the diplomats in charge of overseeing American foreign policy cannot predict.
The 39-page report’s main topic is the so-called “security cooperation” initiatives that Congress approved in 2001 in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF, against specific terrorist organizations. The Defense Department was given permission under one of these programs, Section 127e, to “provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating authorized ongoing military operations by United States special operations forces to combat terrorism.”
The Department of Defense (DOD) defines “irregular warfare” as “competition short of traditional armed combat” or “all-out war.” Section 1202 is “a tremendously important instrument for enabling irregular warfare operations…to discourage and defeat…revisionist countries and rogue regimes,” according to Pentagon officials. Additionally, they emphasized that if the DOD starts to “prioritize great power competition,” irregular warfare is likely to be used more frequently.
According to the report, “generally speaking, the [Section] 1202 authority’s aim is to use the department’s [Section] 127e method of developing and managing partner forces against countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.” “Section 1202 raises the same possibility of wars that Congress has not authorized as Section 127e, but with much graver repercussions because the enemy may be a powerful, nuclear-armed state,”
The paper concludes that simply deleting or amending “outdated and overstretched AUMFs…[is] insufficient” in light of the elevated threats. “The security cooperation powers of the Department of Defense should be repealed or reformed by Congress. The country will remain at war until it does so, perhaps without the agreement or the knowledge of its citizens.
