Pentagon Pushed to Explain Broad Powers to Protect Allies Overseas by Missy Ryan – Washington Post
A Democratic senator is pressing the Pentagon to explain a policy that allows the military to launch attacks to protect an array of foreign forces, a practice that critics contend adds to already inflated powers to conduct counterterrorism missions overseas.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), in a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, asked the Pentagon to explain what he described as a “broad and troubling” interpretation of presidential authority under a military doctrine known as “collective self-defense.”
Under that principle, the military can conduct strikes to defend foreign troops it identifies as partner forces, even when U.S. personnel are not at risk and when no engagement has been authorized by Congress. Because U.S. troops might not be involved or even present when the strikes occur, it goes beyond the right of self-defense that U.S. troops have at all times.
In his Oct. 2 letter, Kaine said that the “unintended consequences of this policy could be grave, and it raises the possibility of inadvertently becoming entangled in other countries’ conflicts, especially as U.S. forces are deployed to over 170 countries around the world.”
“I view the use of collective self-defense as yet another unilateral expansion of the President’s Article II authority in a now 17-year counterterrorism campaign that seemingly knows no limits or end,” he said. Article II of the Constitution, among other things, lays out the president’s role as commander in chief of the military…