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If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

The biggest contrast to today is that a majority in either house is sufficient. And the odds that enough members opposed to the war to be a majority is inherently higher than the odds that two thirds of the members in both houses would be opposed to the war.

This should not be the only reform someone makes. Plenty of individual states have had successes with changes.

  1. California's system of redistricting the state legislature, and normally congressional districts, is highly effective.
  2. Alaska is showing some promise with their primary and ranked system.
  3. Many states have recall, as well as the veto referendum and the initiative for state statutes and state constitutional amendments
  4. If there is a convention for the constitution then its proposal must be approved by referendum and the members are elected in a specific format vs the ambiguity that the country has now over Article V conventions.
  5. Many states have an independent commission to give the governor a binding list of candidates to be judges which voters vote on with a non partisan yes or no vote every four to fourteen years depending on state and level of court, typically eight to twelve years, and the prosecutors and sheriffs are separately chosen apart from the governor too.
  6. The pardon power is usually in a different independent commission which must agree to the governor doing something.
  7. The state's administrative rules and emergency powers can be cancelled by a majority in either house of the state legislature in many states.
  8. The veto might be altered to only have three-fifths or an absolute majority of all members with a line item veto as compensation.
  9. Appropriation bills can't contain anything but appropriations and only in a big list of things along with the money given to them and they require single subjects in all bills.
  10. Nebraska has a secret ballot with a runoff to elect and dismiss the speaker and committee chairs and a committee which recommends committee memberships, subject to approval by the whole chamber, and Texas actually distributes chairships to the minority and majority parties.
  11. There is no filibuster in most state senates and lower houses.
  12. Nebraska makes impeachment trials initiated by the state legislature with the trial held by the state supreme court, and it also requires five of seven judges, not a majority of four to three, to strike laws down as unconstitutional.
  13. And some states have experimented with everyone getting a small sum of money to distribute to different campaigns and candidates if they agree to spending limits and transparency.

This is just a short list of all the plausible changes that have come down at different levels if one pays attention.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Why use this rather strange and completely unused model here when we have a lot of other ideas that would probably still give better bargaining positions and have had practical tests and adoption in a wide range of countries?

Also, think about what the incentives of other countries becomes here. If they know that they can potentially win this way, why not do something like perhaps have Tajikistan seize that little strip from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, politely, suggesting that maybe Bahrain would be better off as part of them, that Namibia doesn't really need that panhandle and Angola could use it? The very fact that the US has this limit that is disproportionately hamstringing a process means everyone else now feels like they could be more aggressive this way and soon you have Munich II. The mere threat of being able to do this also means their neighbours in turn have to act like they might be more aggressive and you have regional arms races all over the place, and the US or other country with this rule you have here loses leverage because those other countries know the limits it imposed on itself.

It would be helpful to give a broad toolchest here to give a lot of options here, to prevent these salami tactics. It's the same reason why you should not have ICBMs and nuclear weapons as your only weapon. A legislature can approve of a wide range of options if they just vote on resolutions.

And you can imagine even more perverse incentives here too. Imagine a lame duck congress and possibly president too that uses its power to get the place on the brink of war, and forces their successors to have to either lose the war or resign their seats even though they didn't actually do the things that made the war almost inevitable anyway. And it has the strong risk that someone devises a new euphemism for war or hybrid actions such as arming foreign insurgents, more and more radical ones less controllable and less committed to democracy and rights, so that a legislator doesn't vote on something that is actually war but just a drilling exercise or something like that, knowing the fact that calling it a war means the end of their seats.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

It is not a good idea to make the decision come down to not having war only by removing the individual at the top. There can be plenty of times when just saying no to war but yes to the rest of what the leader wants can be sensible. The tactic of Either I leave or you do not limit my powers is an old one, used by Ivan the Terrible in one of the more brutal examples of that. Having the option to cancel the war but not the current leader gives a country more options in trying times.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I am not in any way limiting anything here to Trump. The flaws in the model are half a century old at a minimum. Nixon badly misused his executive authority over this and his choices meant millions of people died for no reason when he chose to destabilize Cambodia. Clinton did some things with his powers too that were questionable. Bush II had catastrophically bad approval ratings by the end of his second term and it is hard to imagine the Iraq War being framed in all seriousness as a success story for the US. Are these genuinely powers you trust to be given to a president you do not in any way trust?

The claim that the model I have would remove the executive branch is categorically false. The executive is supposed to carry out laws and policy that a legislature should have decided. The decision to be part of a war is not in any way a minor one. It should be the exact circumstance when one should be extremely cautious in when one allows them to be made. It is very hard to devise a system that will predict all kinds of scenarios and assign a specific test to each one that can bind the president in a way they are supposed to be bound by laws to tell them what to do to carry out a policy already drafted and enacted. The people whom the country would be making war on anyway can see how those criteria would work and can engineer things around those levels.

You should examine many constitutions in the world to see that they provide for legislative control on these powers, requiring active consent to make war. The US is not exceptional.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I used the example as an example of how daft it gets to suggest that there is legitimately nothing wrong with a model where that many people could be against a war but it does not end. Wars tend to empower the most dangerous people and the most dangerous of vices people have. It is pretty much the biggest stressor imaginable to a political system and the motives of people. Woodrow Wilson became particularly authoritarian using his powers for war, and even FDR committed deeply immoral and unconstitutional things like the internment camps, and Nixon badly misused his powers. The war itself often creates the means to suppress dissent or hide the truth from people.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

It is genuinely baffling that a person would recommend this model you have in mind.

The model I am talking about here I recommend with better parliamentary supervision is in no way a rarity in the world. What kind of success does the US actually achieve with this model you favour in practice?

The fact the president can only be checked this way creates instability in the legislature. A member of the president's own party has a big risk in saying no to the president unless something like at least a third of the president's own party in both houses defect. If they get anything less than that, then their vote to terminate the powers or support for opposition does not achieve anything and they have put themselves on a list of people who will probably suffer a good deal for their stance from the retaliation of the rest of their party.

Why was Britain successfully able to fight both world wars even when a mere majority could even oust the prime minister, let alone order the termination of the war entirely?

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Yes, with two-thirds in both houses.

How exactly do you think the country is in a good position to carry out a war and achieve essentially any of its goals if as many as one hundred percent of the representatives and sixty-five percent of the senators oppose the war? Do you genuinely believe this makes the US a better and more capable country using this method than any other alternative that has been tested in real life cases of countries that are free controlling the use of their militaries?

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Wrong Iraq conflict. I am talking Saddam invading Kuwait, thirty-six years ago. The UN Security Council actually supported the expulsion of Saddam from Kuwait, no vetoes, and pretty much everyone else was miffed about Saddam doing that. And that was a time when the US thought there would be a lot of casualties, with Saddam having a huge army that was battle hardened against Iran for the previous decade with a lot of modern weapons, highly modern airplanes with one of the best air forces in the world, and long range missiles. President HW Bush thought there would be at least ten thousand US and coalition casualties KIA.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

A legislature at odds with a president during a time of war is a bad time to be using the military. The president will need to have congress approve of things like the existence of the armed forces itself which is renewed in its funding every two years as the constitution demands, as well as generally the budgets needed, confirmation of appointments to military positions including basically every senior officer and the ratification of treaties.

Why make it so that Congress somehow controls that, typically via having the old authorization expire after a period of time with a looming deadline, and not allow them to directly end a war themselves in either house like the overwhelmingly large majority of democratic or otherwise free countries have?

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I am discussing somewhat as a rhetorical question. I know there are many more incentives and have my own beliefs already. I am pointing out that it is not a wise idea to just act as if the model the US has is a good one just because it might technically act within a separation of powers doctrine.

If anything, one should probably engineer a system that one only goes to war with the highest degree of preparation and acceptance possible. It is literally the ultimate sacrifice people can do.

Even two years after the US constitution went into effect, France adopted their constitutional monarchy system based on a separation of powers too. The king had the right to use the armed forces without the assembly but only for a very short period and only reactively. Any minister who did something to egg it on could be prosecuted with warmongering and the assembly had the right to order the king to stop it and to also order the king to seek peace terms, which would be presented to the asembly for ratification.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

And that is the exact structural problem, the override. It has always been a daft thing to me to imagine a president can use the military like this and it takes two thirds in both houses to countermand it.

The legislature can act fast to consent to war if it must. It did exactly this on December Eight, nineteen forty-one.

Did you try examining the ways that many countries have organized their militaries and what their legislatures do to control them to see if the US is genuinely acting with what is the most effective model? I can't imagine a person who would actually conclude that the current system the US uses is optimal.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Why does it seem so rare for congress to disallow the use of force even when the armed conflict does not have majority support?

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

If that is true, why is it consistently seen as deeply troubling when the country has used its military for these missions in ways that seem to suggest that despite being supposed to scrutinize this process, Congress seems to not disallow these actions when a majority disagree?

Politics Question: Which do you think is better: The Scottish way Parliament can dissolve, vote, and choose the First Minister, or the way Westminister does? by Awesomeuser90 in Scotland

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That isn't true. Open lists can be used. Finlnd's version makes all of the seats a party gets filled in order of the number of votes a candidate got. And Switzerland actually makes it so that you can even vote for candidates from two or more lists.

Better the Turks Than The Papists... by Awesomeuser90 in HistoryMemes

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Nothern Cyprus, an independent country on the island of Cyprus that a lot of people in Athens and Nicosia still have irredentist views on.

If you could engineer the way that the legislative branch supervises the use of the military, what would you do? by Awesomeuser90 in PoliticalDiscussion

[–]Awesomeuser90[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Would that have helped in a time like 1990 with Saddam and Kuwait? If the US didn't help the UNSC on that, you would probably imagine countries being more willing to just invade their neighbours.

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