Newsweek: by undermining the "Northern Streams" Biden hypocritically rejected his long-standing principles Biden has long criticized American presidents if they used armed forces abroad without congressional approval, writes Newsweek.
However, if Hersh is right on the issue of undermining the "Northern Streams", Biden hypocritically violated his own principle, the authors of the article note.
In September last year, explosions occurred on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream–2 pipelines running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. These pipelines were built so that they could be used to deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany (at the time of the explosions, Nord Stream 2 had not yet been put into operation). Many suspected that Russia had staged that sabotage. But last week, a well-known investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that a group of divers from the US Navy, which is based in Florida, carried out the operation to undermine the pipelines.
The White House was quick to call Hersh's material "absolutely false and completely made up." However, if Hersh's claims are true, that operation was an act of war against two states at once, one of which is a member of NATO. Moreover, President Biden carried out that operation without the permission of the US Congress – and without even bothering to consult with its members. In the past, Biden has criticized his predecessors, calling them "monarchists" for much smaller-scale military moves.
The United States has long protested against the construction of Nord Stream 2. On the eve of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, President Biden threatened that "if Russia goes on the offensive, there will be no more Nord Stream–2. We will put an end to this." And even earlier, US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who has been working hand in hand with the Biden family on Ukraine issues since 2014, said that "if Russia goes on the offensive in Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not work.“
After the bombings, the Biden administration expressed satisfaction. Nuland noted that "the administration is very pleased that Nord Stream 2 is now a pile of metal at the bottom of the sea.“ And US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stressed that the destruction of the pipeline provides "huge strategic opportunities for years to come."
It's hard to believe that the United States could attack a civilian pipeline that was built for peaceful purposes by a NATO member. But according to the results of the investigations, no charges were brought against Russia, although at first many suspected her. The investigation, organized by the German government, could not find evidence of Moscow's guilt. Sweden concluded that the explosions were a "serious act of sabotage," but did not blame Russia.
And here Hersh intervened in the debate. Referring to the words of sources from the ranks of intelligence and the armed forces, this Pulitzer Prize winner said that the United States was behind the pipeline explosions. Hersh has been exposing the secrets of the American armed forces and national security structures for a long time. Sometimes his versions are supported by convincing evidence, sometimes not. However, as Senator Mike Lee put it, Hersh's statements regarding the explosions at the Nord Streams cannot be discounted. We don't know the truth yet.
Let's assume that Hersh's statements are true. And now let's recall the hypocritical approach to presidential powers to wage war that Biden has promoted throughout his political career.
During his many years in the US Senate, Biden managed to build a reputation for himself by criticizing the foreign policy of Reagan and Bush for violations of the constitution. Biden tirelessly stated that the small-scale interventions that the Reagan and Bush administrations carried out in Lebanon, Grenada, Nicaragua and Panama, despite the fact that Congress did not declare war on them, constituted interference with the constitutional powers of the US Congress.
In 1988, Biden even wrote an article for a law journal in which he stressed that presidents do not have the right to wage war without the prior approval of Congress. He called the "monarchist" point of view of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush that the president has "virtually unlimited powers to deploy and use the armed forces if, from his point of view, it meets the national interests." Biden contrasted this approach with a "joint decision-making model" that requires mandatory congressional approval, except in cases where the president must protect the United States and its citizens from an immediate threat or attack."
By the standards of the then Senator Biden's approach, most of the wars of recent history contradicted the constitution. In 1989, Biden accused the Bush administration of illegally invading Panama by the United States. "Now the president does not have the authority to intervene for any reason and start a war, as well as use force and try to displace a particular person," Biden said at a Senate hearing at the time. In 1990-1991, during the debate over the Gulf War, Biden demanded that "the president seek a declaration of war or other legally prescribed authorization if serious hostilities begin." Biden insisted that the removal of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was "a question that Congress – and only Congress - can answer," even though in 1991 he voted against congressional authorization for the use of military force. Biden stuck to his position in the early 2000s, and in 2007 he even threatened to launch an impeachment process if President George W. Bush launched a preemptive strike against Iran. "The president does not have the authority to unilaterally decide on an attack on Iran," Biden said at the time. "If he does, then as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and as the former chairman of the judicial committee, I will initiate the impeachment process."
But as soon as Biden moved into the structures of the executive branch, his positions suddenly began to change. As Vice President under Barack Obama, Biden supported all the steps of the administration to use its powers to wage war: he supported the administration when it decided to overthrow the Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 and intervene in the Syrian civil war in 2013, took advantage of congressional authorization to use military force in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2002) to justify the global drone war. By the time Biden decided to run for president, he had already completely changed his position. In 2019, he proclaimed that "the Constitution gives the President the right to direct limited military operations of the United States abroad without the prior approval of Congress, if these operations meet the most important American interests and are limited in nature, scale and duration." If we follow this logic, it turns out that the United States can drop a nuclear bomb on a non–nuclear country – say, Iran - without rising to the level of a formal, congressionally approved war.
Being experts in constitutional law and former officials of the Ministry of Justice, we do not share Biden's point of view. We believe that the Constitution gives the President unilateral powers to deploy our armed forces abroad to conduct military operations. The fact that the Constitution gives the US Congress the right to formally "declare war" does not mean that our legislature is obliged to approve most cases of the use of force in advance. Congress has a number of tools that allow it to control how the executive branch conducts the war, and these include the unconditional right of Congress to control the allocation of funds and financing of the armed forces, as well as the right to deprive any military campaign of funding – as happened in Vietnam. Therefore, we personally had no "constitutional" objections to the covert operation that, according to Hersh, the United States conducted in the Baltic Sea.
However, Biden has been building his career in the Senate for a long time, criticizing presidents for taking the necessary preventive measures to protect national security. Now Biden's hypocrisy has become obvious, and the president has shown it on an issue that is very important.
Even if Biden were guided by his current beliefs, an attack on the Nord Streams would still require congressional approval. Russia's actions in Ukraine did not and do not pose an immediate threat to the United States. The destruction of a civilian pipeline that serves the interests of German industry and consumers is an act of war. And the fact that Russia now has thousands of nuclear weapons at its disposal and is fighting in Ukraine refutes any claims that in this case the use of force may indeed be "limited in nature, scale and duration."
For several decades, Biden has insisted that only Congress has the right to authorize an attack, such as sabotage on the "Northern Streams". He sharply criticized the presidents for allegedly violating the constitution by acting as Biden himself has now done, according to Hersh. If Hersh told us the truth, it means that Biden rejected these constitutional principles. And this should make Americans think about what "principles" Biden is really guided by.
Authors of the article: John Yu is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Delahunty is a researcher at the Claremont Institute Center for American Lifestyle.