Welcome to the Cato Podcast. I am your host for today's episode. My name is Katherine Thompson, and I have the distinct honor to serve as the senior fellow on the Defense and Foreign Policy team here. Today, I am joined by a distinguished guest, Matt Duss, who is Executive Vice President for the Center for International Policy and former Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. Matt's work has been widely published, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, The American Prospect, and Foreign Policy. Not only is Matt a distinguished caller and thought leader, but he is a friend who I was honored to work closely with on war powers issues in the United States Senate when I worked for Senator Mike Lee. Welcome, Matt. Thank you so much. Great to see you and great to be here. Awesome. Well, today's conversation, you know, just to sort of set the scene on what we're what we're going to talk about today is really a discussion of something that, you know, you and I are familiar with, Matt, but it's re-emerging on the scene in Washington, and that is the conversation around war powers, the Trump administration's recent unauthorized engagements to strike drug boats in the Caribbean, use of military force in Venezuela, contemplation of U.S. force in Greenland, and then, of course, the topic that is on everyone's minds and in every political newsletter this morning, a possible campaign against Iran. You know, Congress has, in response to many of these activities, you know, attempted to reassert its role as the only branch of our nation's government with the enumerated power to declare war. Senators Cain and Paul have offered resolutions on Venezuela, and they have offered, as of this morning, they have offered a resolution in response to the administration's potential action in Iran. Same with Representative Massey and Representative Ro Khanna. They have also offered an Iran war powers resolution. So I thought that we would talk today about sort of our assessments on the congressional tactics and the political dynamics at play in this war powers debate, share some of the lessons learned that you and I have taken away from working on the Yemen war powers debate, which was that plus the previous Iran debates in 2020 were really the last time that we had a robust war powers debate in the U.S. Congress, and then discuss areas for reform to make Congress more effective in leveraging its Article I powers. So I thought just maybe as a stage setter for our listeners, maybe we could open with our thoughts on why the executive and legislative branches are in conflict on this question of declaring war or employing the use of military force today? And why should this issue hit home for Americans outside of the Beltway? Sure. Well, again, thanks for having me in for this really important conversation. Just to start, I would say the reason people should care is that, you know, the use of violence abroad is really one of the most serious things any government can do. I think the framers of the Constitution understood that, which is why they put the power to declare war, to authorize hostilities, to authorize the use of military lines with the Congress, the representatives of the people. They did not give the power to make that decision to one person in the Oval Office. They understood a decision of this kind of import with these kinds of consequences needed to reside with the representatives of the people to be debated and then decided upon. Now, once that decision was made, obviously, the executive branch of the president has considerable leeway to act upon that decision in the execution of war and the conduct of war, but the initial decision whether or not to use force or besides with the Congress. And as you know, over the past decades, the executive branch has taken more and more authority, has expanded its view of what it is allowed, what is not allowed. This goes back even before 9-11, We saw in Vietnam, for example, defined as a police action, not really a war, but of course it turned into a horrible war, both for the United States and Americans, but even more so for the Vietnamese people. And I think after that is when Congress said, okay, listen, we've seen the executive branch violating clearly the spirit and the letter of the Constitution. That is when the War Powers Resolution was written and passed in 1973 to codify Congress's authorities and the executive's responsibilities about when and how the U.S. should go to war and that process. But yeah, since 9-11, especially the passing of the AUMFs after 9-11, the 2001 AUMF, which declared war on Al-Qaeda and associated forces, a very elastic definition with the, as we've seen, constantly adding new groups to this list, which the president has authorized to go and make war on, groups that in many cases did not even exist on 9-11, but we've now decided that these are bad people so we can go kill them too. and of course the 2002 authorization for the war on Iraq. But blame goes to Congress here too, right? Because in giving, in kind of absolving oneself of responsibility and kind of surrendering these authorities, it kind of enables Congress not to have to worry about it and not really pay a price and just kind of empower the president to go ahead and do what the president wants. And if the president screws up, members of Congress will criticize them. but they don't really have to take ownership of these decisions in the way that I think the constitution clearly intends. And so I think this is part of all of this is what really kind of undergirded the work that we did with our bosses, Senator Lee and Senator Sanders and Senator Murphy, also the third original co-sponsor of that Yemen war powers resolution in the Senate to kind of reassert Congress's article one authority. And I think it was a really important moment, not only because it really, I think, helped to get some muscles working in the Congress that had sort of atrophied over a number of decades. It also, I think, provided a moment of education about Congress's authorities and responsibilities and also about the situation in Yemen. There were two pieces to that, at least as Senator Sanders saw. There was, of course, the constitutional piece, the legal piece, but there was also the strategic and humanitarian piece. The United States was clearly implicated in a devastating war that was creating the world's worst humanitarian crisis at that time, despite the administration's claim that, well, we're not really fighting this war despite the fact that we're refueling these planes and we're providing the bombs and we're giving them intelligence and helping them figure out where they should bomb. You know, the argument that we've made that I think made a lot of sense is like, listen, if Russia was doing this for Canada, we would very much see Russia as involved in a war against us. And I think that comparison holds. You know, in fact, I think we saw Senator Rand Paul make a similar comparison with relation to Venezuela when Secretary Rubio came up and tried to argue that, no, it wasn't really a war in Venezuela. We just invaded their country, kidnapped their president and got out of there. Senator Paul was like, listen, if any other country did this to us, you better believe we would see it as an act of war. And yet these are the kinds of weird rationalizations and kind of elastic, bizarre arguments that are often made by the executive branch to avoid engaging in a real constitutional process. I loved that phrase you used, getting the muscles working that had been atrophied from Congress before and a moment of education, because I totally agree with you. I think Congress has over time, you know, certainly in the post-World War II era, abdicated so much of its responsibility in matters of foreign policy, including the power to declare war. And, you know, I'm maybe curious to get your reactions to some of the political dynamics at play right now, because, you know, despite our efforts to get these muscles working again, you know, typically the sort of bipartisan consensus of chairman of the armed services committees of the foreign relations committees on both the right and the left have kind of, you know, traditionally not agreed with some of the pushback that members like Senator Sanders and Senator Murphy have offered before. But I noticed something interesting when the Greenland possibility of use of force was being contemplated. You had a lot of members that were traditionally sort of in this bipartisan establishment coalition that were comfortable giving the executive more leeway. You had some of them saying, wait, wait, wait, we want to be involved. It's egregious that you haven't consulted with us. Do you think that maybe right now what we're seeing is some muscles and muscles working and waking up in pockets of the political establishment that we haven't seen before? Yeah I think the Greenland you know the Greenland issue was became salient for a number of reasons But as I see it at least on the Democratic side the main one was this was really damaging to our relationship with Europe This would essentially be the idea that the United States would seize the territory of a NATO member would essentially destroy NATO as they saw it. Now, I have my issues with NATO in general. I think security alliances can be very good. I think there's a lot that's good about NATO. Collective security, I think, is an important principle. There are ways in which NATO has, I think, not been good, and that's the debate to have. But I think that is part of what drove that concern about Greenland, just the fact that Trump was acting in a straightforwardly predatory way towards some of the United States' most longstanding allies. So I think it was less a constitutional issue. It was more just a kind of particular subject because we, unfortunately, you know, we saw some criticisms over Venezuela. We saw some criticisms over the Iran strikes last June. But I think they were somewhat more muted than Greenland precisely because this was striking at the heart of, you know, the foundation of the United States' longstanding transatlantic security concept. I love that. I love that reflection. And yeah, I definitely agree. And I think that, you know, it's funny when, you know, it's not just a constitutional concern, but some of these other issues can sort of wake up members to the dynamics at play and sort of bring the conversation to the forefront for folks that maybe previously hadn't been as interested in it before. You know, in terms of the congressional tactics and what's available to members that have these concerns, I think, you know, there's an understanding that two tools really exist at the disposal of Congress to check the executive on questions of war or use of force. And that's funding power of the purse and then the War Powers Act, which you gave a great overview of sort of how we got the War Powers Act in 1973 in the wake of Vietnam. And we've seen the War Powers Act probably get the most floor time, but with limited success in actually, you know, checking the president in a meaningful way that results in, you know, I think what every War Powers resolution that gets brought up for debate is hoping to do, which is, you know, halt the use of force by the president. I'm curious, just maybe for your reflections, thinking back to our time grappling with the War Powers Act and the current usage of it, what are maybe some of the pros and cons of leveraging the War Powers Act as a tool? Yeah. Well, I think the use of the War Powers Act and its tools of privilege are itself a reflection of the dysfunction of Congress and the dysfunction of the relationship between Congress and the presidency. There should be lots of stops between here and a War Powers Resolution, but because Congress operates at such a distance from what should be regular order, particularly as you mentioned the power of the purse. But as you know, Congress is so screwed up at this point that they pass just a small number of huge bills. So the opportunities to actually withhold money for any specific thing is very, very limited. Most of these bills get packaged into these massive omnibus bills, and people don't want to be tagged with voting against some other piece of it, even though they support withholding money for this other thing. So it's very hard to use that tool to impose authority and oversight as the Constitution requires. So I think just the use of the War Powers tool, I think, is kind of a last-ditch effort to finally impose oversight. Um, another thing I'd say is even though I think, you know, successfully doing it in 2019 on Yemen and again, Senator Keynes, Iran or powers resolution in January, 2020, after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, um, I think we're, we're very good exercises. Um, you know, both in kind of laying down. I mean, you remember when we did it in 2019, we went through this whole process, uh, with the parliamentarian because what we were doing was by definition unprecedented. No one had ever actually used the War Powers Act to pass a resolution of that kind before. So we essentially laid down tracks, you know, for the future use of that tool, which is why Senator Cain's resolution almost a year later moved much more quickly because we had kind of answered a lot of these procedural questions in the time we did it. But still, it provided an opportunity for members to go on record. There was a debate. There was the Votorama, which everyone loves. I still get triggered when I hear that word. Um, yeah, for people who don't know, Votarama is, you know, when, when you use a tool like a War Powers Resolution, there is a time, uh, when, when members can offer pretty much any kind of amendment, um, not any kind, it has to be kind of germane to the issue at hand, but you have this whole period of time going hours after hours where members of, of the Senate are offering different amendments to vote up or vote down. Um, it can get pretty weird. Um, but there was value in that, in, in getting members, you know, educating, uh, the public, educating the Senate members, you know, if they're going to put their name on something, raise their hand, yay or nay. Um, that's an opportunity for them to find out about the issue, which is, which, which was part of the, the, the project there. But the upshot as I see it is, you know, that the Congress has now passed two war powers resolutions. Those both went through the Senate and then they were passed by the house and both were vetoed by the president. And in both cases, there was not the necessary number of votes in the Senate to overturn that veto. So, you know, unfortunately, what we found out is that we're in a situation where the president can essentially just go to war whenever he or she wants, if he can count on there not being a super majority voting against that war. Um, and that is just a complete reversal of the, the, the intended constitutional order. And I think that's something that's really troubling because I think even now, I mean, I think the president, President Trump, I would say has even more control, um, over his caucus in the house and over the Republican caucus in the house and the Senate than he did even in 2019 and 2020. Um, but that's, that's the, you know, the situation we find ourselves in is, you know, the Congress is unable even to use the war powers tool, I think, effectively to stop the president from doing one of the most serious thing a president can do, which is using military violence abroad. I totally agree. And I think one of the things that you pointed out that I think is most important for us to really reflect on is this inability for us to overcome a sort of veto-proof majority, to overcome a presidential veto. So, you know, should a war powers resolution succeed? And as I'm looking at the dynamics, you know, forthcoming with a potential engagement, you know, against Iran, I have to ask myself, like, is this, you know, is this one going to be severe enough to where there's enough members on both sides of the aisle that say, wait a minute, we really, really have to check the actions here. You know, we've learned the hard lessons of 2001, 2002, and how extended those conflicts can get, how far reaching those definitions can apply to take us to places that are, you know, not just fighting Al Qaeda perpetrators of 9-11, but can take us to Syria, Libya, you know, and beyond. And, you know, these lessons seem to percolate and to come back around. But it just doesn't seem like there's anything that's ever severe enough to really get members motivated. You know, as you're looking at the Iran situation, you know, I certainly think that this is is an element where, you know, the severity and certainly the consequences for U.S. readiness and our ability to deter in other places, including the Indo-Pacific, including, you know, in the in the European theater to the extent that that's a priority. our ability to act in the Western Hemisphere. All of that would be severely implicated if we get in an extended campaign against Iran. And I'm just curious for your kind of reflections, do you think politically this one could be severe enough to really tip that scale? I mean, I think it could be. I mean, right now we've got the most military firepower we've had in that region since the Iraq War. That's a lot. Now, I think obviously one of the things that makes it much more politically salient is when young Americans are killed and are coming home in coffins. That could well happen. I mean, I think that's what's part of the hesitation here, and I think it's right to be hesitant, is that I think the president understands from his advisors is that this engagement will not look like last June, which was just a couple days of heavy bombing. This could very quickly spiral out of control and draw us into a much longer conflict a much worse conflict in which American coups could be drawn in But that important But it also just the fact that as I see it there is no legal or strategic justification for this at all. Iran does not pose a threat to the United States right now. Obviously, Iran poses a threat to other countries in the region. I would argue it poses far less of a threat than it has posed in the past. Um, but there is, there's nothing like nothing close to any urgency right here, um, to the United States that would justify the president, uh, doing this. And yet, um, because I think multiple administrations have just asserted this kind of authority, um, he seems quite willing to just go ahead and do it. So getting back to your question, um, will members of Congress step up and feel urgency? You know, they may, if this goes poorly, but we should acknowledge that itself is a failure. That is a failure of our system if Congress is only responding to an unauthorized illegal war going badly. They should be feeling this urgency right now. And that's, you know, I think that's an excellent point to make. And that's why I think, you know, to your point earlier about the upshot of using the War Powers Act as a tool, I think, you know, especially in terms of educating members, but also, you know, showing the American public transparently like this is the debate on the table. and these are the things that your representatives are considering. I think that's one of the biggest advantages of, you know, Senator Paul, Senator Kaine, Rep Khanna, Rep Massey deploying these war powers resolutions on Iran because, you know, I think igniting this conversation on the floor and the sort of privileged nature of the conversation is a strategic advantage to forcing this debate. And I think this is absolutely the debate we should be having right now. And you're right. It's a failure if the only time we're going to have the debate is reacting, you know, to something that's already happened. And I think that gets at another question that I've been sort of contemplating, you know, in terms of using the War Powers Act as a tool. I think, you know, we saw this most acutely for Venezuela. You know, when we were using the War Powers Act, we were, you know, actively, we understood from the administration that there were active activities to support the Saudi coalition, Yemen happening, the air-to-air refueling being probably the most poignant and illustrative example. And so our resolution was targeted at this idea of like, we wanted that to stop and stop immediately upon passage. But with the Venezuela War Powers Resolution, the tough thing was when Senator Rubio came in with his letter to the Foreign Relations Committee saying, there's actually not troops in hostilities. We have not deployed ground forces. We executed this operation and there are no forces left behind, that raised a procedural challenge to sort of forcing an action to prevent, you know, at the time what members were most concerned about, which was future deployment of forces in Venezuela that we wanted to have the ability to check from the congressional side. You know, is the War Powers Act as a tool right now, is it set up appropriately to both respond to things that are happening in the present where forces have already been deployed and are present somewhere. But also, is it a tool that can respond to the contemplation of future action? Or is this an area that perhaps needs a relook? Yeah, no, I think the answer is clearly it is not sufficient. The War Powers Resolution has a period of time, I believe it's 60 days. The president, in moments of emergency, when there's not time to come to Congress for a debate and a vote to authorize force, the president is authorized to use force to defend the United States and its interests, but then must come to Congress to get that authorization. And that's, of course, not what's happening here. I mean, this administration, and I would say not only this administration, but previous administrations have kind of used that window to say, oh, we're just going to have a little war and then, oh, we're out of the war. So, you know, what are you actually going to vote on? That's clearly a violation of the spirit of what the Constitution lays down, which is that, you know, the president needs permission. And there's no plausible argument that the Venezuela operation was necessary to protect, you know, to defend the United States or its interests. There's not that argument right now for Iran. But again, this is, even though I think Trump is bending this out of completely out of recognition, he is not the first. I mean, let's go back to the Obama administration, the argument that was made by the Obama administration about the Libya operation. You know, it was Harold Coe, who was a State Department lawyer and others who came up with this. Well, the War Powers Resolution only applies if American forces are physically on the ground taking fire, which is utterly bizarre. Which, you know, by that definition, you know, Britain and Germany were not actually at war during the Blitz because there were no German forces taking fire. There was just bombing. I mean, just on its face, it's absurd. But it shows you that administration lawyers of both parties will come up with these bizarre Plato legal justifications for executive power whenever they have to. But to get to your question, yes, absolutely. There needs to be the War Powers Resolution needs to be rethought, redrafted. Its authorities need to be tightened and sharpened. There was an effort to do this, which, again, Senator Lee was a part of, along with Senator Sanders and Senator Murphy, the National Security Reform Act. I believe that's what it was called. National Security Powers Act. National Security Powers Act, yes, of 2021, which a fantastic bill. I still cite it all the time. You know, people, we can put a link into it, I guess, here on the website. But I really hope even if a future Congress doesn't pass it in full, I think its various parts are still very, very worthwhile in terms of, you know, recodifying Congress's authorities over this hugely important issue. Yeah, I have to imagine, particularly in the legal justification space, like it's sad to think about, but I have to imagine that in the administration right now, the Office of Legal Counsel, their national security lawyers must be the most over-caffeinated people in D.C. right now. Right. But again, just to restate, I mean, this is a problem with both parties is that these lawyers, it's not necessarily that they come up with legal arguments for, you know, it's their job is to give legal cover to, you know, whatever the president wants to do. I mean, going back to the George W. Bush administration, the George, you know, the Bush administration, Dick Cheney was like, we want to torture people. So can you come up with a legal argument for why torture isn't torture? And of course they did. Um, so that's, that's also, I think, and, you know, other, other experts have raised the, the need for Congress to have the capacity to respond to those arguments because, you know, administration lawyers, if they provide the goal, the purpose of that is to give legal cover to the administration for any future consequences. So if they are challenged legally for their actions, they can say, well, we spoke to our lawyers and they told us that this was fine. So it does make sense for Congress to have a capacity to make its own arguments to say, no, that that is completely invalid and ridiculous and have some mechanism for adjudicating that so that administrations can't just keep giving themselves permission slips to do whatever they want. Oh, absolutely. And this is actually something that, you know, we contemplated heavily, you know, in the discussions of the creation of the National Security Powers Act, because, you know, having worked for an excellent constitutional lawyer, you know, one of the things that came up most frequently was this idea that, you know, the Supreme Court would likely end up kicking any sort of actual conflict between the branches back to Congress anyway, making it a non-justiciable political question. So Congress grappling with sort of what legal justifications are on the table from the executive branch and being able to offer a sufficient challenge to them and force that debate on the floor. Right. Because, I mean, I think one of the things that Senator Lee always said and stuck with me was this idea that, you know, the executive and the Congress are not co-equal branches. Like Congress was given enumerated powers that elevate it above the executive branch. Yes, there's checks and balances, but it is not a co-equal branch. Congress was imbued with the power to be more powerful than the executive for a reason, you know, as part of the founding. And so I think that's been, you know, a foundational element that has been kind of forgotten and lost in the debate. And hopefully Congress can, if there's any hope of optimism, hopefully the debates that are happening now can reinvigorate that spirit. it. But since you mentioned the National Security Powers Act, you know, just as we're contemplating some of the elements that, you know, if we had our druthers would make, you know, would be the most helpful in terms of reform efforts, especially for our friends, you know, out as part of this political movement or coalition contemplating ways to help Congress reform you know the tools it has at its disposal You know one of the things that stuck out to me you know in terms of most helpful elements of reform in the National Security Powers Act was just forcing Congress to, if it does provide an AUMF or a declaration of war, forcing Congress to revisit that, you know, on a certain time horizon. I think for the National Security Powers Act, we set it at every two years after the passage of an AUMF, you know, Congress had to relook Maybe we maybe maybe that timeline should be shortened. But, you know, I'm curious, maybe, you know, either in the National Security Powers Act or just things you've contemplated on your own, what sticks out to you as some of the most poignant areas for reform and big ideas in the space? Yeah, I think my answer would be that there are a lot of great ideas. You and I worked on a lot of those ideas when we were we were on the Hill. But ultimately, this there is no legal fix to this problem. There is a political fix. And I think that is much tougher because I think, you know, not news to listeners that we're in a deeply polarized era. We have kind of lost a shared sense of the American political project, not to put it, you know, that's the reality. And I think members of both parties are very, very disinclined to hold a president of their own party responsible. I mean, we saw this under Biden. Democrats were very, very hesitant to really, you know, to really criticize really abuses of executive authority. I mean, I'll go back. I remember the first time that I believe it was February or March of 2021 when the Biden administration struck Iran connected militia groups in Syria, I believe. And the justification that they gave, it didn't even cite one of the AUMFs. It just cited Article 2 authority, just saying, well, American troops, American personnel were here and they were under threat, so we struck these other militias in a third country. And when one considers the very questionable authorities under which those troops were there in the first place, this is a way to bootstrap the U.S. into war pretty much anywhere you want. If like our troops are in danger here and we want to strike this third country for X reason, I mean, frankly, in my view, that was a more expansive view of executive power than even Trump had asserted in the first term. Now, I think Trump has gone farther in his second term. But all of this to say presidents of both parties have been part of abusing this power and members of Congress of both parties are guilty of allowing their presidents of their party to keep doing it. So I think, you know, I think thinking up legislation is important, but ultimately this is a political challenge, finding some measure of bipartisan and transpartisan agreement. It's going to take, you know, Democrats agreeing to do it when there's a Democrat in the White House and Republicans agreeing to do it when there's a Republican in the White House. That is the only way to really, you know, start to solve this problem. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we were probably part of one of the last, sadly, cadres of staffers that were, you know, willing to get in a room and really have these conversations, have the debate and acknowledge, you know, we may be unlikely allies on other political questions, but on this, there's alignment. You know, my hope is that, you know, my hope is that staff can someday get back to that spirit of working together. And because I, you know, and our members worked well together on this question. And, you know, I think it's fair that, you know, to acknowledge that perhaps Senator Sanders and Senator Lee may have had different, you know, fundamental reasons driving them. But we agreed on the question. And that is what at the end of the day mattered the most. And so, you know, hopefully hopefully there's some hope that we can get back to that. But I agree with you. It's, you know, fundamentally a political question and any reform is going to take, you know, political appetite just as much as it's going to take legislative acumen. Right. Right. And it takes members of Congress having the courage to take risks. Right. Because as you said, Senator Lee and Senator Sanders agree on very, very little. They have different points of view on a whole range of questions. But they agreed on this very important issue. And that's and working together on that is effective politics. Um, surely took some criticisms from their own side. Um, but I think at the end of the day, they achieved something really important. Um, and I think I, I, you know, just speaking as someone who worked on the democratic side, I think there was a pretty wide acknowledgement in the democratic caucus that something important was done there, even though we had to drag a number of offices along kicking and screaming to get, to get to the final result. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, I guess on that spirit, I mean, hope maybe we can end on a, a positive note. I mean, And I know that the prospects certainly, you know, on the Iran situation look grim. And, you know, you highlighted, I think, accurately and probably the legal justification if I open my crystal ball and what we might be seeing from, you know, the lawyers who are over-caffeinated and working very hard to come up with a justification on Iran right now. You know, certainly our legacy-basing posture in the region and potential threat to that may be what is foretold to us as the legal justification. But, you know, as as members, their staffs are undertaking an effort right now to to push back against this action. And, you know, by knocking on wood here, by all accounts, either, you know, deter the president from taking such action or stopping it after it's already happened. And, you know, what sort of words of wisdom or words of optimism would you would you send out to those folks that are trying to trying to push back, trying to undertake reform, trying to reassert Congress's rightful constitutional role? I would just, you know, make the argument that this is illegal. I mean, it's unstrategic. It's the president has not laid out what he's actually trying to achieve and how he expects to get there. I would also just raise the point like this is Trump violating a very, very important commitment he made on the campaign trail. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump, he clearly said he wanted to be an anti-war president. He wanted to be a president that ended wars, not started them. And there's clearly a large constituency of voters, I think of both parties and independents, who agree with that. You know, it's something that I've cited this piece of data a lot. But every president since the end of the Cold War, in every election since the end of the Cold War, with the one possible exception of 2004, the more anti-war president has won. The more restraint-oriented president has won. And again, I'm not going to pretend that that is why they won, but I do think this is now a pretty interesting set of data. It does suggest that there is a real constituency in this country for a more restrained foreign policy that's not just launching wars here and there all over the place. And I think Trump appealed to that constituency effectively in 2016 and in 2024. And he's now now he's already broken that promises in multiple places, including Iran before, and he seems poised to do it again. So I think making that argument, if it should reach him, who knows if it'll work, but I think people should make it. Yeah, I would echo everything you said. And I would also offer to the staff and the members that are undertaking this project just, you know, now is the time. If I've learned one thing from the Senate that's perhaps most powerful, it's the power of Senate procedure. And I would leverage every element of Senate procedure that you can to force this conversation because I think it's incredibly important, but also to force these arguments that Matt was discussing out into the open so that at the very end of the day, at least everyone can say that their members were aware, their members had an opportunity to debate it, to speak on it, and to make their case if they disagreed, but that it's out in the open for the American people, the folks that are going to be most affected long term economically and, you know, blood and treasure wise, if we do undertake this action, you know, so that they know what's going on. But, you know, thank you, Matt, for this conversation. Thank you for for joining us to our listeners to listen to two former Senate staffers have a heart-to-heart and relive the glory days. Maybe we should play Bruce Springsteen's song on the way out. I hear he's doing a great concert coming up, so maybe that's fortuitous. But thank you for joining us. If you liked what you heard here, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and check out our content at the Cato.org. Matt, where can our listeners learn more from your folks and from you? Check out the Center for International Policy at internationalpolicy.org. you can find my tweeting too much at Matt Duss on X and on Blue Sky. And thanks so much for having me. It was delightful to talk to you. Yeah, thanks for being here. And I can attest Matt's tweets are great. So you should absolutely go check. I don't need to hear that. I don't need I don't need more encouragement. Well, thank you for listening. And we look forward to having you join us again soon.
