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Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the David Frum Show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic. My guest this week will be Alistair Campbell, co host of the extraordinarily successful British podcast the Rest Is Politics. Previously he served as the most intimate aide of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and he worked especially in that capacity on the US UK Relationship and in this time of war in the Middle East. I thought Campbell, who was such a central figure in the US UK partnership in the Iraq war of 2003, could cast light on what is right and what is wrong in the US UK relationship in this war in the Persian Gulf. My book this week will be a novel, the Director, by the German writer Daniel kelman, published in 2023 and translated in 2025. It's a fascinating study of moral compromise in the production of art and also relevant to many of the questions Americans are wrestling with today. Before I turn to any of that, let me begin with some opening thoughts about the raging and intensifying and escalating and prolonging conflict that the United States is waging in the Persian Gulf against the Islamic Republic of Iran. I record this podcast on the morning of Monday. You will probably watch or listen to it somewhat later, and so you may know more about current events than I will not try to keep up with the military situation in the Gulf. I want to talk instead about an increasing constitutional crisis that this war poses at home. This war, as at the time I record, and probably still at the time you watch or listen to it, has not in any way been authorized by Congress, and it needs to be emphasized how unusual this is. I composed a short list of the major conflicts the United States has fought since 1945 Korea, Vietnam, the invasion of Granada in 1983, the Panama invasion in 1989, the Gulf War in 1990, Somalia, the Kosovo war, the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libya war, the ISIS war that started in 2014 as sort of an aftershock of the Iraq War. Now it is impressive how many of these wars had explicit congressional authorization. The Gulf War was authorized by Congress. The Afghanistan war was authorized by Congress. The Iraq war was authorized by Congress. Now other wars were not, but they still had a legal basis. The Korean War, for example, was not authorized by Congress because in 1950Americans believed very intensely in the integrity of the United Nations. They had yet to be disillusioned by that. And in the United Nations Charter it said that acts of aggression would be met by the combined action of United Nations Security Council members. When North Korea invaded South Korea in the summer of 1950. There was a secure the Soviet Union was boycotting the United nations at the time. And so there was able to pass a Security Council resolution calling on member nations to support South Korea against North Korea. And so President Truman argued, not only do I not need authorization by Congress, but Congress has already authorized the war by authorizing us to join the United Nations Charter which calls on member nations to do what didn't happen to in the League of Nations and enforce the orders of the United nations by military power. Now lawyers will argue about all of this. And of course the United nations didn't go the way Americans hoped it would in 1950. But Truman thought, and Americans agreed, he had a strong legal basis for fighting the Korean War in the authorizing act of the United Nations. In the same way George H.W. bush's actions in Panama to overthrow the dictator Noriega, which were not authorized by Congress, were presented by him as as actions in support of the Panama Canal treaty between Panama and the United States, which he argued the dictator Noriega was violating by his drug dealing and other other crimes. So if not an authorizing act by Congress, then an authorizing act by some kind of treaty of the United States. Most of the other wars that were fought without authorization were quite limited in scope. Grenada, Kosovo, Libya. Kosovo was costly in money, but not in American human life. The Libyan intervention was not an expensive war in either terms of money or human life, and neither was Grenada. So the precedence of the day argue these are policing actions. They don't require supplemental appropriation by Congress. We can do them based on executive authority. But big wars require either a pre existing treaty or an authorization. Both the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were authorized by a vote of Congress. And the war against ISIS was a continuation of the Iraq war. And the Obama administration argued that the Iraq authorizing resolution still held. It was not a dead letter. In 2013, President Obama considered getting involved in the Syrian civil war and he asked for an authorizing resolution from Congress. And when Congress voted no, he chose not to act. That had many other consequences, but it preserved the theory that congressional resolution is necessary or authorization is necessary for the United States to fight a big costly and dangerous war. So Iran really is a departure here. It's a war. There's no treaty, it's obviously a major war. And there's no pretense, no pretext, no initiative, no beginning of an act of a request for authorization by Congress is not authorized in any way. Now some have argued on the basis of this that because of that, the war is illegal and should be stopped as quickly as possible. But that's kind of a fantasy. I mean, the war is on. It is halfway through or midway through or substantially through its stated objectives of reducing Iranian military capacity. We don't know what the casualties are on the Iranian side. They're very big. America has also taken losses. American allies in the region are under missile fire. This is like parking an airplane in midair. You cannot stop this war right now and say, oh, well, let's pretend that never happened. This war will have to be fought to some kind of resolution, either successful or unsuccessful. But there's no stopping it midway through. And that makes the absence of congressional authorization even more glaring. An unhappy truth that must be told is many in Congress prefer it this way. See, the secret of the Iran war is it's not actually as unpopular in Congress as it seems to be in the country. And there are many in Congress, especially on the Democratic side, but not only, who support the goals of this war, broadly support the way in which it's being conducted, but don't trust Donald Trump, don't want to tangle with the progressive wing of their party that wants to stop the war altogether and prefer not to cast a vote one way or another. And so they are becoming increasingly compliant and even complicit with President Trump's decision preference to just do everything on his own without asking Congress. But Congress needs to make itself heard. And this pattern in Iran is a reminder of how much of the usurpation of the Trump administration is enabled by the willing compliance of Congress, and not only Republicans in Congress, with assertions of presidential authority that they don't disagree with, but don't want to be on record one way or the other about. And this is not. This is not a stable. This is not a constitutional outcome. And this is an outcome that anyway can't last, because sooner or later, the Trump administration will come to Congress with a request for money because the war is costing a billion dollars a day, some say $2 billion a day. By the administration's own account, it had cost more than $11 billion as of the end of last week. Those figures will surely rise. They're probably understated in all kinds of ways. There will have to be some kind of supplemental resolution that will pass House and Senate to pay for the war that Trump started. And Congress's dereliction of duty not being present during the conduct of the war will meet its judgment when, at some point when the war is over or well on its way to being over or much more advanced anyway than it is now. Congress has asked, will you pay for it or not? And Congress will presumably vote to pay for it. So since they're going to do that, if they're going to be present at the funding stage, they need to be present at the war fighting stage. This is especially important with an administration that as untrustworthy as the Trump administration, because the administration is up to things that Congress needs to stop. Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, as he styles himself, Pete Hegseth has given press conferences in which he has invoked the possibility of American atrocities. He has said there will be no quarter given, meaning no one will be allowed to surrender. If true, that's a war crime. But Congress needs to be overseeing is this war fought in accordance with American values and the laws of war? Are you taking prisoners when prisoners surrender? Are the prisoners treated properly? Are you doing other things to avoid the taint of atrocity that seems to so fascinate and delight Pete Hegseth? Congress also needs to be overseeing the question of how is this war not only being paid, but how is it giving off revenue? President Trump has taken lavish gifts from many of the countries that the United States is protecting this war. He took a plane from Qatar that the United States is protecting. He and his family took a major investment in their corporation from state sponsored business in the United Arab Emirates at the end of the Gulf War in 1990, 91, President George H.W. bush gained for the United States major payments from US allies in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They contributed to the costs of the 1990 war, and those contributions went into the U.S. treasury, where they offset the cost of the war according to provisions established by Congress. We want to make sure that President Trump, if he repeats this program, repeats it in an equally legal way, and that none of the contributions from allies, if there are any, go into his pocket, those of his family, those of his Cabinet, that he doesn't turn contributions by allies to American costs into bribes by allies to, to the Trump family. We want to make sure of that. That's Congress's job. No emoluments, no atrocities. They have to be present. And that means they need some kind of oversight structure. And that means they need to be present in some way in the approval and authorization of this war. They can't just wash their hands of it and say, well, if it leads to results we like, we'll accept them, and if it leads to results we don't like, we will condemn them. But in the meantime, we won't do anything because we know that the progressive demand stop the war is meaningless and irresponsible and impossible and just. Just words that don't mean anything. We don't want to be with them, but we don't want to be with the administration. So we'll abstain and not be responsible at all. The ideal of constitutional government is not only a restraint on the power of the President and the powers of other branches of government. It's an affirmative duty imposed on everyone in government and enforced in the first place by Congress. This war purports to be a war of liberation for the oppressed people of Iran. I hope that war aim is true and is met. It purports to be a war of self defense for the American people and I hope that claim is true and will be justified by the event. But whatever its motives, however its conduct, whatever fine goals we assert for the war, the war needs to be fought as a constitutional war as previous American wars always were. And the job of making it a constitutional war is not going to be done is not of interest to the administration. The job of making this a constitutional war will fall on Congress, mostly Democrats, but also Republicans. It's a duty that Congress has and they should stop refraining from it and assert themselves as the first branch of government defined by the first article of the Constitution and entrusted with the war making powers and the peacemaking powers of the United States. And now my dialogue with Alistair Campbell. But first, a quick break. Alistair Campbell co hosts the leading British political podcast the Rest is Politics. But that is only the most recent accomplishment in a career. Glittering with them press secretary and chief speechwriter to Tony Blair. In the great labor victory of 1997, he led the strategy that won two more majorities for the United Kingdom Labour Party in the elections of 2001 and 2005. In government, among many other portfolios, he was crucial to building and sustaining the US UK partnership after the 911 attacks. A partnership that came under fire in Britain during the long and difficult wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's an author too of some 18 books if I have the tally right, notably of many volumes of selections, notably of selections from his voluminous diaries. Expelled from the Labour Party in 2017 for his all out opposition to British exit from the European Union at a time when the then leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, was slyly temporizing with Brexit, Campbell now looms above the party system. Like the monarchy or the common law. I've had the privilege of appearing as a Guest on the on the Restless Politics. I'm honored to host a return visit by Alistair Campbell. David Fromm show. Alistair, thank you so much.