Wars require authorization. Spending requires scrutiny. Diplomacy requires investment.

The Constitution assigns Congress the authority to declare war and the President the role of Commander in Chief. The 1973 War Powers Resolution attempted to restore congressional authority after the Vietnam-era expansion of executive war-making. In practice, every administration since has treated the WPR as a notification requirement rather than a constraint, and Congress has rarely tested it. The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed three days after 9/11, authorized force against those responsible for the attacks and those who 'harbored' them. Four administrations have stretched it to authorize force against ISIS, AQAP in Yemen, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and various other groups across more than a dozen countries — many of which did not exist in 2001 and had no operational connection to the original authorization. The 2002 Iraq AUMF and the 1991 Gulf War authorization remain technically in force despite the operations they authorized having ended decades ago. Repeal proposals for these stale authorizations have produced bipartisan majorities in both chambers in recent sessions, with broad agreement that authorities must be matched to current operations and time-limited. Modernization of the War Powers Resolution itself — clarifying the introduction-of-forces threshold, requiring affirmative congressional approval for sustained operations, ending the rolling-extension pattern — is a longer-running fight.

The Department of Defense has been required to produce a clean financial audit since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. It has never done so. Annual audit attempts since 2018 have produced repeated failures, with auditors unable to verify trillions of dollars in assets and transactions. The pattern has implications well beyond accounting: weapons-system cost overruns are pervasive, contractor accountability is weak, and Congress cannot meaningfully oversee what it funds. Reform options span scales. Substantive cost reform: full-scope audits with consequences for failure, performance-based budgeting that ties continued funding to demonstrated outcomes, restoration of the comptroller's office to meaningful authority. Contractor accountability: stricter rules on cost-plus contracts, real penalties for performance failures, executive accountability for major program failures, expanded use of fixed-price contracts where feasible. Strategic reform: smaller, more capable forces oriented to actual current threats rather than legacy postures. The fiscal stakes are large — Pentagon spending is roughly half of the federal discretionary budget. Even modest efficiency gains free substantial resources for other public priorities.

The Arms Export Control Act creates a tiered review process for foreign military sales: notifications, holds by the chairs and ranking members of the relevant committees, and floor procedures for the largest transfers. In practice, the system has eroded. Most transfers proceed without meaningful congressional examination. Notifications often arrive after key political windows have closed. End-use monitoring — the requirement that recipient governments use US weapons consistent with stated purposes — is structurally weak; documented violations rarely produce halts in subsequent transfers. The substantive policy options: stricter Leahy Law enforcement (the existing prohibition on transfers to units credibly accused of gross human rights violations), modernization of the AECA review process, public disclosure of recipient and end-use information that's currently classified, conditions on transfers to specific governments based on humanitarian and strategic concerns, and Senate-confirmed accountability for the State Department officials who certify transfers.

The State Department's annual budget is roughly 5% of the Pentagon's. USAID's budget is below 1% of the federal budget. Both agencies are routinely staffed below authorized levels, with hiring freezes, attrition, and political appointments compounding workforce gaps. The asymmetry has consequences. When diplomacy fails, the alternative is often military action that costs orders of magnitude more. When development fails, the alternative includes humanitarian crises, refugee flows, and conflict that subsequent intervention has to address. Reform options: substantial Foreign Service hiring and retention investment, USAID protection from the budget pressure that has hollowed it out over recent administrations, climate diplomacy and pandemic preparedness as core State Department functions rather than discretionary add-ons, multilateral institution funding (UN, WHO, IMF) defended against repeated political attacks, and integration of public diplomacy and information operations into a coherent strategy rather than fragmented across multiple agencies.

Covert action — operations the US government conducts without acknowledging — is governed by the National Security Act and a network of presidential findings, briefings, and committee notifications. The system was reformed substantially after the Church Committee revelations of the 1970s, but the post-9/11 expansion of intelligence authorities and the increasing use of military and intelligence community capabilities for what would historically have been covert activity have outpaced the oversight infrastructure. The substantive reforms: real-time notification requirements (rather than after-the-fact briefings), expanded Gang-of-Eight access to operational details, sunset provisions on authorities that lack public justification, declassification of major findings after specified periods, and limitations on the use of military forces in covert capacities. The political constraint is bipartisan: members of both parties have generally been reluctant to actively challenge intelligence community equities. Civil society pressure and limited but persistent congressional minority work have produced incremental reforms that aggregate over time.