Congress has given final approval on a resolution to end American military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, in an unprecedented attempt to curtail the president’s power to go to war and a sweeping rebuke to Donald Trump’s foreign policy.
The House voted 247 to 175 to send the resolution to the president’s desk, where it is likely to be met with a veto. Sixteen Republicans broke ranks and joined Democrats in the effort. The Senate passed the resolution last month, with seven Republicans voting in favor of it.
The resolution’s passage sets up another confrontation between Congress and Trump, who has already threatened to veto it. The White House has said the resolution raises “serious constitutional concerns”.
The vote marks the first time Congress has invoked the 1973 War Powers Act to curb the executive’s power to take the country into a conflict without congressional approval. It is aimed at ending US involvement in the long-running Yemen conflict.
Under intense public and congressional pressure, the Pentagon stopped providing aerial refueling in November for Saudi warplanes on Yemen sorties. Benjamin Friedman, policy director for the Defense Priorities thinktank, said that most of the remaining US involvement in the conflict was in the providing intelligence support for the coalition.
“It will be a mix of intelligence including signals intercepts, overhead surveillance from satellites and aircraft, including drones,” Friedman said. “Exactly just how dependent the Saudis and UAE are on the US is hard to say.”
The war in Yemen, which has just entered its fifth year, is estimated to have killed more than 60,000 people and left millions on the brink of starvation, creating what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The two lead sponsors of the measure, the independent senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna issued a joint statement saying: “Today, the US House of Representatives took a clear stand against war and famine and for Congress’s war powers by voting to end our complicity in the war in Yemen.
“This is the first time in the history of this nation that a War Powers Resolution has passed the House and Senate and made it to the president’s desk,” the statement said. “Finally, the US Congress has reclaimed its constitutional authority over matters of war and peace.”
At a press conference after the vote, Khanna told reporters that he remained “hopeful” Trump could be persuaded to sign the resolution. He said a bipartisan group of lawmakers will send a letter to Trump, requesting a “good faith” meeting to make the case that the Yemen resolution “is a humanitarian issue not a political issue”.
The White House did not return a request for comment.
Sanders added that the vote sends a “clear” message from Congress that the US “should not be led into war by a despotic, undemocratic, murderous regime”.
Senator Chris Murphy, another Democratic co-sponsor of the resolution, said the conflict also poses a “national security threat”, pointing to reports that some US weapons sold to Saudi Arabia and its allies have ended up in the hands of brigades and militias affiliated with al-Qaida.
“This is a moral statin on this nation every day that we continue to take part in this war but it is also making this country much weaker,” he said.
Many peace campaigners believe that the only way of winding down a war, that is in danger of triggering mass starvation that could kill millions, is to increase US pressure on Riyadh to end its aerial bombing campaign, and more actively pursue a peace deal with Houthi rebels.
According to a new report by the Centre for International Policy published on Thursday, total US arms sales to Saudi Arabia in 2018 were $4.5 bn, including $579 million in firearms.
“The death toll is mounting and our country’s hands aren’t clean – just recently, we saw more civilians killed in Yemen as coalition airstrikes and intense fighting hit hospitals,” Scott Paul, the lead Yemen specialist at the Oxfam charity, said. “The vote brings the issue to President Trump’s desk, where a veto would end any lingering question of where his priorities lie.”
The vote does not stop the billions of dollars in US arms sales to Riyadh, but another bipartisan measure making its way through the Senate is intended to limit those sales, in response to the murder last October of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and the Saudi-led coalition’s role in the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. Trump is also expected to veto that bill.
Should Trump issue a veto, Khanna says Congress can consider other legislative steps, including reconsidering the terms of the US alliance with the kingdom and the billions of dollars in US arms sales to Riyadh. The administration could also apply pressure on the Saudis to lift the blockade stopping food and medicine from reaching the staring population, he said.
Khanna said the crisis in Yemen had personal resonance for him as the grandson of an Indian freedom fighter who was imprisoned during the West Bengal famine of 1943, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3 million Indians in what was then a British territory.
“I grew up being told stories of the utter indifference of the British and the rest of the world towards that famine, a famine that could have been prevented,” Khanna said. “So when I had the opportunity in Congress to try to make a difference, to make sure history doesn’t make that same mistake … I tried to do my part.”