As President Obama detailed his response to the growing ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria,  outlining limited bombing campaigns, arming rebels, and launching aerial attacks against the strengthening group, large legal questions loom over the legitimacy of going forward without congressional authorization. Though the administration has now established its short game against ISIS, few legal and constitutional constructs currently provide Obama with the opportunity to create a sustained effort against the group. His greatest tool is the one which has gone disused since 2002: the Authorized Use of Military Force.

The AUMF is a legal document passed by Congress which grants the president jurisdiction for military activities. The current AUMF for intervention in Iraq is considered by many legal scholars to be in serious need of a reboot as its original aims have been stretched to their legal limits. Originally passed to “[…] defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq,” the AUMF specifies that it provides authorization to expel threats to American security emanating from Iraqi actors. What ISIS, so far, has accomplished is domestic terrorism within Syria and Iraq exclusively. The already worn-out legal justification for intervention under the standing AUMF is invalidated, at present, by the lack of credible threat to American security posed by ISIS.

Approaching Congress to authorize war is, as Obama experienced with talks of Syrian intervention, challenging. Talks of intervening directly in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s regime died when the legal route to war was taken. This time, the president believes he has the legal authority to engage with ISIS in Iraq, bypassing the need for congressional authorization. So as much as the president has responded to the bipartisan call for intervention against ISIS, what is the administration’s long-term strategy to curtail the group’s growth? The answer might rest within congressional support after all, despite prior failures.

The beheading of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff provided galvanizing moments for a war-weary president—paving a more popular path toward intervention than witnessed when the administration weighed its options to intervene in the Syrian Civil War in 2013. While 76 percent of the nation currently supports military campaigns to quell the spread of ISIS, the president has also determined that the legal authorization of a sclerotic Congress will not be his path toward direct action—leaving Congress to weigh in on provisions to Syrian groups versus tackling the thornier question of authorization for military force.

Though many may hail this as a bold move for a president who is currently accused of having a toothless foreign policy grasp on increasing global unrest, the decision to forgo congressional approval and the promotion of a new AUMF creates more questions than answers, both in terms of constitutionality and also with regards to long-term planning for regional military action. Action against Bashar al-Assad was ultimately unpopular with Congress, but there’s bipartisan support for action against ISIS, with Bob Corker, Rand Paul, Tim Kaine, and Gary King all speaking out in favor of consultation with the president on a plan of action.

A oft-forgotten relic of American history is that the nation has only declared war 11 times in its history—one of the key sources of power bestowed upon Congress from a constitutional perspective. As warfare evolved, so did the methods by which the government conducted war from a formal and legal perspective, eschewing formal war declarations for authorizations of force within asymmetrical skirmishes against unrecognized governmental and military powers. In recent history, President George H. W. Bush’s Congress used the AUMF framework to pave the way toward action against Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1991, and George W. Bush was provided two separate AUMFs for the Global War on Terror and the 2002 Iraq War. To date, the 2002 AUMF provides the current context for American intervention in the nation, which has received scrutiny as the practical rationale for U.S. intervention shifted from toppling the Hussein regime to nation-building and counterterrorism. The current AUMF, however, has no sunset date which would provide an expiration period on its legitimacy, creating a landscape of perpetual war without a clearly defined end goal.

The flipside of this evolution, however, is the creation of hazy, open-ended definitions of why the nation goes to war—and how intervention comes to a close. Usage of the current AUMF relies heavily on its legal justification to attack and detain “persons who were part of, or substantially supported, Taliban or al-Qaida forces, or associated forces […]” The authorization also specifies that its objectives are to use force against “those nations, organizations, or persons” responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington, which led many legal scholars to call for a revised AUMF well before ISIS crystallized its power through Iraq and Syria. Additionally the link between ISIS, al-Qaida, and the Taliban, is hazy at best—creating further ambiguity in a legal document which is already stretched thin. At Opinio Juris, Cornell Law professor Jens David Ohlin makes a case for why the current AUMF won’t hold water in the fight against ISIS, writing:

[…] There appears to be little evidence that this link exists between ISIS and al-Qaeda. Of course, ISIS was once part of (or closely associated with al-Qaeda), and therefore at that time the AUMF arguably covered ISIS. Before its current manifestation, ISIS was considered an Iraq franchise of al-Qaeda, operating under the banner of Osama bin Laden and ostensibly subordinating itself under his operational control.

That relationship no longer exists. ISIS no longer operates under the banner of al-Qaeda, nor is it operationally subordinate to what is left of al-Qaeda core or any of the other al-Qaeda franchises. And famously, al-Qaeda effectively excommunicated ISIS for not following its central directives regarding target selection. Al-Qaeda officials correctly concluded that ISIS’s strategy was counter-productive because it alienated Muslims, and they promptly disassociated themselves from a group that was too radical even by al-Qaeda’s standards. So the operational link is broken, and has long-since been broken.

On top of the AUMF’s stated goal of targeting al-Qaida, ISIS’s separation on ideological and organizational levels creates an added need to provide a revised AUMF. The current provision covers direct action against al-Qaida, omitting any legal flexibility for curtailing the spread of ISIS through Iraq and Syria. As al-Qaida proved an imminent threat to American national security, the rationale behind intervention was also markedly different than the current mission to curtail the fanatical spread of ISIS ideology throughout the region.

In 2007, Senator Obama specifically addressed his intent for presidents to act through appropriate congressional channels for interventions such as the one proposed this past Wednesday, telling the Boston Globe that, “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” In last night’s statement, Obama stated, “ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria, and the broader Middle East—including American citizens, personnel and facilities. If left unchecked, these terrorists could pose a growing threat beyond that region—including to the United States,” stopping short of providing clear and unequivocal  evidence of possible attacks against the American homeland, which would have otherwise provided umbrella for attacks under the current AUMF. Obama continued, “While we have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland, ISIL leaders have threatened America and our allies.”

During a summer wherein Obama was attacked for his foreign policy, he now has the opportunity for support from a hawkish Congress to attack ISIS. With the wind at his back, the president could allow Congress to approve an AUMF which better states America’s intentions in Iraq and addresses the evolving threat to the nation—and our own nation’s—security. Instead, however, the calls to “go it alone” that rang loudly during the bitterest moments of fighting in Syria seem to be winning the day—to the detriment of the nation’s long-term global grand strategy.

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Brian O’Connor is a Blog Editor for The Brooklyn Quarterly as well as a freelance writer and editor. By day, he is a book editor focusing on politics and current affairs.