A REPUBLICAN VIEWPOINT: CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY
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"Effective foreign policy requires a genuine and continuous bipartisan engagement between the President and Congress," says Senator Gordon H. Smith, a Republican from Oregon. "Without such engagement," he says, "the content of U.S. policy will be characterized increasingly by ambiguity and inconsistency." |
It has been said that the United States Constitution is "an invitation to struggle" among the three branches of government -- the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. This has certainly been the case in national security policy where the President and Congress have overlapping roles.
The Constitution declares the President to be the commander in chief and the nation's chief diplomat. In these capacities, he is responsible for the military defense of our national interests, including the deployment of U.S. military forces, and diplomacy, including the negotiation of treaties.
But the Constitution also grants Congress very significant national security powers. The Senate is responsible for the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of individuals nominated by the President to fill key posts in his administration. Congress also is granted significant "powers of the purse." By using its authorities over the federal budget, Congress can, and often does, check and balance presidential initiatives.
These overlapping powers make it important for the President to respect the views of Congress and to robustly engage often varied views on foreign policy that exist in the Senate and the House of Representatives. This is, of course, a more challenging undertaking when the President and the majority in one or both Congressional chambers are of different parties -- but such situations make engagement all the more imperative. The success or failure of our international policies depends upon the leadership of the President, namely whether or not he is concerned more with politics than with policy.
The recent extension of membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary is perhaps the best example of how a President should lead and engage the Congress on matters concerning major international treaties.
NATO enlargement was first promoted by the Republican-led Congress, which facilitated what some experts have called unprecedented dialogue and information-sharing between the two branches. That engagement occurred not only through formal hearings of the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Appropriations, and Budget Committees, but also through countless informal meetings and conversations between Members of Congress and senior administration officials in the course of the two years leading up to the April 1999 vote.
Moreover, both the Senate and the President took institutional steps to deepen their engagement on NATO enlargement. In April 1997 the Senate leadership established the Senate NATO Observer Group to help ensure that the chamber was fully abreast of and involved in key decisions before the NATO alliance. Foremost on its agenda was NATO enlargement. On this issue, the NATO Observer Group met some 17 times, not only with administration officials, but also with NATO's Secretary General and numerous other European officials.
The administration established its own special office, the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office, led by a special adviser to the President. His mandate was to promote the cause of enlargement both in Congress and among the American people. At the recommendation of the Enlargement Ratification Office, the President included representatives of the Senate NATO Observer Group in his delegations to the 1997 and 1999 NATO summits.
The Senate's historic April 30, 1999 vote (80-19) ratifying the first round of NATO enlargement was a model of how a President and Congress should work together on matters of foreign policy. Policy took precedence over politics, and the final outcome was a success because of it.
In contrast, the Senate's rejection of the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) highlighted the risks a President takes when he loses sight of Congress's responsibility and authority under the Constitution and addresses key matters through the lens of politics rather than policy.
The Clinton Administration did not lead the effort on CTBT in the same way it did during the NATO enlargement debate. It did not take opportunities to prepare for the debate or engage Congress on CTBT with the same energy and commitment it had dedicated to NATO enlargement, leaving Congress to fill the vacuum created by a breakdown of executive leadership on the issue. Some Congressional leaders had been critical of the CTBT's enforcement and verification provisions and its potential impact upon our nuclear arsenal. Knowing of these concerns, the President should have been more engaged and resolved the concerns of Republican senators or, at a minimum, restrained Democratic senators from baiting and inciting the Republican leadership.
Unfortunately, the issue of an important treaty fell victim to runaway politics, personal animus, and immovable ideologues in the Senate and the White House. The worldwide fallout from the failure of CTBT cast unnecessary doubt on the United States, its government, and especially its Congress, showing that foreign policy-making is one of the most important duties of the Congress, having some of the most far-reaching implications.
The Clinton Administration's handling of, and the Congressional response to, the CTBT ratification effort was a disappointment in two regards. First, the Treaty would have helped curb the risks posed by nuclear weapons and preserved for the United States the moral standing to resist the proliferation of such weaponry. Second, the administration's approach to the Senate's CTBT reservations regarding verification and enforcement defied the tradition of bipartisanship with which most Congressmen and Presidents have approached key issues of foreign policy.
This Treaty's defeat not only reminds us of Congress's powerful constitutional authorities in foreign policy, it also underscores an important development in the making of U.S. foreign policy: the increasingly important role of Congress. Today, Congress is more vigorously exercising its prerogatives and promoting its perspectives on issues of national security, often in direct challenge to the President. Indeed, it was Congress that pressed successfully against the President's initial hesitancy on NATO enlargement and national missile defense. It successfully forced the President to adjust his approach to the Chemical Weapons Convention. It has vociferously challenged presidential initiatives, such as the NATO missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.
The partisanship demonstrated during the CTBT debate must not be allowed to emerge as a trend in the making of U.S. foreign policy. Such a development would make it more difficult to work with allies and to deter our enemies abroad. We would be less capable of marshaling our national strengths to promote and protect our values and interests. America's ability to lead with initiative in world affairs would be hampered by domestic political gridlock. It would be more difficult for the President and Congress to live up to their shared responsibilities of promoting and protecting our national interests and values.
For these reasons, the partisan tremors that permeated the President's handling of the CTBT should leave us remembering the responsibilities and the powers that the Constitution provides to the President and the Congress. These powers were intended to foster a relationship out of which would emerge debated and dissected policies and processes that reflect the good of our government, not the bad.
Effective foreign policy requires a genuine and continuous bipartisan engagement between the President and Congress. Without such engagement, the content of U.S. policy will be characterized increasingly by ambiguity and inconsistency.
Fostering a foreign policy consensus between Congress and the President is, for constitutional reasons primarily, the responsibility of the White House. It is the President's role as commander in chief and chief diplomat that makes him the leader of our foreign policy.
Fostering engagement, however, between the White House and Congress on matters of foreign policy is also the responsibility of Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Congress can and should undertake initiatives to foster dialogue, information-sharing, and engagement with the President and his cabinet on key matters of national concern, such as seen with NATO enlargement. The failure of CTBT has shown that such bipartisanship must not be taken for granted. As these episodes demonstrate, the success of American foreign policy depends upon the successful engagement of the President and the Congress in their constitutional duties.