Interference Instead of Oversight : Congress a Tinkerer, Not a Leader, in Foreign Policy

Nearly two years ago, during a trip by Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Tex.) to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Defense Intelligence Agency refused to let his traveling companion--former Miss USA-World Annelise Ilschenko--fly with him aboard a U.S. government airplane because of rules limiting such travel to spouses and staff aides.

Late last year, Wilson finally got his revenge. Congress, at his urging, deprived the agency of two foreign-based C-12 planes--the type that agency officials had ruled were off limits to Ilschenko.

Although Wilson maintains that his amendment was inspired primarily by a desire to trim the federal budget, he has acknowledged: “It just can’t help but look like this kind of spoiled congressman with a bloated sense of self-importance trying to get back at someone for not flying his girlfriend around.”

The incident was part of a long-established but disturbing pattern: the tendency of individual members of Congress to thrust themselves into the smallest details of foreign policy and national security, bending government agencies to their personal whims and narrow political perspectives on an endless array of relatively low-level issues.

Acting like “535 secretaries of state,” in President Reagan’s words, members of Congress sometimes even hold their own exercises in personal diplomacy.

More troubling still is a corollary pattern: Congress as a whole appears to have increasing difficulty in discharging its responsibility under the Constitution for overseeing the overall conduct of U.S. foreign policy and acting as a check and balance to the executive branch on major policy decisions.

As a result, although presidents have always complained that the House and Senate interfere in what the executive branch sees as its exclusive domain, the real problem is not that Congress assumes too big a role in foreign policy but that it tries to play too small a role--fiddling with the details instead of trying to achieve agreement on the overall objectives of U.S. policy around the globe.

“We tinker, but we don’t focus,” said Sen. Daniel J. Evans (R-Wash.). “It’s crazy.”

Motorcade Decorum

Last October, for example, when the Senate considered the State Department appropriation bill, members used the occasion to propose more than 100 amendments reflecting their individual ideas on numerous foreign policy issues, many of them requiring tiny changes in the conduct of U.S. diplomacy. One proposal went so far as to dictate the proper decorum for motorcades carrying foreign visitors around Washington, D.C.

An exasperated Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), in an unusual outburst, declared:

“I think we are going too far. Clearly, we have some role . . . but does the role of the U.S. Senate in foreign policy extend to constantly tinkering with everything, fine-tuning everything? I would submit that no reasonable person anywhere in the world can predict how the United States stands on any foreign policy issue. We are a cacophony of confusion.”

The problem appears to be rooted in two separate developments in recent history:

--The erosion of discipline and increasing independence of individual members of Congress brought on by the decline in political parties and the realization that members have only themselves to rely on for winning re-election.

--The poisoning of trust between the legislative and executive branches as a result of the Vietnam War, Watergate and similar episodes.

Distrust of the President

Much of the blame for the latter falls squarely on the men who have occupied the White House in the last two decades. Ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson misled Congress about the Vietnam War, members of Congress have distrusted the chief executive--a state of mind that has flourished in recent years as a result of the Reagan Administration’s frequent lack of regard for congressional advice.

“It’s a problem of the post-Vietnam era that is exacerbated by the current President and the current Congress,” Norman J. Ornstein, political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “The fact is that no President can come forward and say: ‘Trust me. I have more information than you have.’ No Congress will trust a President in foreign policy. They feel they have been lied to by all of them.”

Examples of the resultant trend are legion.

--House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) last year drew angry fire from the Reagan Administration for meeting with Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega at a time when Reagan refused to do so. Actually, Wright is just one of dozens of members who have placed themselves in the middle of the political cross fire between Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and the rebels fighting it.

--In 1984, former Rep. George Hansen (R-Ida.) traveled to Tehran in an unsuccessful attempt to free Americans being held hostage in the Middle East.

--Rep. John Murphy (D-N. Y.) advised former Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza on how to deal with the Jimmy Carter Administration during the final days of Somoza’s rule in 1979.

Congress’ Role Questioned

Distrust between Congress and the President reached crisis proportions last year over the Iran-Contra affair. Members of both houses accused Reagan of violating the Constitution by refusing to obey a law prohibiting U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan Contras and failing to inform Congress that he was selling arms to Iran. In response, White House officials argued that Congress has almost no legitimate role in foreign policy.

Former White House aide Oliver L. North freely admitted that he had lied to a congressional committee about his activities on behalf of the Nicaraguan resistance. “I didn’t want to tell Congress anything,” he confessed.

Likewise, the President’s policy of providing U.S. naval escorts for Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf demonstrated how this mutual mistrust could push the two branches of government perilously close to a total breakdown in cooperation. Not only did Reagan refuse to acknowledge his obligation to inform Congress about the operation under provisions of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, but House and Senate leaders stubbornly refused to endorse Reagan’s policy, even though it obviously had the support of a majority of members of Congress.

On Capitol Hill, critics of executive branch secrecy saw the Persian Gulf debate as a classic example of how the President encourages opposition in Congress by failing to consult with members before he puts U.S. troops at risk. At the White House, by contrast, it was viewed as proof that members of Congress frequently refuse to embrace the President’s foreign adventures simply to be in position to criticize if the policies fail.

High Court Ruling Cited

These events of the last year have reopened the age-old debate over the proper role of Congress in foreign policy. Although members of the legislative branch argue that the Constitution gives them the power to set policy abroad, Reagan cites a 1936 Supreme Court decision in the case of the U.S. vs. Curtiss-Wright Export Co. that designated the President “the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.”

According to most constitutional experts, the truth lies somewhere between the extremes. Under the Constitution, they say, Congress was given a broad role in establishing American foreign policy--but absolutely no role in carrying it out.

“Clearly, in an ideal world you have the legislative branch setting broad guidelines, leaving a lot of discretion to the executive branch to carry them out,” Ornstein said. “Congress is supposed to play an aggressive role in foreign policy, but not in diplomacy. Where individual members of Congress have gotten involved in outrageous acts and screwed up, it’s been for intervening in diplomacy.”

Ornstein noted that many of the critics who blame Congress for doing too much in foreign affairs are the same ones who claim that too little is being done on Capitol Hill to trim the deficit.

“There is a lot of hypocrisy here,” he said. “Many of them are simply pro-President. They are trying to provide a convenient scapegoat other than Reagan for the lack of action on the deficit, and they’re also trying to rationalize the Iran-Contra affair.”

‘Busiest Xerox Machine’

Rep. Henry J. Hyde (D-Ill.), for one, argues that “the President represents all the people. We have narrow constituencies. We respond to the loudest of those constituencies and those who have the busiest Xerox machine and the longest letterhead. Our vision of the future does not extend much beyond the next election.”

In fact, according to many political scholars, there is no evidence that Congress involves itself in foreign affairs much more than it does in domestic policy, even though the President clearly resents it more because it undercuts his image as a world leader.

Even Hyde, one of the most outspoken advocates of the President’s view, agrees with Ornstein that the House and Senate should play “a vigorous role, an effective role” in advising the President. “I don’t think we should be patsies for any Administration or rubber stamps,” he said.

“On the other hand,” Hyde added, “when decisions have been made after they’ve been thoroughly ventilated and debated and argued, whether in public or private . . . it seems to me there is considerable merit in trying to support that decision or at least not obstructing it, simply because we must speak with one voice.”

No matter what role the Founding Fathers envisioned for Congress in foreign policy, it is unlikely that they foresaw the fast-paced nature of the modern world with its global communications, jet travel and superpower tensions in the nuclear age--all of which have played a part in shaping the current role of Congress.

There is little doubt that members of Congress have become more involved in foreign policy as their understanding and knowledge of global problems have expanded. Not only do members travel abroad more frequently, but congressional committees now receive much more information from the Administration about U.S. policy and covert operations as a result of the improved oversight that was established in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

“You are able to debate issues with the State Department when you have as much knowledge or access to information as they do,” said Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “When you are more informed, you’re more likely to challenge and argue on an issue and say, ‘Wait a minute, I’ve read the intelligence reports and they don’t say that,’ or, ‘I’ve been there, I’ve talked to so and so, that’s not the way it is.’ ”

Contacted by Lobbyists

Likewise, members of Congress are contacted more frequently by lobbyists for foreign governments and visiting foreign leaders than they were in the past. Like Philippines leader Corazon Aquino, many Third World leaders have lived in the United States and know how to tap into the American political process by contacting members of Congress directly.

“The vast majority of members now travel, and they are not just going off to London, Paris and Rome,” Ornstein said. “Once they start to travel, they develop contacts among foreign governments and with opposition leaders. They maintain those relationships. And, when those people come to Washington, (members of Congress) are much more accessible than State Department figures, ambassadors and diplomats.”

The expansion of congressional committee staffs over the last decade has also helped members to become better equipped to tinker with the details of foreign policy. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1985 and 1986, noted that former State Department officials frequently go to work for members of Congress, bringing to Capitol Hill a detailed knowledge of Administration policies and a desire to make changes.

In fact, the President himself has encouraged members of Congress to get involved in diplomacy by calling on his friends on Capitol Hill when he needs a foreign envoy. In 1986, for example, Reagan relied on Lugar and then-Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) to act as his go-betweens with Ferdinand Marcos, then the Philippines’ dictator.

All of that should make Congress better equipped to play a responsible role in the formation of broad policies and discourage lower-level meddling, but such is not the case.

Avoiding Dangerous Issues

In part, this may be because large issues like arms control and Central America involve such high stakes and come shrouded in such uncertainties that they seem too dangerous politically for Congress to do anything but sidestep or temporize on.

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey) argues that Congress’ task has been complicated because recent presidents, instead of setting firm policies in various regions of the world, have preferred to respond to events. Congress thus must make its judgments about policy in the highly charged atmosphere of a global crisis.

“What is our foreign policy for the Middle East? What is our foreign policy for Central America?” Panetta asked. “In the absence of having a defined foreign policy, what you then do is that you begin to react to crises.”

Many members of Congress see dabbling in foreign policy as a risk-free way of gaining publicity. “They love to get involved in foreign affairs because there is no great political downside at home,” Evans said.

Wright’s involvement with the Sandinistas demonstrates how influential members of Congress can use their contacts with foreign leaders to influence and alter Administration policy.

According to Hyde, the Speaker’s contacts with Ortega allowed the Nicaraguan leader to “play one branch of government off against another and divide this government.” In addition, Administration officials contend that Wright, an opponent of Contra aid, has secretly been advising the Sandinistas throughout the implementation of the Central American peace plan.

Although Wright hotly denies these charges, there is no question that congressional support for the Contras has declined as a direct result of Wright’s development of a joint peace plan with Reagan for Central America and his subsequent support for the current peace initiative proposed by five Central American presidents. Nor does Wright deny that one of his objectives was to defeat Contra aid.

“I think it’s appalling,” said Hyde, a Contra supporter. “The Speaker . . . wishes to become a major player--maybe he wants to be the next Nobel Peace Prize winner--at the cost of presenting a very divided American government in the face of a communist revolution.”

Ban on Contra Aid

Nothing since the Vietnam War has so tested the role of Congress in foreign policy as Reagan’s support for the Contras. Even when Congress banned covert U.S. assistance to the guerrillas between 1984 and 1986, the Reagan Administration solicited support from private sources and third countries.

Reagan’s former national security adviser, John M. Poindexter, an architect of that policy, insisted during the congressional Iran-Contra hearings last summer that Congress has no role in foreign policy outside its power over the federal purse strings.

The Iran-Contra affair exposed a raw nerve of resentment within the executive branch toward congressional oversight of covert operations. Ever since 1977, the President has been required by law to inform the House and Senate intelligence committees in a “timely fashion” of all covert operations--a law Reagan failed to obey in the case of arm sales to Iran.

Administration supporters argue that the President was justified in not telling Congress because Congress would probably have leaked any information it received to the press. Indeed, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, later admitted leaking the panel’s initial findings on the Iran-Contra affair.

But Cohen argues that congressional oversight of covert operations serves primarily to provide the President with good advice about risky ventures. “We have no veto power; all we can do is say, ‘It sounds like a bad idea’ or ‘It sounds like a good idea,’ ” he said.

According to Cohen, Reagan refused to inform Congress of the Iran arms sales not because he feared leaks but because he did not want the policy to be held up to scrutiny. “Had they come up to the committee, we’d have said: ‘Gee, this sounds like we’re going to start trading some weapons here. What does the secretary of defense have to say? What will this do to the balance of power? What about the secretary of state? Does he favor this?’ And if they had been honest, they would have said, ‘No.’ That is why they didn’t come to us.”

War Powers Resolution

Prior to the Iran-Contra affair, the debate over the role of Congress in foreign policy focused on the 1973 War Powers Resolution, a vestige of the Vietnam era. The resolution was intended to preserve Congress’ constitutional prerogative to declare war in a modern world where the character of combat is no longer predictable.

The resolution requires the President to notify the House and Senate within 48 hours after American troops face “imminent hostilities.” It gives Congress the right to force withdrawal of troops from the area of hostilities within 90 days.

But no President has ever willingly complied with the War Powers Resolution or even acknowledged the constitutional right of the Congress to prescribe those conditions. Instead, the law has been a central point of contention between the President and Congress every time U.S. forces have come under fire.

Many differences between Congress and the President on foreign policy could be avoided, according to experts, if the two branches of government could agree on a well-defined, bipartisan foreign policy much as existed in the aftermath of World War II.

As Danforth and Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.) wrote recently in the Washington Post: “The time has come for a truly bipartisan foreign policy in which congressional deference in the execution of policy would be offered in exchange for legitimate consultation and trust in the formulation of policy.”

Cooperation at Arms Talks

Lugar noted numerous examples of cooperation between Congress and the Reagan Administration in foreign policy, even though they have been far overshadowed by the recurring bitterness. One shining example: the congressional observer group that monitored U.S.-Soviet arms talks in Geneva over the last few years.

Not only has the observer group helped to build support in Congress for the recently signed U.S.-Soviet agreement limiting intermediate-range nuclear weapons, according to Lugar, but it succeeded in educating Soviet negotiators as to what kind of agreement would be politically acceptable in the United States.

“We probably have a different kind of deal, largely because of the presence of political persons at those negotiations,” he said.

Thomas E. Mann, political analyst at the Brookings Institution, said many differences over foreign policy could be avoided if the President simply consulted more with members of Congress. “Presidents have to understand that no foreign policy is sustainable in the long run without the support of the Congress,” he said.

Panetta noted that members of Congress readily respond to personal attention from the President.

“A meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House, a few drinks with these guys in a side room there--it is a human process,” he said. “It’s the same process that it takes to get a Rotary Club to sell Christmas trees.”