Only One President--There’s No One Else : Flap over Carter role hides fundamental issue

The controversy about Jimmy Carter’s role as a special envoy in the Haiti negotiation--and the subsequent chilliness between the former President and Secretary of State Warren Christopher--obscures a fundamental constitutional issue that cannot be too frequently underlined. In the executive branch, the President and only the President is ultimately responsible for the conduct of foreign policy; virtually all major foreign policy decisions are presidential ones.

That may seem obvious, but it’s a fact that is getting lost in the effluvia about strong or weak secretaries of state. It is also being covered over in the discussions about hot-shot special envoys from outside the government, like Carter, who parachute into crises or stalled negotiations.

The former President did just that not only in Haiti but earlier this year in North Korea and, according to Times Washington bureau chief Jack Nelson, in the Cuban refugee crisis. Carter, who this week criticized Clinton’s Haitian policy and said some odd things about dictators, has expressed puzzlement that anyone would criticize his actions. Now he is being eyed with both suspicion and admiration for his role in brokering the Haiti accord. Although the agreement led to the peaceful entrance of 15,000 U.S. troops into the island nation, it also permitted Haiti’s junta to stay on for a transition period and allowed its members to perhaps remain in the country indefinitely.

Carter believes, no doubt wholly, that he did a great job and that without him and fellow negotiators retired Gen. Colin L. Powell and Sen. Sam Nunn, many American and Haitian lives would have been lost and the Caribbean nation would have remained mired in deep crisis. Of course, a final judgment on the deal between Washington and Haiti’s dictators won’t be possible before Oct. 15, when the junta is due to step down; even years may pass before it can be determined whether democracy has in fact taken root. But however history judges Carter’s recent performances in Haiti and elsewhere, it must be remembered that allowing a special envoy to enter a sensitive and complex situation, especially at a late point, poses very special risks. It also needs to be said that any incumbent President who increasingly relies on special envoys undercuts his own official foreign policy team. If the team he assembled does not serve him well, he needs to change the team, not turn more and more to special envoys. A special envoy--especially a former President--cannot know every piece of background, every nuance that a current Administration may want to convey.

Moreover, major foreign policy decisions are not things that can be farmed out, whether to a special envoy or a commission, every time they loom large. President Harry S. Truman used to say the buck stopped at his desk. That’s especially true for major foreign policy decisions, which a President must personally make.

So in the flap over Carter, we have the following advice for the present President and the former President. To Clinton, we can only emphasize that major foreign policy decisions cannot be delegated, that no matter how good your foreign policy advisers are, you have to make the call, you are going to be held accountable, you are the principal architect and decision-maker and no one else. To Carter we would suggest that he remember what it is like to be in the Oval Office, how much a President needs his advisers to tell him what he needs to know and that when a decision is made or a policy set, all must become loyal members of the team . . . and that includes any special envoys.