Republicans Unlikely to Give Clinton Free Rein to Make Foreign Policy

If Bill Clinton had any thought of spending the next two years as a foreign policy President, some of Congress’ new Republican leaders are warning that he’d better think again.

Like Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, the incoming majority leader, who says he wants U.S. troops in Haiti home by Thanksgiving--not next March, as Clinton plans.

Or Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the next chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who calls foreign aid a “rat hole” and says the U.S. effort to broker peace between Israel and Syria is a bad idea.

Or Sen. Frank H. Murkowski of Alaska, probable chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who wants to block funds to carry out Clinton’s nuclear deal with North Korea.

The Republicans who are set to take over Capitol Hill in January have a foreign policy agenda that clashes with Clinton’s in almost every particular: less money for foreign aid, more reluctance to use U.S. troops in peacekeeping operations and deep skepticism about the United Nations.

And those policy differences are fueled by the imperatives of partisan politics. The Republicans, looking ahead to the 1996 presidential election, are determined to deny Clinton the high ground of foreign policy leadership.

“He won’t get any kind of free ride,” warned Margaret Tutwiler, a political aide to then-Secretary of State James A. Baker III during the George Bush Administration. “Republicans are going to be asking all kinds of hard questions about foreign policy, just as Democrats used to when there was a Republican in the White House.”

In the aftermath of the Nov. 8 GOP landslide, some White House aides said Clinton might spend more time on international affairs, where he would have more leeway to act independently of Congress than on domestic issues. But Dole, Helms and other Republicans have warned that they won’t let Clinton get away so easily.

“I think we ought to take a look at foreign policy,” Dole said in a television interview five days after the election. “We ought to get the troops out of Haiti by Thanksgiving. . . . We ought to lift the arms embargo in Bosnia. We ought to investigate whether or not we got a good deal in North Korea.”

Clinton acknowledges that conflict is inevitable between a President from one party and a Congress controlled by the other. But he told a news conference during his post-election trip to Asia, “I do think on the really pivotal matters we’ll be able to achieve the kind of bipartisan . . . consensus to do what’s right for the country.”

But since Nov. 8, Republican foreign policy aides say they have spent most of their time charting ways to press their bosses’ disagreements with Clinton:

HAITI: Most Republicans opposed Clinton’s decision to send U.S. troops to reinstall Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president of Haiti. Now that the GOP controls Congress, they plan to make the continued deployment as painful as possible.

“Our mission’s complete,” Dole said. “We are going to bring back 6,000 troops. My view is we ought to hurry up and bring back the other 9,000 troops. It doesn’t serve any purpose if there’s no problem there.”

Administration officials say that withdrawing all U.S. troops too early could lead to a collapse of civil order in Haiti.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) has asserted that the Haiti operation will cost as much as $3 billion over the first six months, far more than the Administration’s initial estimate of about $500 million. GOP aides have suggested holding a major debate over a supplemental appropriation for the larger amount to bring home to voters how much the operation is costing.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Dole and others have demanded that the United States break openly with its European allies and abandon the U.N. arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina. “We’re finally putting a little pressure on our allies in Bosnia, but my view is we ought to lift the arms embargo, give the Bosnians a chance to defend themselves,” Dole said.

Clinton, who initially favored lifting the arms embargo, has shied away from taking the step unilaterally because it would violate a U.N. Security Council resolution and touch off a crisis with the allies.

The Administration has finessed the point through a series of awkward compromises, drawing up plans for arms sales to Bosnia, formally conferring with Congress and submitting doomed resolutions to the Security Council. But Dole appears bent on using the Republican majority to try to force Administration action.

NORTH KOREA: Last month, Republican leaders denounced Clinton’s deal with North Korea to halt the Communist regime’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for energy aid from the United States, Japan and South Korea. Now they plan to make sure no substantial U.S. money goes to carry out the pact.

“We are looking at every angle we can to stop any funds and call them to account,” an aide to Murkowski said. GOP aides concede that they probably cannot stop the Administration from paying about $5 million for short-term fuel shipments to North Korea.

But they say Murkowski and others will act to block any significant spending. As a result, the Administration is seeking agreement from Japan, South Korea and other countries to pick up those costs.

THE MIDDLE EAST: Helms alarmed both sides of the Arab-Israeli negotiations last week by saying he wasn’t sure the talks, which have enjoyed wide bipartisan support, are such a good idea.

“Syria doesn’t want peace with Israel,” he said. “What Syria wants is the Golan Heights--plus, of course, access to the American taxpayers’ money. Congress needs to get off the dime and demand a reassessment of the entire Middle East peace process.”

Helms’ aides say the senator’s main concern is that a peace agreement may include a large new commitment of U.S. aid for Syria--and a large new commitment of American peacekeeping troops to patrol the Syrian-Israeli frontier. Administration officials acknowledge that both of those may be part of a settlement--and that both could be difficult to get through Congress.

One official said of the proposed U.S. peacekeeping force on the Golan: “It will be substantial and it will be controversial. We will be making a mistake if we think this one will be easy.”

THE UNITED NATIONS: Helms has called the United Nations the “nemesis of millions of Americans . . . costing the taxpayer billions of dollars.” Most other GOP leaders are not this hostile, but they resist spending more on U.N. peacekeeping operations.

The United States has already paid $1.2 billion to the United Nations for peacekeeping this year but owes $400 million more to cover its pledge to pay for 30% of total costs.

FOREIGN AID: U.S. military and economic aid budgeted for this year totals $12.3 billion; that’s down 20% from the previous year and is about 0.1% of the U.S. economy, a smaller share than any other rich country spends. Still, many Republicans like the idea of cutting foreign aid because most taxpayers don’t see much benefit from it.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the probable chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, says he wants to subject the entire foreign aid system to a searching new review.

Among the areas McConnell wants to cut is one close to Clinton’s heart: the roughly $60 million being spent in Northern Ireland in hopes that economic development will bring about peace. “A slush fund for a country that’s part of the European Union,” an aide said dismissively.

The Administration’s response has been diplomatic. Secretary of State Warren Christopher made a conciliatory telephone call to Helms, saying he would try to be cooperative. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott made a point of praising McConnell for his work on aid to the former Soviet Union--even though McConnell has been strongly critical of Talbott.

J. Brian Atwood, administrator of the Agency for International Development, says he has already cut the foreign aid budget 20% from its level during the Bush Administration, and 70% of what is left pays U.S. companies to provide goods and services overseas. AID officials are combing their contracts to determine how many workers in Helms’ North Carolina owe their jobs to U.S. foreign aid.

“There will be a small percentage of Congress who will believe we should have no foreign aid program at all,” Atwood said. He said he hoped to convince the rest that the program is necessary for “our own well-being.”

And he noted that foreign aid’s Republican supporters include the probable new chairmen of both the Senate and House appropriations committees, Sen. Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon and Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana.

Even Helms had to pull in his horns last week. After newspapers in Israel reported that the senator was thinking about cutting U.S. aid, he telephoned the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Itamar Rabinovich, to assure him that he would not touch the $3 billion Israel receives annually in military and economic assistance.