GOP Takes on Clinton From the Left

A peculiar realignment in Congress is nudging American foreign policy toward progressive values--human rights, arms cuts and lower military spending. Liberal Democrats are involved, but now they are joined by a growing number of Republicans who are taking President Clinton to task from his left.

Among the renegades is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), the Reagan-style conservative who is a leading proponent of a “code of conduct” on arms exports--curbing sales of weapons to nondemocratic regimes. Rep. Jack Quinn (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.) are leading the popular effort to ban land mines. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) has initiated numerous cuts in Pentagon spending, a courageous stand in a defense-dependent area. Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) long has been a deficit hawk and helped sink the B-2 bomber.

The GOP is showing new interest in human rights as well. Rep. John Porter of Illinois is sponsoring an unusual bill to directly fund human rights activists in Turkey. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York chair the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which routinely blasts the human rights records of several countries that the administration just as routinely defends. And many Republicans are hotly critical of America’s forgiving attitude toward China’s dismal record on rights.

What gives? For one thing, Clinton’s performance on international issues has been lethargic; Republicans are stepping into the vacuum. Apart from trade, the president shows little interest or leadership on global concerns. While his foreign policy team was upgraded this year, the unimaginative program of his first term lingers. The expansion of NATO is his primary foreign policy goal, a lackluster vision that is opposed by many Republicans.

Perhaps the more momentous reason for the role reversal is that congressional Republicans had to recast themselves: They govern from Capitol Hill, not the White House. Their intemperate “revolution” of 1995-96 is over, and many of them are adopting a more mature attitude. Some simply see clear principles to which they are staking claim. No one epitomizes this phenomenon more than Rohrabacher. In many ways a classic Orange County conservative, Rohrabacher was drawn to the code of conduct idea because of its moral power. “The United States should always be on the side of the oppressed,” he told a congressional committee last summer. “We should not be arming dictators around the world with weapons that they will use to suppress their own people.” Cosponsoring the bill with the fiery Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), Rohrabacher and allies have maneuvered the code around the Republican and Democratic congressional leadership, the White House and the Pentagon. It is now stuck in House-Senate negotiations, but could pass before the end of October. The code shows how a “liberal” cause can be embraced by conservatives.

The proliferation of lethal weaponry has, time and again, come back to haunt the United States--in Iran, Somalia, Iraq, Southeast Asia. While liberals and conservatives will wrangle over what constitutes America’s “vital interests” in the world, they can agree that increasing numbers of weapons in the hands of despots is not a good idea. Of the countries receiving the $40 billion in U.S. weapons during Clinton’s first term, more than half were nondemocratic regimes. Some, such as Indonesia, have major internal conflicts under way. Others, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are human rights violators. And then there is Turkey, a favorite of the GOP establishment, which is technically democratic but is ravaging its Kurdish population in a 13-year-old civil war.

Republicans whose human rights concerns were mainly reserved for communist regimes are finally making the connection to other forms of tyranny. Equally pivotal is their resolve in standing up to the military brass on issues like arms exports and land mines, something the Democratic commander in chief is not willing to do.

It may be a modern variation of the Nixon-goes-to-China gambit, the idea that bona fide conservatives can more easily breach conventional boundaries on defense issues. Whatever the reasons, Rohrabacher and company are resuscitating the moral core of U.S. foreign policy.