Congress and the Politics of Foreign Policy

Despite the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the dictum that the U.S. Constitution is an invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy is still an accurate description of political reality in contemporary politics. This is the central theme of the essays collected in this book. Accommodation among the three branches of government is made more difficult by the apparent absence of a clear doctrine or paradigm to guide U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, and the habitual division of partisan control among the branches during the past decade has made such a consensus even more difficult to attain. There still remains a strong consensus between the political parties and between the branches of government that the executive should generally predominate on national security matters. The chief executive's capacity to deploy U.S. forces and Congress's fear of being perceived as undermining those forces has been a particularly powerful weapon in this regard, as the domestic debates over deployments in Bosnia and Kosovo have indicated. Several of the included chapters delineate the rise of presidential power in terms of executive assertiveness, congressional acquiescence, and judicial sanction. Nevertheless, Congress can--and does--use its powers and prerogatives to remain an active partner and effective obstacle to presidential ambitions when it chooses to do so. This is perhaps best illustrated by the rise in "message politics" that now pervade the floors of both chambers of Congress, and has also intruded on the foreign policy process. Even in the august Senate, message politics filters into deliberation as with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Perhaps "playing politics" with such ostensibly critical matters as nuclear testing is symptomatic of the generally low salience of foreign and defense policy issues in American politics since the fall of the Soviet Union. The increased influence of "ethnic" lobbies in U.S. politics since the demise of communism is also on the rise. In the absence of an overriding global foe, these groups are now better able to assert that their particular interest is also the national interest. Several ethnic lobbies, most notably the Israeli, Irish, and Cuban lobbies, have had particular influence on congressional debates over their respective areas of interest, and have often prevailed, as national public opinion remains generally immobilized or unmotivated by these issues. Is a new U.S. foreign policy doctrine emerging? Some have argued that the global economy and democratization have become the new guidelines for U.S. foreign policy. There appears to be a consensus among elite opinion on these issues in the abstract, but in Congress globalization must contend with many state and local interests, to which members of both parties are electorally committed to give attention. Human rights issues will arouse U.S. concern, but only when other U.S. security interests--such as the preservation of NATO and containment of conflict--are present will America become militarily involved. The higher degree of internationalism prompted by globalization and the end of the Cold War also raises issues of sovereignty and institutional prerogative, of which Congress is jealous. Yet as a global superpower, militarily and economically, the U.S. federal government is unlikely to find its powers compromised by supranational bodies that rely on U.S. participation for their effectiveness. The terrorist hijackings and assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 brought the congressional-presidential relationship once more into focus. As is traditional in a national security crisis, partisan disagreements on Capitol Hill were immediately minimized. The two House leaders, J. Dennis Hasten (R-Ill.) and Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), who had rarely been seen together, appeared jointly on teleCampbell, Colton C. is the author of 'Congress and the Politics of Foreign Policy', published 2002 under ISBN 9780130421548 and ISBN 0130421545.