THE TALK OF THE TOWN COMMENT DANGEROUS GAMESMANSHIP
ILLUSTRATIONS BY TOM BACHTELL
D
uring the early nineteen-thirties, Bolivia and Paraguay fought a war over an arid borderland called Chaco Boreal. Congress passed a resolution permitting President Franklin Roosevelt to impose an embargo on arms shipments to both countries, and he did. Prosecutors later charged the Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation with running guns to Bolivia. The company challenged the resolution, but, in 1936, the Supreme Court issued a thumping endorsement of a President’s prerogative to lead foreign policy. “In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems,” the majority wrote, only the President “has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation. . . . He alone negotiates.” In this respect, the Justices added, Congress is “powerless.” U.S. v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp. has influenced law and the conduct of foreign policy for almost eight decades, but its admonitions have made little impression on the Republicans now on Capitol Hill. They have meddled in unprecedented fashion to undermine President Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, as he seeks—with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China—to cap Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The most egregious example came in March, when forty-seven Senate Republicans signed an open letter to Iranian leaders, which contained a dubious analysis of the Constitution and warned the mullahs not to rely on any deal that Congress failed to approve. Now a framework for a deal is in place, and many Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, support Obama’s policy. Others, like Senators Tim Kaine and Michael Bennet, have pressed the call for a congressional review of a final agreement— due on June 30th—essentially on the ground that Congress should be heard. Last week, after reaching a compromise with the White House, the Sen-
ate Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously for an act that sets prospective terms for such a review. Is Congress within its rights to insist on a vote? The Constitution states that the Senate must approve treaties, but the Iran deal would not be a treaty; it’s a political agreement. Congress has voted on some political agreements involving nuclear issues as a matter of course. Yet the specifics of the Iran deal make it more closely resemble the scores of diplomatic bargains short of treaties that Congress has ignored, including such important arms-control deals as the one that created the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The Foreign Relations Committee act is a measured one—it may allow only for speechmaking and largely symbolic votes. That’s why the Administration went along with it. Nonetheless, it reflects a large measure of cynical partisanship. It’s true that America’s faltering strategy in the Middle East could benefit from a more open and informed debate, but the increasing willingness of Republicans to entangle foreign policy in political gamesmanship has opened a new chapter in the fragmentation of American power. During the Tea Party era, Republicans in Congress have adapted to unbridled, grassroots-fuelled campaigning on domestic issues like Obamacare and the debt ceiling. This collapse of inhibition is now leaching into the Party’s position on matters of war and peace, from Benghazi and the Islamic State to Iran. Last month, Senator John McCain said that Secretary of State John Kerry’s explanation of his negotiations with Iran was less trustworthy than that of Iran’s leaders. Kerry and McCain were once friendly Senate colleagues. “That’s an indication of the degree to which partisanship has crossed all boundaries,” President Obama said, of McCain’s remarks. “It needs to stop.” It probably won’t, although that may not matter in the short run. Obama is constrained by his congressional opposition, but, with THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 27, 2015
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