After Donald Trump appeared to side with Vladimir Putin over the US intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow meddled in the 2016 US election, Congressional Republicans finally spoke out.
Days later, with even senior Republican senators apparently eager to accept Trump’s claim that he misspoke after his Helsinki meeting with the Russian leader, that initial forceful response has devolved into the foreign policy equivalent of the “thoughts and prayers” offered after school shootings.
But Congress need not just be a spectator, cheering or heckling from the stands.
Congress has many tools to limit the damage of Trump’s Russia posture; it’s overdue to start using them.
We know Congress can do more because - over a combined four decades on Capitol Hill and in the State Department - we’ve been on both the giving and receiving ends of vigorous congressional oversight and activism on foreign policy.
Whether through investigations, appropriations, legislation, resolutions, hearings or official travel, Congress members have a strong hand to play.
The Constitution dealt them into the game because its framers knew the stakes.
In the words of policy analyst Jonathan Masters, “the periodic tug-of-war between the president and Congress over foreign policy is not a by-product of the Constitution, but rather, one of its core aims.” Congress squeezed funding to limit or end controversial military engagements in Vietnam and Central America, and covert operations in Angola.
In the mid-1980s, when freshman Senator John Kerry joined Senator Richard Lugar to pass an amendment compelling the Reagan administration to condition aid to the Philippines on free elections, Filipinos ousted autocrat (and client of former Trump aide Paul Manafort) Ferdinand Marcos.
Congress imposed sanctions on apartheid-era South Africa over the objections of a reluctant administration.
Congress repeatedly pressed the Clinton administration on the Balkans.
Lawmakers unilaterally lifted an arms embargo to help Bosnian rebels fighting ethnic cleansing, which both pressured - and gave leverage to - the administration to intervene forcefully.
For years, the legislative handiwork of two Republicans (the so-called Helms-Burton law) tied any president’s hands on travel and trade policies with Cuba. — Reuters
Julia Frifield and David Eckels Wade
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