WILL CLINTON’S NEXT FAST ONE PUT U.S. TROOPS ON THE GOLAN HEIGHTS?

Precis: Congress has been
handed a fait accompli on Bosnia primarily
because it accepted the Clinton Administration’s
argument that it was “premature” to
discuss the idea of deploying U.S. troops in a
dangerous situation until there was an agreement
providing for such a deployment. At that point,
of course, it is said to be too late to
oppose the idea. The same ruse is being used to
foil congressional objections to another dubious
Clinton commitment — the deployment of American
forces on the Golan Heights. If Congress endorses
Mr. Clinton’s Bosnia initiative, it will only be
reinforcing his impression that he can disregard
the legislative branch entirely on the Golan and
other important security policy matters.

(Washington, D.C.): By now it is pretty
clear: Very few in Congress are happy with
President Clinton’s unilateral commitment to
deploy 20,000 U.S. troops in Bosnia. Told that it
was premature to object before his commitment was
formalized in Dayton, Ohio, legislators waited;
once the deal was done, they were told it was too
late to object. Such a power play has won Mr.
Clinton the opportunity to insert American forces
where he wants them. It has, however, won him few
of the friends he will need on Capitol Hill as
the folly of that decision becomes manifest.

You Can’t Tell the Players Without a
Scorecard

To be sure, there are some in Congress who
have defended Mr. Clinton’s initiative. They have
generally done so, however, out of a sense of
loyalty to a Democratic president and a desperate
hope that the Dayton Deal will actually
ameliorate the terrible plight of the Bosnian
people. Of these, many — like the minority
leadership in the House and Senate — have,
in the past, actively opposed Mr. Clinton’s
Republican predecessors’ assertion of exclusive
presidential authority to dispatch American
forces overseas, even in emergency situations.
When (not if) the Bosnian operation goes bad, few
among this group are likely to protect the
President against the justifiable outrage of
their colleagues and constituents.

Others, notably Senate Majority Leader
Robert Dole and Senator John McCain, have
expressed reluctant support. This group has
groused that Mr. Clinton has presented the
legislative branch with a fait accompli.
They feel constrained as a result not to object
lest the military overseas be made victims of
domestic political feuding. Such legislators are,
however, determined to minimize their own
political exposure as the Dayton Deal melts down.
The resolution they will introduce this week to
“express support for the troops”
therefore will make clear their real misgivings
about the risks associated with this impetuous
and ill-considered mission — and provide a
pretext for pulling the plug in due course.

Finally, there is the large number of
legislators who are vehemently opposed to the
Clinton commitment of troops on the ground in
Bosnia. In the House, this group mustered
impressive majorities prior to completion of the
Dayton agreement, both on a non-binding
resolution and on a binding prohibition for
funding to deploy troops to Bosnia without
express congressional authorization. Their
counterparts on the other side of the Hill — led
by Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, Jon Kyl, Jim
Inhofe and Hank Brown — are expected to
offer their own resolution this week which will
present the first post-Dayton opportunity for the
Senate to express its opposition to the
deployment.

Much is riding on the outcome of the vote on
the Hutchison-Kyl-Inhofe-Brown resolution. Not
only will it establish unmistakably who was in
favor of sending American troops to Bosnia — and
the distance legislators will be able to claim
down the road from responsibility for the fiasco
that will likely result. Perhaps more
importantly, this measure will be a test of
congressional willingness to be treated by the
executive branch in a similar, cavalier if not
contemptuous, fashion in the future.

Next Stop — The Golan Heights

This is no idle consideration. Indeed, the
Clinton team that brought Congress a fait
accompli on Bosnia is actively cooking up
another one in a part of the world that has
proved no less dangerous for American military
personnel: the Middle East.

In fact, Special Mideast Envoy Dennis Ross is
this week engaged in a redoubled effort to nail
down a peace agreement between Syria and Israel.
Such an accord is widely expected to entail
Israel’s surrender of the strategic Golan Heights
to Syrian control. In order to sell such a risky
move to the Israeli people — already anxious
about the implications of turning over much of
the West Bank to Yasser Arafat and leery of
Shimon Peres’ judgment on balancing security and
diplomatic imperatives — President Clinton
has promised to deploy American troops as
“peace-enforcers” on the Golan Heights.

Here again, Congress was not consulted on
that commitment. Here again, legislators’
requests for information prior to completing a
deal have been deflected on the grounds that it
is “premature” to talk about such a
step before an agreement is forged and the
details elaborated. Here again, legislators are
being told that congressional deliberations and
debate at this time could preclude an agreement
from being reached — and “peace” thus
assured.

To date, little outcry has been heard from
Capitol Hill about the dangers that American
personnel would face on the contested Golan
Heights — a site in close proximity to the
training camps and headquarters of most of the
world’s terrorist organizations in Syria and
Lebanon. Scarcely a concern has been uttered
about the risk to Israel of the United States
being transformed from a staunch ally to a
“neutral party” vis à vis the
Jewish State and Syria. Even before Yitzhak
Rabin’s murder, few Members of Congress were
willing to insist that the legislative branch
have an opportunity to vote on putting U.S.
troops in harms’ way on the Golan lest they be
accused of “impeding the peace
process”; fewer still seem willing to do so
now.

Taking Congress for Granted

What is more, the Clinton Administration may
be further emboldened to think that it can
disregard congressional sentiment since Capitol
Hill is letting it do so in other areas of shared
responsibility. Nowhere has this phenomenon been
more in evidence than with respect to arms
control and U.S.-Russian agreements, in
particular. As the Center for Security Policy
noted recently,⁽¹⁾
the Administration has engaged in a troubling
pattern:

“The Russians refuse to honor their
arms control obligations and the Clinton
Administration accedes by overlooking
Moscow’s violations and/or by modifying
treaties to accommodate them. Presumably
fearful that such concessions would not be
endorsed by a Republican-controlled Senate,
the Administration has chosen not to submit
these treaty modifications for its advice and
consent.”

The latest example of this astounding pattern
is the Clinton Administration’s decision — taken
in the face of repeated expressions of strong
opposition from Congress — to reach an agreement
with Russia that would greatly expand the scope,
signatories and pernicious limitations of the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Although this
agreement would have the effect of converting the
ABM Treaty into an anti-theater as well as
anti-strategic ballistic missile defense accord,
Mr. Clinton apparently will not submit it for
Senate advice and consent.

The Bottom Line

The Founding Fathers deliberately created the
congressional power of the purse and the Senate’s
role in treaty-making as a check on executive
authority in the conduct of foreign affairs. As
Center Board of Advisors member Elliott Abrams
writes in this week’s Weekly Standard ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_100at”>see the attachment),
the legislative branch allowed President Clinton
to get away with preempting its deliberations
about a troop deployment once before — in Haiti.
If Congress now acquiesces to President Clinton’s
power play on Bosnia, it will be again rewarding
him for infringing upon those prerogatives,
encouraging him to do more of the same and
allowing him to off-load some of the blame when
such short-sighted, expediency-driven gambits
come a cropper.

(1) See the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Where’s Sam Nunn When We
Need Him? Mutating Treaties Require — But Lack
— Senate Oversight ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_93″>No. 95-D 93, 16 November
1995).