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Responses to S. 908 (Helms Bill)
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Responses to S. 908 (Helms Bill)
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Records of the Office of the Chief of Staff (Clinton Administration)
Jennifer O'Connor's Subject Files
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FOIA Number: 2006-1363-F
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
Chief of Staff
Series/Staff Member:
Jennifer O'Connor
Subseries:
OA/ID Number:
8163
FolderID:
Folder Title:
Response to S.908 (Helms Bill)
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
S
22
5
9
3
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
14 September 1995
MEMORANDUM FOR NANCY SODERBERG
FROM:
JENNIFER O'CONNOR
SUBJECT:
RESPONSE TO S.908 (THE HELMS' BILL)
Nancy - The attached was forwarded to Harold regarding our
political positioning on the Helms bill. He asked me to forward
it to you to see where some of these ideas might fit in.
H=
some
MEMORANDUM
alout
& specificity .96 This poliy
RE:
Responding to S.908 (the Helms Bill)
7/21
sent
the
ger
The coming confrontation with the Republican Congress over money
and machinery to sustain U.S. foreign policy could become a
defining moment for the Clinton Administration. It presents an
opportunity to begin building a diverse coalition in support of
an American foreign policy that continues to look outward, to the
promise of the post-Cold War world.
But accomplishing this now may also require the Administration to
make a significant change of course. At the moment, a veto would
be seen as the result of disagreement over three main issues:
1) Foreign aid;
2) Resources and support for the U.N.; and
3) Presidential authority in foreign policy.
The politics of a conflict that is cast in these terms --
especially if it requires defending and sustaining a veto -- are
not ideal. The Right will portray the President as a supporter
of global welfare, a misguided devotée of Boutros-Ghali, and a
man obsessed with the constitutional prerogatives of his office.
So far the message coming from this Administration does not
effectively repudiate this caricature.
Moreover, certain foreign aid constituencies have been especially
vocal. This is admirable; there can be no flinching from a
defense of the value of foreign assistance. But, if foreign aid
becomes the salient issue in this conflict, foreign aid could
suffer the gravest damage. Senator Helms seems to relish his
assault on AID, and his allies turn the debate to foreign aid
whenever challenged. There is also a charge that this given
suggests to some that this Administration's foreign policy is
shaped by special interest groups.
But, if such difficulties as these can be dealt with, the
conflict over the Helms bill could turn to the President's
advantage:
*
It presents a timely and dramatic opportunity for
reaffirming this President's view of the world: rejecting
isolationism, reminding Americans of promising trends in the
world, and pointing out the opportunities these developments
are opening for America and for Americans.
It offers a chance to explain the degree to which some in
Congress have fallen under the sway of small-mindedness,
negativism and irresponsibility in foreign policy --
a radical but little-recognized shift on the Right away from
the crusading internationalism of the Reagan era.
It reveals how much a near-anarchism has taken hold in these
same nominally "conservative" circles: a fascination with
abolishing something.
To those who say that this Administration is too disposed to
compromise and conciliation, it poses the real alternative:
a right-wing coterie, with little consultation,
justification or time for debate, presents a sweeping plan
for reorganizing the nation's foreign affairs apparatus, and
threatens to bring it all to an abrupt standstill if the
President refuses to stand aside.
There are in fact real fissures in conservative ranks over the
approach to foreign affairs that has come to dominate the
Republican Congressional committees. (See, for one example, the
attached Freedom House statement.)
The opportunity is there to begin shaping a bipartisan resistance
to right-wing disengagement.
II.
Mounting this resistance will require more than simply attacking
the foreign-policy-by-committee ornaments that encumber the Helms
bill. They are, to be sure, annoying intrusions upon
Presidential authority in foreign affairs. But for the President
to defend his authority effectively in the absence of a Cold War
threat, he must first explain why he still deserves that
authority. This requires a carefully constructed challenge to
the underlying premises of the Helms bill: premises that, when
drawn into the open, reveal a serious and unwelcome departure in
American foreign policy.
A.
First, the Helms legislation imposes a vast re-organization
of agencies -- our foreign policy tools -- that is not
informed by any explicit foreign policy purpose. Today
there is plenty of room for debate about how the United
States should exercise its international leadership. But
this legislation circumvents such debate by proposing
structures and resource allocations that will profoundly
influence the means by which we engage the world, without
addressing the great issues of goals and strategy that these
instruments serve. This is no small miscarriage of
democracy. It is consistent with what the President has
been criticizing in the policy-free assault on domestic
government by Republican budgeteers.
But on close examination, it is possible to detect
conceptual premises behind the consolidation proposal. One
of these, noted earlier, is delight at the prospect of
abolishing federal agencies. The other, more interesting,
is the re-emergence of the old "Fortress America" idea.
Instead of engagement with the diverse, fluid, fast-paced
world that is emerging in the aftermath of the Cold War, the
Helms legislation envisions a ponderous, centralized
diplomacy, nostalgic for the 19th Century. A Fortress
America approach is not, strictly speaking, isolationist.
It is willing -- sometimes eager -- to employ military force
and coercive diplomacy when dangers arise. But, by forcing
this country drastically to cut back its presence in the
world -- not only our embassies, but our broadcasting,
exchanges and contact with civic and cultural forces -- it
will, as General Shalikashvili has protested, make it harder
for us to detect and respond to potential dangers before
they reach the level of real military threat. It also will
weaken our ability to exploit opportunities for trade, and
for scientific and educational exchange.
The Helms bill gives us a foreign policy battleship, in a
time of satellite communications and smart missiles. It
thickens the walls of foreign affairs bureaucracy when our
values, ideas and economic interests are -- or should be --
on the offensive, in pursuit of historic global opportunity.
As with NAFTA, the Helms bill offers the President an
opportunity to stand for dynamism, change and possibility,
against the politics of stasis and anxiety.
Today many Republicans are dismayed by their party's
tendencies toward retreat and reaction -- especially the
young, the educated and the entrepreneurial. Senator Helms
is no hero to this group. These are people that the
President can reach, people who, though they may have voted
Republican, did not vote to turn back the clock.
This forward-looking milieu understands that democracy and
modern communications have brought large transnational
publics into the arena of foreign affairs. They will
understand that formal, ministry-to-ministry diplomacy --
while still important --- has diminishing significance today.
They know from their own experience in the economy that
nimbleness and the ability to customize products and
services are important -- and are not achieved by dense,
vertical structures. They can understand why different
institutional cultures are required to carry out distinctive
tasks. They want accessible government that can help
facilitate private sector and NGO activities -- not a remote
and priestly national security state.
One key audience for this line of argument is the Republican
supply-siders: Steve Forbes, Teddy Forstmann, Jack Kemp,
Larry Kudlow -- the "Empower America" circle, which is
increasingly frustrated with what it sees as the revival of
"root canal" Republicanism. The Helms bill is root canal
pessimism in foreign policy, reflecting the anxious
provincialism of the world of Republican freshmen. The
suburban, high tech, educated and more cosmopolitan elements
of Republicanism bring a more confident and outgoing spirit
that contrasts with the Helms outlook.
B.
There is another line of argument against the Helms bill
that will appeal to a slightly different constituency of
Republicans and Republican-leaners, as well as to centrist
Democrats. Toward the end of the Cold War, Reagan
conservatives and neo-conservatives joined "Scoop" Jackson
Democrats in reviving an emphasis on values, ideas and
information in foreign affairs. They saw that conventional
power politics -- military pressure, economic aid, threats
of sanctions or diplomatic isolation, and other measures
directed toward foreign governments -- frequently was more
expensive and less effective than intelligent appeals to the
moral, political and material aspirations of foreign
peoples.
This community feels that it made a signal contribution to
ending the Cold War. It believes that cultural and
intellectual engagement with foreign peoples can be
strategically critical to our national security and economic
interests. It understands that the emphasis on government-
to-government relations that has prevailed at the Department
of State creates an institutional sub-culture that does not
give sufficient value to what is called "public diplomacy"
and that a measure of separation between public diplomacy
and formal diplomacy is beneficial to both.
The so-called neo-conservative internationalists were taken
aback to hear younger Republicans assailing our foreign
policy agencies on the House floor as "relics of the Cold
War" -- a rhetoric they customarily associate with the Left.
They believe that the Cold War was an honorable undertaking,
and one we can learn from -- especially the lessons of
engaging foreign peoples through international broadcasting
and other forms of exchange. This group includes people
such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Michael
Novak, Albert Shanker and Senator Malcolm Wallop.
C.
There is still a third community of potential opposition to
the Helms bill that we are not reaching with our current
appeals. These are people with real stakes in current
foreign affairs issues, who can appreciate that the abrupt
and drastic transformation the Helms legislation demands
will cause enormous personnel and organizational turmoil at
a time of considerable volatility in international affairs.
Anyone working in a foreign affairs agency today can sense
the distraction and demoralization that this legislation has
created, not because it proposes change, but because it
reveals an urge to abolish government entities without
offering plausible ideas on how their work will be done in
new circumstances. (The suspicion is that those promoting
this legislation have no intention that this work will
indeed continue: as a Republican staffer reportedly said,
"We're sending these programs to Auschwitz.")
Perhaps the U.S. business leadership can better appreciate
this problem following the difficulties the U.S. encountered
at the Halifax G-7. There should also be leaders in the
defense community who can grasp how things can go wrong when
the foreign affairs agencies are thrust into a desperate
game of musical chairs.
III.
Possible action:
1.
The President should invite a group that includes
conservative and moderate foreign affairs leaders who have
reservations about this legislation to the White House for a
discussion before he vetoes it. Start by picking invitees
from the list of signers of the Freedom House statement,
then add to fill the group out.
2.
A veto message should be accompanied by a serious speech to
a foreign affairs audience on the fundamental issues of
American leadership at stake here. The press should not be
left to write this up in the present terms of debate.
3.
The Administration should stress its own commitment to
reducing foreign affairs spending by $5 billion through
carefully considered "reinvention" efforts, as the Vice
President has promised. All efforts should be made to
secure and publicize the elusive GAO study ordered by
Senator Helms office, which reportedly demonstrates that in
itself his plan produces negligible savings.
4.
The President should offer the Republicans an opportunity to
join in sponsoring a Blue Ribbon review of our foreign
policy goals, resources and organizational structures. He
should point out what is wrong with the Helms assumptions,
and why it is reckless to lurch ahead without due study, and
greater consensus. He should explain to the American people
what is happening to us in the world as a consequence of
this rushed and partisan maneuver for "reform."
5.
The White House should reach out to non-traditional
constituencies to build support for this effort, which could
have important effects on the 1996 campaign. These should
include state and city trade promotion officials, academic
officials, groups such as the National Council for
International Visitors and the Sisters Cities program, The
Institute for International Education, etc.
6.
Republican threats to hold appointments and appropriations
hostage until the President signs their bill will, if the
issues have been drawn correctly, further demonstrate their
irresponsibility in foreign affairs and their inablility to
govern the country.
###