76

JohnsonCongress and t he Cold War

Survey Article

Congress and the Cold War

C Robert David Johnson

In 1990 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan caustically observed thatldquothe neglect of congressional history is something of a scandal of Americanscholarshiprdquo1 The historiography of American foreign relations for the mostpart con rms Moynihanrsquos observation Insuf cient attention to congressionalin uence has yielded a distorted perspective especially in works dealing withthe Cold War Many fundamental questions regarding the legislaturersquos role inthe formation and implementation of postwar US foreign policy remain un-explored Although some of these questions do not yield themselves to an in-tensive exploration of congressional in uence any work focusing on the USforeign policy decision-making process or on domestic ideological debatescannot omit the role of Congress

The tendency to overlook Congress has stemmed from many factors Forone thing historiographical developments have conspired against a promi-nent place for the legislature The early luminaries of diplomatic history suchas Samuel Flagg Bemis Dexter Perkins and Arthur Whitaker focused theirresearch on the presidency the State Department and the foreign ministriesof the countries with which the United States interacted In addition ortho-dox historians tended to frame their questions in a way that allowed them toavoid inquiring into the type of domestic political constitutional and legisla-tive disputes in which Congress traditionally has played a major role Bemisrsquosbook on Jayrsquos Treaty which ends before the highly charged debate in theHouse of Representatives in 1795ndash1796 on the treatyrsquos implementationexempli es the pattern Moreover the traditionalist historians concentratedmainly on the diplomacy of the early republic when the power of Congress asa whole was relatively weak and the body played a comparatively minor rolein foreign policy2 This approach was perhaps unsurprising given the realpoli-tik tenor of US foreign policy during the late eighteenth and early nine-teenth centuries but it unduly in uenced the Cold War interpretations of-

1 Daniel Patrick Moynihan On the Law of Nations (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press1990) p 50

2 On the weakness of Congress during the early republic see James Sterling Young The WashingtonCommunity 1800ndash1828 (New York Columbia University Press 1966)

Journal of Cold War StudiesVol 3 No 2 Spring 2001 pp 76ndash100copy 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology

fered by orthodox historians For instance Herbert Feis perhaps the mostproli c and certainly the most insightful of the early Cold War scholars fo-cused almost exclusively on state-to-state relations in his attempt to explainand assign responsibility for the origins of the Cold War3

Although revisionist historians have sought to distinguish themselvesfrom traditionalists by exploring the relationship between domestic forces andthe conduct of US foreign policy they too have rarely delved into the activi-ties of Congress Concentrating instead on the in uence of more broadlybased economic or ideological interests associated with the US economyrsquoscapitalist structure they have generally treated the US government as amonolithic actor For example The New Empire Walter LaFeberrsquos study ofGilded Age foreign relations essentially ignores the congressional anti-expansionist coalition that frustrated almost all of the executive-sponsoredinitiatives that the volume details including William Sewardrsquos attempt to pur-chase the Danish West Indies Ulysses Grantrsquos scheme to annex the Domini-can Republic and the Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty with Nicaragua The revi-sionist works that do include Congressmdashsuch as William ApplemanWilliamsrsquos The Roots of American Empiremdashalmost always minimize congres-sional in uence Williams does not treat Congress as an independent actorbut simply as a source of quotations that sustain his argument on the consen-sus supposedly behind American economic expansion Standard revisionistinterpretations of the early stages of the Cold War such as works by LaFeberand Gabriel Kolko share little with Feis apart from a tendency to bypass Con-gress and to focus on the executive branch as the key to understanding theUS approach to the Cold War4

A similar pattern of relegating Congress to the periphery has character-ized the reinvigorated debates now waged over US foreign policy and theearly Cold War Except for the typical obliging references to Senator ArthurVandenberg most works that fall into the category of postrevisionism give

77

Congress and the Cold War

3 See for example the three works by Samuel Flagg Bemis The Diplomacy of the American Revolution(New York D Appleton-Century 1935) Jayrsquos Treaty a Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (New YorkMacmillan 1923) Pinckneyrsquos Treaty A Study of Americarsquos Advantage from Europersquos Distress 1783ndash1800(Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1926) Dexter Perkins The Monroe Doctrine 3 vols(Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1927) Arthur Whitaker The Mississippi Question AStudy in Trade Politics and Diplomacy (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1934) and TheUnited States and the Independence of Latin America 1800ndash1830 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press 1941)

4 William Appleman Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire A Study of the Growth andShaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York Random House 1969) WilliamsThe Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland Globe Publishing Company 1959) Walter LaFeberThe New Empire An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860ndash1898 (Ithaca Cornell UniversityPress 1961) and Gabriel Kolko The Politics of War The World and United States Foreign Policy (NewYork Random House 1968) For a critique of revisionism on this issue see David Pletcher ldquoCarib-bean Empirersquo Planned and Improvisedrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 14 No 4 (Fall 1990) p 458

short shrift to the complexities of securing congressional support for noveland expensive initiatives including the 1946 loan to Great Britain the Mar-shall Plan of 1947 the creation of the national security state and the fundingof the remarkable expansion of the defense establishment after the outbreak ofthe Korean War Congress virtually never appears in the work of John LewisGaddis or other leading postrevisionists Melvyn Lef errsquos Preponderance ofPower justi ably attracted widespread praise but it like the pioneering worksof revisionism and postrevisionism of the 1960s and 1970s focuses almost ex-clusively on the executive branch Indeed the bookrsquos bibliography includesonly one congressional manuscript collection that of H Alexander Smith ofNew Jerseymdasha thoughtful moderate Republican Moreover re ecting theshared bias of traditionalists revisionists and postrevisionists alike no promi-nent review of the volume mentioned this oversight5

Among recent studies of US foreign relations Fredrik LogevallrsquosChoosing War which explores US policy toward Vietnam from mid-1963 tomid-1965 demonstrates the bene ts of incorporating the congressional per-spective Logevallrsquos meticulously researched volume combines substantial dis-cussion of the international perspective of the war with an equally detailedanalysis of the political and legislative situation that confronted Lyndon John-son Logevall not only offers extensive coverage of the congressional role inthe war but also uses the widespread skepticism in Congress about the John-son administrationrsquos policy to strengthen his argument that the administra-tion and Johnson himself deliberately chose war spurning alternatives such asnegotiation or neutralization It is encouraging to see that some youngerscholars are also beginning to pay more attention to the role of Congress An-drew Johns one of Logevallrsquos students has been studying the attitudes of con-gressional Republicans toward Vietnam and Jeffrey Bass has recently pro-vided the rst sustained analysis of the views espoused not merely by anti-warDemocrats but by the entire Senate Democratic caucus6

Practical reasons have contributed to the weak coverage of Congress Un-like material housed in the various presidential libraries or documents fromother executive agencies sorted in the National Archives congressional ar-chives are spread out across the country usually in the home states of the vari-ous senators and representatives Graduate students facing decisions aboutpossible dissertation topics and even senior scholars understandably prefer

78

Johnson

5 Melvyn Lef er A Preponderance of Power National Security The Truman Administration and theCold War (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1992)

6 Fredrik Logevall Choosing War The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam(Berkeley University of California Press 1999) and Jeffrey Bass ldquoWellspring of a Connecticut Cru-sader Thomas J Dodd and the Nuremberg Trialrdquo Connecticut History Vol 37 No 1 (Spring 1996)pp 31ndash45

the more centralized access that presidential libraries afford Trips to manyout-of-the-way archives can be expensive and inconvenient To investigateeven ten of the senators most active on foreign policy issues during the1960smdashJ William Fulbright Richard Russell Frank Church Wayne MorseGeorge McGovern Ernest Gruening Henry Jackson John Tower JohnStennis and Stuart Symingtonmdasha scholar would have to travel to the Univer-sities of Arkansas Georgia Oregon Washington Alaska-Fairbanks and Mis-souri Boise State University Mississippi State University Southwestern(Texas) University and Princeton University Moreover there would be noguarantee that these journeys would yield anything of value since the papersof postwar members of the upper chamber are of widely varying quality TheJohn Culver collection includes detailed staff memoranda and the FrankChurch Papers contain occasional personal letters but many of the other col-lections are like that of Senator Joseph Clark whose papers consist almost en-tirely of published background material of no direct relationship to the sena-torrsquos activities Moreover while the Church Papers at Boise Statersquos AlbertsonLibrary are impeccably organizedmdashdown to the le foldermdasha more typicalcase is that of the Culver Papers which remain in the boxes sent to the ar-chives following the Iowa senatorrsquos defeat in 1980

The prevailing weakness of specialized studies of Congress further dis-courages historians of US foreign relations from studying congressional is-sues Institutional histories of Congress which are quite rare in any casemostly explore domestic affairs and rarely cover the postndashWorld War II yearswhich are regarded as the domain of political scientists7 Instead biographiesare the eldrsquos most popular genre

Although biographical studies may not be the historianrsquos usual fare theycan be of great use The new surge of biographies of key members of the post-war Congress is particularly valuable for those studying the Senate during theCold War Three studies of twentieth-century chairmen of the Senate ForeignRelations CommitteemdashWilliam Widenorrsquos Henry Cabot Lodge and AmericanForeign Policy Randall Woodsrsquos Fulbright and LeRoy Ashbyrsquos Fighting the

79

Congress and the Cold War

7 For examples of institutional histories see Young The Washington Community David RothmanPolitics and Power The United States Senate 1869ndash1901 (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press1966) Elaine Swift The Making of an American Senate Reconstitutive Change in Congress 1781ndash1841(Ann Arbor University of Michigan 1996) Michael Foley The New Senate Liberal Inuence in aConservative Institution 1959ndash1972 (New Haven Yale University Press 1980) Fred Harris Deadlockor Decision The US Senate and the Rise of National Politics (New York Oxford University Press1993) and Robert Mann The Walls of Jericho Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Richard Russell andthe Struggle for Civil Rights (New York Harcourt and Brace 1996) For a rare coverage of Congressfrom a foreign policy angle see Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 (Lincoln Uni-versity of Nebraska Press 1983) Ironically broader coverages tend to focus on the weaker of the twobranches such as Charles Whalen Jr The House and Foreign Policy The Irony of Congressional Reform(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1982)

Oddsmdashare all well-researched monographs that provide the backgroundneeded to incorporate their subjects into the foreign policy of the time8 Cam-bridge University Press has issued an abridged version of the Woods biogra-phy that focuses exclusively on Fulbrightrsquos foreign policy activities The vol-ume details the transformation of the Arkansas senator from a somewhatreluctant Cold Warrior who accepted executive supremacy into an outspokencritic of the Cold War who demanded a greater role for the Senate in foreignpolicy and it also supplies a stunning bureaucratic history of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee seen largely through the relationship betweenFulbright and the committeersquos longtime staff director Carl Marcy Ashbyfor his part draws on the Church Papers and over 100 interviews to providethe best coverage of the Senate of the 1970s a period in which Church washighly in uential rst as chair of a special committee investigating the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then as chair of the Foreign RelationsCommittee

Unfortunately too many congressional biographies focus so closely onthe life of the pro led gure that they ignore the wider context that would beof use to diplomatic historians Gilbert Fitersquos study of Richard Russell thechairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from the mid-1950sthrough the early 1970s is all too typical in its meager treatment of the poli-tics of the committee and the committeersquos broader role in the debates of theera This oversight is especially problematic given Russellrsquos prominence at var-ious levels The newly released tapes from the Lyndon B Johnson Library re-veal that the Georgia senator played an even more important role in foreignpolicy during the early stages of Johnsonrsquos term than historians previouslyrealized Within Congress itself meanwhile Russell was critical in helpingthe Armed Services Committee become the most powerful committee in thepostwar years and in preventing more rigorous congressional oversight ofthe national security state Thomas Becnelrsquos biography of Allen Ellender suf-fers from the same dif culty Ellender a Democrat from Louisiana who con-cluded his career as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee was amuch less in uential gure than Russell but he did wage a somewhat quix-otic crusade against the foreign aid program and more important he repre-sented an antimilitary strain in Southern thinking A well-rounded biographyof Senator Henry Jackson was published by Robert G Kaufman in 2000 butno full-length biographies exist for other key members of the Senate duringthe Cold War including John Stennis Stuart Symington and John Tower

80

Johnson

8 LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Fighting the Odds The Life of Senator Frank Church (PullmanWashington State University Press 1994) Randall Bennett Woods Fulbright A Biography (New YorkCambridge University Press 1995) William Widenor Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an Ameri-can Foreign Policy (Berkeley University of California Press 1981)

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

fered by orthodox historians For instance Herbert Feis perhaps the mostproli c and certainly the most insightful of the early Cold War scholars fo-cused almost exclusively on state-to-state relations in his attempt to explainand assign responsibility for the origins of the Cold War3

Although revisionist historians have sought to distinguish themselvesfrom traditionalists by exploring the relationship between domestic forces andthe conduct of US foreign policy they too have rarely delved into the activi-ties of Congress Concentrating instead on the in uence of more broadlybased economic or ideological interests associated with the US economyrsquoscapitalist structure they have generally treated the US government as amonolithic actor For example The New Empire Walter LaFeberrsquos study ofGilded Age foreign relations essentially ignores the congressional anti-expansionist coalition that frustrated almost all of the executive-sponsoredinitiatives that the volume details including William Sewardrsquos attempt to pur-chase the Danish West Indies Ulysses Grantrsquos scheme to annex the Domini-can Republic and the Frelinghuysen-Zavala treaty with Nicaragua The revi-sionist works that do include Congressmdashsuch as William ApplemanWilliamsrsquos The Roots of American Empiremdashalmost always minimize congres-sional in uence Williams does not treat Congress as an independent actorbut simply as a source of quotations that sustain his argument on the consen-sus supposedly behind American economic expansion Standard revisionistinterpretations of the early stages of the Cold War such as works by LaFeberand Gabriel Kolko share little with Feis apart from a tendency to bypass Con-gress and to focus on the executive branch as the key to understanding theUS approach to the Cold War4

A similar pattern of relegating Congress to the periphery has character-ized the reinvigorated debates now waged over US foreign policy and theearly Cold War Except for the typical obliging references to Senator ArthurVandenberg most works that fall into the category of postrevisionism give

77

Congress and the Cold War

3 See for example the three works by Samuel Flagg Bemis The Diplomacy of the American Revolution(New York D Appleton-Century 1935) Jayrsquos Treaty a Study in Commerce and Diplomacy (New YorkMacmillan 1923) Pinckneyrsquos Treaty A Study of Americarsquos Advantage from Europersquos Distress 1783ndash1800(Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1926) Dexter Perkins The Monroe Doctrine 3 vols(Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1927) Arthur Whitaker The Mississippi Question AStudy in Trade Politics and Diplomacy (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1934) and TheUnited States and the Independence of Latin America 1800ndash1830 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins Univer-sity Press 1941)

4 William Appleman Williams The Roots of the Modern American Empire A Study of the Growth andShaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York Random House 1969) WilliamsThe Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland Globe Publishing Company 1959) Walter LaFeberThe New Empire An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860ndash1898 (Ithaca Cornell UniversityPress 1961) and Gabriel Kolko The Politics of War The World and United States Foreign Policy (NewYork Random House 1968) For a critique of revisionism on this issue see David Pletcher ldquoCarib-bean Empirersquo Planned and Improvisedrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 14 No 4 (Fall 1990) p 458

short shrift to the complexities of securing congressional support for noveland expensive initiatives including the 1946 loan to Great Britain the Mar-shall Plan of 1947 the creation of the national security state and the fundingof the remarkable expansion of the defense establishment after the outbreak ofthe Korean War Congress virtually never appears in the work of John LewisGaddis or other leading postrevisionists Melvyn Lef errsquos Preponderance ofPower justi ably attracted widespread praise but it like the pioneering worksof revisionism and postrevisionism of the 1960s and 1970s focuses almost ex-clusively on the executive branch Indeed the bookrsquos bibliography includesonly one congressional manuscript collection that of H Alexander Smith ofNew Jerseymdasha thoughtful moderate Republican Moreover re ecting theshared bias of traditionalists revisionists and postrevisionists alike no promi-nent review of the volume mentioned this oversight5

Among recent studies of US foreign relations Fredrik LogevallrsquosChoosing War which explores US policy toward Vietnam from mid-1963 tomid-1965 demonstrates the bene ts of incorporating the congressional per-spective Logevallrsquos meticulously researched volume combines substantial dis-cussion of the international perspective of the war with an equally detailedanalysis of the political and legislative situation that confronted Lyndon John-son Logevall not only offers extensive coverage of the congressional role inthe war but also uses the widespread skepticism in Congress about the John-son administrationrsquos policy to strengthen his argument that the administra-tion and Johnson himself deliberately chose war spurning alternatives such asnegotiation or neutralization It is encouraging to see that some youngerscholars are also beginning to pay more attention to the role of Congress An-drew Johns one of Logevallrsquos students has been studying the attitudes of con-gressional Republicans toward Vietnam and Jeffrey Bass has recently pro-vided the rst sustained analysis of the views espoused not merely by anti-warDemocrats but by the entire Senate Democratic caucus6

Practical reasons have contributed to the weak coverage of Congress Un-like material housed in the various presidential libraries or documents fromother executive agencies sorted in the National Archives congressional ar-chives are spread out across the country usually in the home states of the vari-ous senators and representatives Graduate students facing decisions aboutpossible dissertation topics and even senior scholars understandably prefer

78

Johnson

5 Melvyn Lef er A Preponderance of Power National Security The Truman Administration and theCold War (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1992)

6 Fredrik Logevall Choosing War The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam(Berkeley University of California Press 1999) and Jeffrey Bass ldquoWellspring of a Connecticut Cru-sader Thomas J Dodd and the Nuremberg Trialrdquo Connecticut History Vol 37 No 1 (Spring 1996)pp 31ndash45

the more centralized access that presidential libraries afford Trips to manyout-of-the-way archives can be expensive and inconvenient To investigateeven ten of the senators most active on foreign policy issues during the1960smdashJ William Fulbright Richard Russell Frank Church Wayne MorseGeorge McGovern Ernest Gruening Henry Jackson John Tower JohnStennis and Stuart Symingtonmdasha scholar would have to travel to the Univer-sities of Arkansas Georgia Oregon Washington Alaska-Fairbanks and Mis-souri Boise State University Mississippi State University Southwestern(Texas) University and Princeton University Moreover there would be noguarantee that these journeys would yield anything of value since the papersof postwar members of the upper chamber are of widely varying quality TheJohn Culver collection includes detailed staff memoranda and the FrankChurch Papers contain occasional personal letters but many of the other col-lections are like that of Senator Joseph Clark whose papers consist almost en-tirely of published background material of no direct relationship to the sena-torrsquos activities Moreover while the Church Papers at Boise Statersquos AlbertsonLibrary are impeccably organizedmdashdown to the le foldermdasha more typicalcase is that of the Culver Papers which remain in the boxes sent to the ar-chives following the Iowa senatorrsquos defeat in 1980

The prevailing weakness of specialized studies of Congress further dis-courages historians of US foreign relations from studying congressional is-sues Institutional histories of Congress which are quite rare in any casemostly explore domestic affairs and rarely cover the postndashWorld War II yearswhich are regarded as the domain of political scientists7 Instead biographiesare the eldrsquos most popular genre

Although biographical studies may not be the historianrsquos usual fare theycan be of great use The new surge of biographies of key members of the post-war Congress is particularly valuable for those studying the Senate during theCold War Three studies of twentieth-century chairmen of the Senate ForeignRelations CommitteemdashWilliam Widenorrsquos Henry Cabot Lodge and AmericanForeign Policy Randall Woodsrsquos Fulbright and LeRoy Ashbyrsquos Fighting the

79

Congress and the Cold War

7 For examples of institutional histories see Young The Washington Community David RothmanPolitics and Power The United States Senate 1869ndash1901 (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press1966) Elaine Swift The Making of an American Senate Reconstitutive Change in Congress 1781ndash1841(Ann Arbor University of Michigan 1996) Michael Foley The New Senate Liberal Inuence in aConservative Institution 1959ndash1972 (New Haven Yale University Press 1980) Fred Harris Deadlockor Decision The US Senate and the Rise of National Politics (New York Oxford University Press1993) and Robert Mann The Walls of Jericho Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Richard Russell andthe Struggle for Civil Rights (New York Harcourt and Brace 1996) For a rare coverage of Congressfrom a foreign policy angle see Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 (Lincoln Uni-versity of Nebraska Press 1983) Ironically broader coverages tend to focus on the weaker of the twobranches such as Charles Whalen Jr The House and Foreign Policy The Irony of Congressional Reform(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1982)

Oddsmdashare all well-researched monographs that provide the backgroundneeded to incorporate their subjects into the foreign policy of the time8 Cam-bridge University Press has issued an abridged version of the Woods biogra-phy that focuses exclusively on Fulbrightrsquos foreign policy activities The vol-ume details the transformation of the Arkansas senator from a somewhatreluctant Cold Warrior who accepted executive supremacy into an outspokencritic of the Cold War who demanded a greater role for the Senate in foreignpolicy and it also supplies a stunning bureaucratic history of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee seen largely through the relationship betweenFulbright and the committeersquos longtime staff director Carl Marcy Ashbyfor his part draws on the Church Papers and over 100 interviews to providethe best coverage of the Senate of the 1970s a period in which Church washighly in uential rst as chair of a special committee investigating the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then as chair of the Foreign RelationsCommittee

Unfortunately too many congressional biographies focus so closely onthe life of the pro led gure that they ignore the wider context that would beof use to diplomatic historians Gilbert Fitersquos study of Richard Russell thechairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from the mid-1950sthrough the early 1970s is all too typical in its meager treatment of the poli-tics of the committee and the committeersquos broader role in the debates of theera This oversight is especially problematic given Russellrsquos prominence at var-ious levels The newly released tapes from the Lyndon B Johnson Library re-veal that the Georgia senator played an even more important role in foreignpolicy during the early stages of Johnsonrsquos term than historians previouslyrealized Within Congress itself meanwhile Russell was critical in helpingthe Armed Services Committee become the most powerful committee in thepostwar years and in preventing more rigorous congressional oversight ofthe national security state Thomas Becnelrsquos biography of Allen Ellender suf-fers from the same dif culty Ellender a Democrat from Louisiana who con-cluded his career as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee was amuch less in uential gure than Russell but he did wage a somewhat quix-otic crusade against the foreign aid program and more important he repre-sented an antimilitary strain in Southern thinking A well-rounded biographyof Senator Henry Jackson was published by Robert G Kaufman in 2000 butno full-length biographies exist for other key members of the Senate duringthe Cold War including John Stennis Stuart Symington and John Tower

80

Johnson

8 LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Fighting the Odds The Life of Senator Frank Church (PullmanWashington State University Press 1994) Randall Bennett Woods Fulbright A Biography (New YorkCambridge University Press 1995) William Widenor Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an Ameri-can Foreign Policy (Berkeley University of California Press 1981)

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

short shrift to the complexities of securing congressional support for noveland expensive initiatives including the 1946 loan to Great Britain the Mar-shall Plan of 1947 the creation of the national security state and the fundingof the remarkable expansion of the defense establishment after the outbreak ofthe Korean War Congress virtually never appears in the work of John LewisGaddis or other leading postrevisionists Melvyn Lef errsquos Preponderance ofPower justi ably attracted widespread praise but it like the pioneering worksof revisionism and postrevisionism of the 1960s and 1970s focuses almost ex-clusively on the executive branch Indeed the bookrsquos bibliography includesonly one congressional manuscript collection that of H Alexander Smith ofNew Jerseymdasha thoughtful moderate Republican Moreover re ecting theshared bias of traditionalists revisionists and postrevisionists alike no promi-nent review of the volume mentioned this oversight5

Among recent studies of US foreign relations Fredrik LogevallrsquosChoosing War which explores US policy toward Vietnam from mid-1963 tomid-1965 demonstrates the bene ts of incorporating the congressional per-spective Logevallrsquos meticulously researched volume combines substantial dis-cussion of the international perspective of the war with an equally detailedanalysis of the political and legislative situation that confronted Lyndon John-son Logevall not only offers extensive coverage of the congressional role inthe war but also uses the widespread skepticism in Congress about the John-son administrationrsquos policy to strengthen his argument that the administra-tion and Johnson himself deliberately chose war spurning alternatives such asnegotiation or neutralization It is encouraging to see that some youngerscholars are also beginning to pay more attention to the role of Congress An-drew Johns one of Logevallrsquos students has been studying the attitudes of con-gressional Republicans toward Vietnam and Jeffrey Bass has recently pro-vided the rst sustained analysis of the views espoused not merely by anti-warDemocrats but by the entire Senate Democratic caucus6

Practical reasons have contributed to the weak coverage of Congress Un-like material housed in the various presidential libraries or documents fromother executive agencies sorted in the National Archives congressional ar-chives are spread out across the country usually in the home states of the vari-ous senators and representatives Graduate students facing decisions aboutpossible dissertation topics and even senior scholars understandably prefer

78

Johnson

5 Melvyn Lef er A Preponderance of Power National Security The Truman Administration and theCold War (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1992)

6 Fredrik Logevall Choosing War The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam(Berkeley University of California Press 1999) and Jeffrey Bass ldquoWellspring of a Connecticut Cru-sader Thomas J Dodd and the Nuremberg Trialrdquo Connecticut History Vol 37 No 1 (Spring 1996)pp 31ndash45

the more centralized access that presidential libraries afford Trips to manyout-of-the-way archives can be expensive and inconvenient To investigateeven ten of the senators most active on foreign policy issues during the1960smdashJ William Fulbright Richard Russell Frank Church Wayne MorseGeorge McGovern Ernest Gruening Henry Jackson John Tower JohnStennis and Stuart Symingtonmdasha scholar would have to travel to the Univer-sities of Arkansas Georgia Oregon Washington Alaska-Fairbanks and Mis-souri Boise State University Mississippi State University Southwestern(Texas) University and Princeton University Moreover there would be noguarantee that these journeys would yield anything of value since the papersof postwar members of the upper chamber are of widely varying quality TheJohn Culver collection includes detailed staff memoranda and the FrankChurch Papers contain occasional personal letters but many of the other col-lections are like that of Senator Joseph Clark whose papers consist almost en-tirely of published background material of no direct relationship to the sena-torrsquos activities Moreover while the Church Papers at Boise Statersquos AlbertsonLibrary are impeccably organizedmdashdown to the le foldermdasha more typicalcase is that of the Culver Papers which remain in the boxes sent to the ar-chives following the Iowa senatorrsquos defeat in 1980

The prevailing weakness of specialized studies of Congress further dis-courages historians of US foreign relations from studying congressional is-sues Institutional histories of Congress which are quite rare in any casemostly explore domestic affairs and rarely cover the postndashWorld War II yearswhich are regarded as the domain of political scientists7 Instead biographiesare the eldrsquos most popular genre

Although biographical studies may not be the historianrsquos usual fare theycan be of great use The new surge of biographies of key members of the post-war Congress is particularly valuable for those studying the Senate during theCold War Three studies of twentieth-century chairmen of the Senate ForeignRelations CommitteemdashWilliam Widenorrsquos Henry Cabot Lodge and AmericanForeign Policy Randall Woodsrsquos Fulbright and LeRoy Ashbyrsquos Fighting the

79

Congress and the Cold War

7 For examples of institutional histories see Young The Washington Community David RothmanPolitics and Power The United States Senate 1869ndash1901 (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press1966) Elaine Swift The Making of an American Senate Reconstitutive Change in Congress 1781ndash1841(Ann Arbor University of Michigan 1996) Michael Foley The New Senate Liberal Inuence in aConservative Institution 1959ndash1972 (New Haven Yale University Press 1980) Fred Harris Deadlockor Decision The US Senate and the Rise of National Politics (New York Oxford University Press1993) and Robert Mann The Walls of Jericho Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Richard Russell andthe Struggle for Civil Rights (New York Harcourt and Brace 1996) For a rare coverage of Congressfrom a foreign policy angle see Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 (Lincoln Uni-versity of Nebraska Press 1983) Ironically broader coverages tend to focus on the weaker of the twobranches such as Charles Whalen Jr The House and Foreign Policy The Irony of Congressional Reform(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1982)

Oddsmdashare all well-researched monographs that provide the backgroundneeded to incorporate their subjects into the foreign policy of the time8 Cam-bridge University Press has issued an abridged version of the Woods biogra-phy that focuses exclusively on Fulbrightrsquos foreign policy activities The vol-ume details the transformation of the Arkansas senator from a somewhatreluctant Cold Warrior who accepted executive supremacy into an outspokencritic of the Cold War who demanded a greater role for the Senate in foreignpolicy and it also supplies a stunning bureaucratic history of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee seen largely through the relationship betweenFulbright and the committeersquos longtime staff director Carl Marcy Ashbyfor his part draws on the Church Papers and over 100 interviews to providethe best coverage of the Senate of the 1970s a period in which Church washighly in uential rst as chair of a special committee investigating the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then as chair of the Foreign RelationsCommittee

Unfortunately too many congressional biographies focus so closely onthe life of the pro led gure that they ignore the wider context that would beof use to diplomatic historians Gilbert Fitersquos study of Richard Russell thechairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from the mid-1950sthrough the early 1970s is all too typical in its meager treatment of the poli-tics of the committee and the committeersquos broader role in the debates of theera This oversight is especially problematic given Russellrsquos prominence at var-ious levels The newly released tapes from the Lyndon B Johnson Library re-veal that the Georgia senator played an even more important role in foreignpolicy during the early stages of Johnsonrsquos term than historians previouslyrealized Within Congress itself meanwhile Russell was critical in helpingthe Armed Services Committee become the most powerful committee in thepostwar years and in preventing more rigorous congressional oversight ofthe national security state Thomas Becnelrsquos biography of Allen Ellender suf-fers from the same dif culty Ellender a Democrat from Louisiana who con-cluded his career as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee was amuch less in uential gure than Russell but he did wage a somewhat quix-otic crusade against the foreign aid program and more important he repre-sented an antimilitary strain in Southern thinking A well-rounded biographyof Senator Henry Jackson was published by Robert G Kaufman in 2000 butno full-length biographies exist for other key members of the Senate duringthe Cold War including John Stennis Stuart Symington and John Tower

80

Johnson

8 LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Fighting the Odds The Life of Senator Frank Church (PullmanWashington State University Press 1994) Randall Bennett Woods Fulbright A Biography (New YorkCambridge University Press 1995) William Widenor Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an Ameri-can Foreign Policy (Berkeley University of California Press 1981)

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

the more centralized access that presidential libraries afford Trips to manyout-of-the-way archives can be expensive and inconvenient To investigateeven ten of the senators most active on foreign policy issues during the1960smdashJ William Fulbright Richard Russell Frank Church Wayne MorseGeorge McGovern Ernest Gruening Henry Jackson John Tower JohnStennis and Stuart Symingtonmdasha scholar would have to travel to the Univer-sities of Arkansas Georgia Oregon Washington Alaska-Fairbanks and Mis-souri Boise State University Mississippi State University Southwestern(Texas) University and Princeton University Moreover there would be noguarantee that these journeys would yield anything of value since the papersof postwar members of the upper chamber are of widely varying quality TheJohn Culver collection includes detailed staff memoranda and the FrankChurch Papers contain occasional personal letters but many of the other col-lections are like that of Senator Joseph Clark whose papers consist almost en-tirely of published background material of no direct relationship to the sena-torrsquos activities Moreover while the Church Papers at Boise Statersquos AlbertsonLibrary are impeccably organizedmdashdown to the le foldermdasha more typicalcase is that of the Culver Papers which remain in the boxes sent to the ar-chives following the Iowa senatorrsquos defeat in 1980

The prevailing weakness of specialized studies of Congress further dis-courages historians of US foreign relations from studying congressional is-sues Institutional histories of Congress which are quite rare in any casemostly explore domestic affairs and rarely cover the postndashWorld War II yearswhich are regarded as the domain of political scientists7 Instead biographiesare the eldrsquos most popular genre

Although biographical studies may not be the historianrsquos usual fare theycan be of great use The new surge of biographies of key members of the post-war Congress is particularly valuable for those studying the Senate during theCold War Three studies of twentieth-century chairmen of the Senate ForeignRelations CommitteemdashWilliam Widenorrsquos Henry Cabot Lodge and AmericanForeign Policy Randall Woodsrsquos Fulbright and LeRoy Ashbyrsquos Fighting the

79

Congress and the Cold War

7 For examples of institutional histories see Young The Washington Community David RothmanPolitics and Power The United States Senate 1869ndash1901 (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press1966) Elaine Swift The Making of an American Senate Reconstitutive Change in Congress 1781ndash1841(Ann Arbor University of Michigan 1996) Michael Foley The New Senate Liberal Inuence in aConservative Institution 1959ndash1972 (New Haven Yale University Press 1980) Fred Harris Deadlockor Decision The US Senate and the Rise of National Politics (New York Oxford University Press1993) and Robert Mann The Walls of Jericho Lyndon Johnson Hubert Humphrey Richard Russell andthe Struggle for Civil Rights (New York Harcourt and Brace 1996) For a rare coverage of Congressfrom a foreign policy angle see Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 (Lincoln Uni-versity of Nebraska Press 1983) Ironically broader coverages tend to focus on the weaker of the twobranches such as Charles Whalen Jr The House and Foreign Policy The Irony of Congressional Reform(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1982)

Oddsmdashare all well-researched monographs that provide the backgroundneeded to incorporate their subjects into the foreign policy of the time8 Cam-bridge University Press has issued an abridged version of the Woods biogra-phy that focuses exclusively on Fulbrightrsquos foreign policy activities The vol-ume details the transformation of the Arkansas senator from a somewhatreluctant Cold Warrior who accepted executive supremacy into an outspokencritic of the Cold War who demanded a greater role for the Senate in foreignpolicy and it also supplies a stunning bureaucratic history of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee seen largely through the relationship betweenFulbright and the committeersquos longtime staff director Carl Marcy Ashbyfor his part draws on the Church Papers and over 100 interviews to providethe best coverage of the Senate of the 1970s a period in which Church washighly in uential rst as chair of a special committee investigating the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then as chair of the Foreign RelationsCommittee

Unfortunately too many congressional biographies focus so closely onthe life of the pro led gure that they ignore the wider context that would beof use to diplomatic historians Gilbert Fitersquos study of Richard Russell thechairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from the mid-1950sthrough the early 1970s is all too typical in its meager treatment of the poli-tics of the committee and the committeersquos broader role in the debates of theera This oversight is especially problematic given Russellrsquos prominence at var-ious levels The newly released tapes from the Lyndon B Johnson Library re-veal that the Georgia senator played an even more important role in foreignpolicy during the early stages of Johnsonrsquos term than historians previouslyrealized Within Congress itself meanwhile Russell was critical in helpingthe Armed Services Committee become the most powerful committee in thepostwar years and in preventing more rigorous congressional oversight ofthe national security state Thomas Becnelrsquos biography of Allen Ellender suf-fers from the same dif culty Ellender a Democrat from Louisiana who con-cluded his career as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee was amuch less in uential gure than Russell but he did wage a somewhat quix-otic crusade against the foreign aid program and more important he repre-sented an antimilitary strain in Southern thinking A well-rounded biographyof Senator Henry Jackson was published by Robert G Kaufman in 2000 butno full-length biographies exist for other key members of the Senate duringthe Cold War including John Stennis Stuart Symington and John Tower

80

Johnson

8 LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Fighting the Odds The Life of Senator Frank Church (PullmanWashington State University Press 1994) Randall Bennett Woods Fulbright A Biography (New YorkCambridge University Press 1995) William Widenor Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an Ameri-can Foreign Policy (Berkeley University of California Press 1981)

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

Oddsmdashare all well-researched monographs that provide the backgroundneeded to incorporate their subjects into the foreign policy of the time8 Cam-bridge University Press has issued an abridged version of the Woods biogra-phy that focuses exclusively on Fulbrightrsquos foreign policy activities The vol-ume details the transformation of the Arkansas senator from a somewhatreluctant Cold Warrior who accepted executive supremacy into an outspokencritic of the Cold War who demanded a greater role for the Senate in foreignpolicy and it also supplies a stunning bureaucratic history of the Senate For-eign Relations Committee seen largely through the relationship betweenFulbright and the committeersquos longtime staff director Carl Marcy Ashbyfor his part draws on the Church Papers and over 100 interviews to providethe best coverage of the Senate of the 1970s a period in which Church washighly in uential rst as chair of a special committee investigating the Cen-tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and then as chair of the Foreign RelationsCommittee

Unfortunately too many congressional biographies focus so closely onthe life of the pro led gure that they ignore the wider context that would beof use to diplomatic historians Gilbert Fitersquos study of Richard Russell thechairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from the mid-1950sthrough the early 1970s is all too typical in its meager treatment of the poli-tics of the committee and the committeersquos broader role in the debates of theera This oversight is especially problematic given Russellrsquos prominence at var-ious levels The newly released tapes from the Lyndon B Johnson Library re-veal that the Georgia senator played an even more important role in foreignpolicy during the early stages of Johnsonrsquos term than historians previouslyrealized Within Congress itself meanwhile Russell was critical in helpingthe Armed Services Committee become the most powerful committee in thepostwar years and in preventing more rigorous congressional oversight ofthe national security state Thomas Becnelrsquos biography of Allen Ellender suf-fers from the same dif culty Ellender a Democrat from Louisiana who con-cluded his career as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee was amuch less in uential gure than Russell but he did wage a somewhat quix-otic crusade against the foreign aid program and more important he repre-sented an antimilitary strain in Southern thinking A well-rounded biographyof Senator Henry Jackson was published by Robert G Kaufman in 2000 butno full-length biographies exist for other key members of the Senate duringthe Cold War including John Stennis Stuart Symington and John Tower

80

Johnson

8 LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Fighting the Odds The Life of Senator Frank Church (PullmanWashington State University Press 1994) Randall Bennett Woods Fulbright A Biography (New YorkCambridge University Press 1995) William Widenor Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an Ameri-can Foreign Policy (Berkeley University of California Press 1981)

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

Worse yet virtually no important House member has been the subject of a re-cent biography9

Beyond biographies and narrowly focused narrative histories most stud-ies of Congress during the Cold War focus exclusively on the constitutionalstruggle for supremacy between Congress and the executive branch10 With afew exceptions they describe a series of events in which Congress either vol-untarily yielded its power over foreign policy decisions or stood by while theexecutive branch usurped it According to this interpretation the unbalancedrelationship between the Congress and the executive culminated in the escala-tion of the US commitment in Vietnam which in turn paved the way for acongressional resurgence best symbolized by the passage of the War PowersAct in 1973 Adherents of the executive usurpation thesis unintentionally im-ply that historians interested in the actual conduct of US foreign policy dur-ing the Cold War should look no further than the executive branch since itpossessed the bulk of the power11

The work associated with the executive usurpation school has otherdrawbacks as well First of all it too often focuses on crisis diplomacy choos-ing events that by their very nature lead to heightened executive power In ad-dition those who subscribe to this interpretation advocate a political agendathat blurs the line between historical interpretation and public policy recom-mendation For example Loch Johnson a former aide to Frank Church andauthor of several books on Congress and the Cold War begins one of his vol-umes by observing that the bookrsquos ldquonormative themerdquo is that ldquoforeign policyshould be conducted on the basis of a partnership between the executive andlegislative branchesrdquo Johnson concludes by offering what he terms ldquosome

81

Congress and the Cold War

9 Gilbert Fite Richard B Russell Jr Senator from Georgia (Chapel Hill University of North CarolinaPress 1991) Thomas Becnel Allen Ellender A Biography (Baton Rouge LSU Press 1996) and Rob-ert G Kaufman Henry M Jackson A Life in Politics (Seattle University of Washington Press 2000)See also Gregory Olson Mans eld and Vietnam A Study in Rhetorical Adaptation (East Lansing Mich-igan State University Press 1995) and Jon Lauck ldquoBinding Assumptions Karl E Mundt and theVietnam Warrdquo Mid-America Vol 76 No 3 (Summer 1994) pp 279ndash298

10 For examples of essentially narrative studies see John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongress and the ColdWar Congressional Inuence on the Foreign Policy Processrdquo (PhD diss University of Connecticut1974) Gale Harrison ldquoCongress and Foreign Aid A Study of the Role of Congress in Foreign PolicyMaking 1961ndash1975rdquo (PhD diss Vanderbilt University 1976) Edward Duane ldquoCongress andInter-American Relationsrdquo (PhD diss University of Pennsylvania 1969) and Lee Edwards ldquoCon-gress and the Origins of the Cold War The Truman Doctrinerdquo World Affairs Vol 151 No 1 (Winter1988ndash1989) pp 131ndash140

11 For a sampling of this literature see Cecil Crabb Jr and Pat Holt Invitation to Struggle Congressthe President and Foreign Policy 4th ed (Washington DC CQ Press 1992) Louis Fisher Constitu-tional Conicts between Congress and the President (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1985)Fisher The Politics of Shared Power Congress and the Executive (Washington DC CQ Press 1993)Fisher Presidential War Power (Lawrence University of Kansas Press 1995) Thomas Eagleton Warand Presidential Power A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender (New York Liveright 1974) and JohnHart Ely War and Responsibility Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1993)

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

modest prescriptions toward this endrdquo Louis Fisher does likewise in his well-received book on presidential warmaking A former staff member of the For-eign Relations Committee Michael Glennon also re ects this bias com-menting that his book ldquoproposes that the United States recognize and returnto its constitutional moorings in the making of foreign policyrdquo12

This agenda becomes especially problematic when these scholars inter-pret events that took place before the Cold War Indeed the key assumptionof this schoolmdashthat in the words of Fisher ldquogradually the executive branchclaimed for the President the power to initiate war and determine its magni-tude and durationrdquomdashis of limited utility for the years before 194113 The ex-ecutive-legislative foreign policy relationship passed through three broadphases from 1787 to 1941 as congressional power increased and decreased ac-cording to shifts in domestic political forces and alterations in the interna-tional environment Keeping this history in mind allows scholars to view theCold War battles between President and Congress as part of a broader contin-uum of executive-legislative struggles in the international arena and offers amore nuanced perspective on the congressional role in Cold War foreign pol-icy issues

The executive usurpation school implicitly assumes that the US Consti-tution granted Congress a predominant voice in the conduct of US foreignpolicy However scrutiny reveals that the Founding Fathers drew very differ-ent lessons from the Revolutionary era At the very least the framers of theUS Constitution seem to have anticipated con ict between the executiveand legislative branches in foreign affairs as well as domestic policy Suchcon icts marked the diplomacy of the early Republic when a surprisingly as-sertive executive branch encountered a generally meek congressional re-sponse14 Early American history provided a good example of how a constitu-

82

Johnson

12 Loch Johnson The Making of International Agreements Congress Confronts the Executive (NewYork New York University Press 1984) p xviii Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1990) and Fisher Presidential War Power Indeed an excessiveamount of literature on Congress and the Cold War is devoted to what amounts to ideological argu-ments about the appropriateness of Congressrsquos role in US foreign policy and whether an expansion ofthat role aids or hampers the prosecution of foreign policy For a sampling of this literature see JamesLindsay and Randall Ripley ldquoForeign and Defense Policy in Congress A Research Agenda for the1990srdquo Legislative Studies Quarterly Vol 27 No 3 (Summer 1992) p 418

13 Fisher Presidential War Power p 13

14 Charles Lofgren ldquoWar-making under the Constitution The Original Understandingrdquo Yale LawJournal Vol 81 No 3 (July 1972) pp 672ndash702 John Yoo ldquoThe Origins of the Warmaking ClauserdquoPaper presented at the Conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations(SHAFR) Bentley College Waltham MA 1994 Jack Rakove ldquoSolving a Constitutional Puzzle TheTreatymaking Clause as a Case Studyrdquo Perspectives in American History new series Vol 1 No 3 (Sum-mer 1984) pp 207ndash248 William Banks and Peter Raven-Hansen National Security Law and thePower of the Purse (New York Oxford University Press 1994) pp 28 30 Dorothy Jones License forEmpire Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982) AbrahamSofaer War Foreign Affairs and Constitutional Power (Cambridge MA Ballinger Press 1976) pp 5

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

tional structure evenly divided between the two branches quickly tipped infavor of the executive The professionalization of US foreign policy also con-tributed to executive power an intriguing point initially raised by FelixGilbert in To the Farewell Address Two other factors played key roles First aslong as the wars of the French Revolution persisted this tangible threat to na-tional security magni ed the signi cance of the power of the commander-in-chief Second the intimate link between international issues and the rstmultiparty system ensured that contentious foreign policy questions would bedebated along partisan rather than institutional lines15

The War of 1812 altered the nature of the executivelegislative relation-ship on foreign policy matters creating a more paci c situation internation-ally but a more divisive home front The four decades following the Treaty ofGhent witnessed regular congressional challenges to executive supremacyCongressional power in the international arena was enhanced only after theCivil War partly because presidents during this era were willing to upholdtradition and negotiate substantial agreements with foreign powers as treatiesThe failure of the three most ambitious of these treatiesmdashGrantrsquos scheme toannex the Dominican Republic in 1870 the effort to establish a US protec-torate over Nicaragua in 1884 and Benjamin Harrisonrsquos gambit to annex Ha-waii in 1893mdashprompted future secretary of state John Hay to observe that aldquotreaty entering the Senate is like a bull going into the arena no one can telljust how or when the blow will fallmdashbut one thing is certainmdashit will neverleave the arena aliverdquo16

83

Congress and the Cold War

90 212 303 Stanley Elkins and Eric McKintrick The Age of Federalism (New York Oxford Univer-sity Press 1993) Norman Risjord The Old Republicans Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson(New York Columbia University Press 1965) Paul Varg New England and Foreign Relations 1789ndash1850 (Hanover University Press of New England 1983) Banks and Raven-Hansen National SecurityLaw p 36 Reginald Stuart ldquoJames Madison and the Militants Republican Disunity and Replacingthe Embargordquo Diplomatic History Vol 6 No 2 (Spring 1982) pp 145ndash167 and Harry Fritz ldquoTheWar Hawks of 1812 Party Leadership in the Twelfth Congressrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (Winter1976) pp 25ndash42

15 Felix Gilbert To the Farewell Address Ideas of Early American Foreign Policy (Princeton NJ Prince-ton University Press 1961) pp 82ndash83 On the partisan situation see Young The Washington Com-munity and Joseph Charles The Origins of the American Party System (New York Harper and Row1956)

16 Piero Gleijeses ldquoThe Limits of Sympathy The United States and the Independence of SpanishAmericardquo Journal of Latin American Studies Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1992) pp 481ndash505 Ernest May TheMaking of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge MA Belknap University Press 1975) Thomas HietalaManifest Design Anxious Aggrandizement in Jacksonian America (Ithaca Cornell University Press1985) John Schroeder Mr Polkrsquos War American Opposition and Dissent 1848ndash1848 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1973) David Potter The Impending Crisis 1848ndash1861 (New York Harperand Row 1976) pp 177ndash198 Robert May The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire 1854ndash1861(Athens University of Georgia Press 1989) pp 163ndash189 Richard Sewell John P Hale and the Politicsof Abolition (Cambridge MA Harvard University Press 1965) Donathon Olliff Reforma Mexico andthe United States A Search for Alternatives to Annexation 1854ndash1861 (Tuscaloosa University of Ala-bama Press 1981) pp 84ndash152 and Frederick Moore Binder James Buchanan and the American Em-pire (Selinsgrove Susquehanna University Press 1996) pp 217ndash271

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

Just when Congress seemed dominant events at the turn of the centurybrought to an end this second era in executive-legislative relations on ques-tions of foreign policy as Fareed Zakaria has argued in his stimulating newbook17 On the domestic front the realignment generated by William Mc-Kinleyrsquos triumph in 1896 ultimately paved the way for closer partisan coordi-nation between the executive and legislative branches a situation reminiscentof the early years of the Republic In addition political activists in the Pro-gressive Era championed a strong presidency on the assumption that Congresswas corrupt and inherently conservative By the rst few years of the twenti-eth century many envisioned the United States in a more active evenldquomoralrdquo international role a point of view that guided not only McKinleyrsquosCuban and Filipino policies but much of his successorrsquos agenda as well Exec-utive unilateralism in decision making reached its high point during the presi-dency of Woodrow Wilson when US forces were sent to Mexico RussiaHaiti and the Dominican Republic as well as to ght in World War I18

Although the Gilded Age pattern of congressional supremacy thus cameto an end Congress remained a key restraining in uence The one clear-cutexecutive victory on a treaty during this periodmdashthe approval of the Treaty ofParismdashoccurred only because of McKinleyrsquos deference to Congress duringboth the negotiations and the ratication McKinleyrsquos successors lacked eitherhis political tact or his luck and they struggled with the rami cations of thetreaty-making clause In 1905 for example Theodore Roosevelt explainedthat he had not submitted to Congress a treaty con rming the Dominicancustoms receivership for fear that Augustus Bacon ldquobacked by the average ya-hoo among the Democratic senatorsrdquo would block the measure and in theprocess get ldquoa little cheap reputation among ignorant peoplerdquo The Senatersquos re-jection of the Treaty of Versailles might have served as the most spectacular as-sertion of congressional power in foreign policy decisions but it clearly wasnot an isolated example of the upper chamberrsquos effort to make its presence felton international matters19 When Woodrow Wilson attempted to bypass

84

Johnson

17 Fareed Zakana From Wealth to Power The Unusual Origins of Americarsquos World Role (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1998)

18 David Healy Drive to Hegemony The United States in the Caribbean 1898ndash1917 (Madison Uni-versity of Wisconsin Press 1988) Akira Iriye The Cambridge History of American Foreign RelationsThe Globalization of America (New York Cambridge University Press 1994) and WilliamLeuchtenberg ldquoProgressivism and Imperialism The Progressive Movement and American ForeignPolicyrdquo Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol 39 No 2 (August 1952) pp 483ndash504

19 Theodore Roosevelt to Joseph Bucklin Bishop 23 March 1905 in Elting Morison ed The Lettersof Theodore Roosevelt Vol 4 (Cambridge Harvard University Press 1951) pp 1144ndash1145 RichardWelch Response to Imperialism The United States and the Philippine-American War 1899ndash1902 (Cha-pel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1979) pp 3ndash45 and Richard Lael Arrogant DiplomacyUS Policy toward Colombia 1903ndash1922 (Wilmington Scholarly Resources Inc 1987) The bestcoverage of the Senate debate over the Treaty of Versailles is Lloyd Ambrosius Woodrow Wilson and the

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

Congress entirely during the abortive intervention in Russia the legislatorsthreatened to use the ultimate sanction the power of the purse In 1919 a res-olution introduced by Senator Hiram Johnson to cut off funding for the in-tervention failed on a perilously close tie vote This demonstration of theldquocritical spirit in Congressrdquo convinced the acting secretary of state FrankPolk and ultimately the administration as a whole that it had no choice but towithdraw the troops20

The intensity of the Versailles battle heightened the importance of for-eign policy pressure groups of all ideological persuasions and their in uencehas grown ever since In a pattern that was just as evident later in the centurysuch groups tended to have a greater impact on Congress than on the execu-tive branch as demonstrated by the US Army Chemical Warfare Servicersquoshighly effective lobbying campaign against the Chemical Weapons Treaty in1926 and by the role of anti-imperialists in the US-Mexican crisis of 1926ndash192721

Foreign policy issues remained a point of contention between the execu-tive and legislature during the fteen years that preceded the Cold WarFranklin Rooseveltrsquos domestic focus made him reluctant to spend politicalcapital on international affairs such as the protocol for adherence to theWorld Court and this enabled the Nye Committee to dominate public dis-course on neutrality issues As Cordell Hull noted at the time the Congressused its legislative powers to impose sharp constraints on the president mostnotably by passing the Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 measures that Hullconsidered ldquoan invasion of the constitutional and traditional power of the Ex-ecutive to conduct the foreign relations of the United Statesrdquo Ironically themost substantial expansion of executive authority on foreign policy issues en-joyed by Franklin Roosevelt during his rst six years as presidentmdashthe Recip-

85

Congress and the Cold War

American Diplomatic Tradition (New York Cambridge University Press 1987) although see alsoWidenor Henry Cabot Lodge and Ralph Stone The Irreconcilables The Fight against the League of Na-tions (Lexington University Press of Kentucky 1970)

20 Polk quoted in David Foglesong Americarsquos Secret War against Bolshevism US Intervention in theRussian Civil War 1917ndash1920 (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1995) pp 71 251Polk quoted in United States Department of State Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the UnitedStates 1918ndash1919 Russia Vol 4 (Washington DC US Government Printing Of ce 1937) pp245ndash248 and Richard Coke Lower A Bloc of One The Political Career of Hiram W Johnson (StanfordCA Stanford University Press 1993) pp 117ndash132

21 John Chalmers Vinson The Parchment Peace The United States Senate and the Washington Confer-ence 1921ndash1922 (Athens University of Georgia Press 1955) Vinson William Borah and the Out-lawry of War (Athens University of Georgia Press 1957) LeRoy Ashby The Spearless Leader SenatorBorah and the Progressive Movement during the 1920s (Urbana University of Illinois Press 1972)Rodney McElroy ldquoThe Geneva Protocol of 1925rdquo in Dan Caldwell and Michael Krepon eds ThePolitics of Arms Control Treaty Rati cation (New York St Martinrsquos Press 1991) pp 125ndash166 HerbertMargulies ldquoThe Senate and the World Courtrdquo Capitol Studies Vol 4 No 1 (1976) pp 37ndash51 andThomas Guinsberg ldquoVictory in Defeat The Senatorial Isolationists and the Four-Power TreatyrdquoCapitol Studies Vol 2 No 1 (Winter 1973) pp 23ndash36

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

rocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934mdashoccurred when Congress willinglysacri ced its power over foreign economic policy largely because of the back-lash against the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Nonetheless the measure had the long-term effect of removing foreign economic issues from congressional discus-sion during the Cold War22

Some common patterns emerged in the congressional approach to for-eign relations in the years before 1941 The Johnson amendment in 1919(discussed above) re ected a general willingness to use roll call votes on mili-tary spending to expand Congressrsquos built-in power over foreign affairs Theprevalence of treaties heightened the importance of the Senatersquos ldquoadvise andconsentrdquo role in the conduct of foreign policy even though the upper cham-ber approved 86 percent of the 726 treaties it considered between 1789 and1926 Internally Congress settled into a fairly stable bureaucratic patternwhen dealing with international questions With the important exception ofthe tariff the House of Representatives played a minor role on most foreignpolicy issues23 In the Senate meanwhile the Foreign Relations Committeereigned supreme while its two chief rivalsmdashthe Committees on Military Af-fairs and Naval Affairsmdashremained extremely weak These conditions pro-duced a relatively small ldquoforeign policy eliterdquo within the Senate composed ofthe members of the Foreign Relations Committee and the few other membersof the body who for personal political or ideological reasons exhibited in-tense interest in international affairs This small group of senators marshaledthe bodyrsquos considerable international powers for their own ends24

World War II brought far-reaching changes The reemergence of an in-ternational threat Rooseveltrsquos increasing focus on foreign policy and the pub-lic reaction against the attempts to legislate neutrality tipped the balance in fa-vor of executive action Perhaps no single piece of legislation demonstrated

86

Johnson

22 Wayne Cole Roosevelt and the Isolationists 1932ndash1945 pp 161ndash178 and Robert Pastor Congressand the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy 1929ndash1976 (Berkeley University of California Press1980) pp 73ndash92

23 During one congressional session in the 1920s for instance the House Foreign Affairs Committeespent a week debating a 20000 dollar appropriation for an international poultry show in TulsaOklahoma which one committee member recalled as ldquothe most important issue that came before theCommittee in the whole sessionrdquo James Sundquist The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washing-ton DC Brookings Institute 1981) pp 94ndash102

24 W Stull Holt Treaties Defeated by the Senate A Study of the Struggle between President and Senateover the Conduct of Foreign Relations (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1933) Wayne ColeldquoWith the Advice and Consent of the Senate The Treaty-Making Process Before the Cold War Yearsrdquoin Michael Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy Controlling the Use of Force in theNuclear Age (Albany State University of New York Press 1987) p 81 Joseph Martin My First FiftyYears in Politics (New York McGraw Hill Book Co Inc 1960) p 49 and James Robinson Congressand Foreign Policy-making A Study in Legislative Inuence and Initiative (Homewood The DorseyPress Inc 1962) pp 125ndash126

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

the depth of the changes more than the Lend-Lease Act which passed despitecongressional recognition that the measure greatly weakened the institutionrsquosforeign policy powers25

It thus became clear even before the emergence of US-Soviet tensionsthat the balance of power between the congressional and executive branchesin the interwar period would not be sustained in the immediate postwar eraThe bipolar international system and intense ideological rivalry that charac-terized the Cold War con rmed the point Internationally the seemingly all-encompassing nature of the Communist threat after the outbreak of the Ko-rean War placed the government on what amounted to a permanent war foot-ing while the advent of nuclear weapons created the need for instant decisionmaking that was lacking in previous challenges to US national security Thissituation gave rise to a new interpretation of constitutional theory that soughtto increase the power of the presidency through the commander-in-chiefclause On the domestic front there was a widespread perception that the late1930s had revealed the dangers of an overactive congressional role and thisallowed the Truman administration to sti e congressional dissent by equatingits own foreign policy principles with the concept of bipartisanship The Sen-ate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Tom Connally equated opposi-tion to bipartisanship with isolationism and Dean Acheson observed morecolorfully that a bipartisan foreign policy allowed the president to argue thatany critic was ldquoa son-of-a-bitch and not a true patriotrdquo ldquoIf people will swallowthatrdquo Acheson noted ldquothen yoursquore off to the racesrdquo26

Congress embraced calls for bipartisanship mostly because the twobranches agreed on the desirability of vigorously prosecuting the Cold War27

Indeed at times Congress seemed positively eager to expand presidential au-thority Representative Elden Spence argued in 1949 that ldquoin these highly im-portant international affairs he [the President] ought to have the same powers

87

Congress and the Cold War

25 For World War II matters see Robert Divine Second Chance The Triumph of Internationalism inAmerica during World War II (New York Atheneum 1967) pp 93ndash113 Warren Kimball The MostUnsordid Act Lend-Lease 1939ndash1941 (Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 1969) and Banksand Raven-Hansen National Security Law p 102

26 Acheson quoted in Thomas Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policy Public Opinion and CongressThe Truman Yearsrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 3 No 1 (Winter 1979) p 17 Connally quoted inHenry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Administrationrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol90 No 2 (Summer 1975) p 221 That bipartisanship worked to the advantage of Republican presi-dents as well as Democrats was con rmed in the Eisenhower administration Anna Nelson ldquoJohn Fos-ter Dulles and the Bipartisan Congressrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 102 No 1 (Spring 1987)pp 43ndash64

27 Thomas Mann ldquoMaking Foreign Policy President and Congressrdquo in Thomas Mann ed A Ques-tion of Balance The President the Congress and Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings Institu-tion 1990) pp 10ndash12

as the executives or dictators representing the enslaved peoples in the totalitar-ian governmentsrdquo28 Such sentiments all but guaranteed approval of initiativessuch as the National Security Act the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) and the expansion of the defense budget following the onset of theKorean War In the words of Arthur Vandenberg the fact that issues rarelyreached ldquoCongress until they have developed to a point where Congressionaldiscretion is pathetically restrictedrdquo was of further bene t to the presidentThe Korean War was one such examplemdashat the time several senior membersexpressly asked Truman not to involve Congress in the decision to intervene29

Moreover as Duane Tananbaum has illustrated events such as the ldquoGreat De-baterdquo of 1951 in which the Senate conceded the presidential right to sendUS troops to Europe without its consent and the Bricker Amendment of1953 which sought to scale back the power of the executive to enter into in-ternational agreements without congressional consent represented setbacksfor those attempting to assert Congressrsquos formal powers In the Cold War eramaintaining a rigid balance between Congress and the executive seemed sim-ply impractical30

The executive usurpation school therefore has a substantial body of evi-dence favoring the view that congressional in uence on foreign policy issuesdeclined in the period from 1941 to the mid-1950s Postwar presidents fur-ther circumvented Congress by relying on executive or statutory agreementsrather than formal treaties31 Another standard barometer of congressionalin uencemdashthe frequency of attempts to legislate foreign policy through reso-lutions or by attaching policy-related riders to appropriations billsmdashalso de-

88

Johnson

28 Barbara Sinclair ldquoCongressional Party Leaders in the Foreign and Defense Policy Arenardquo inRandall Ripley and James Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent Foreign and Defense Policy on Capitol Hill(Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1993) p 208 Spence quoted in William Long US Ex-port Control Policy Executive Authority Versus Congressional Reform (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1989) p 22

29 James Lindsay Congress and Politics of US Defense Policy (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1994) pp 147ndash152

30 Duane Tananbaum The Bricker Amendment Controversy A Test of Eisenhowerrsquos Political Leadership(Ithaca Cornell University Press 1988) On lower-pro le issues though such as human rights trea-ties congressional recalcitrance remained an important factor See Natalie Henever Kaufman HumanRights Treaties and the Senate A History of Opposition (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press1990)

31 John Norton Moore ldquoExecutive Agreements and Congressional Executive Relationsrdquo in USHouse of Representatives Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on International Se-curity Congressional Review of International Agreements Hearings 94th Cong 2nd sess 1976pp 207ndash219 and Johnson Making of International Agreements A few statistics underscore the shiftIn 1930 the United States concluded 25 treaties as compared to only nine executive agreements Withthe important exceptions of NATO and the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization however presidentsduring the Cold War increasingly turned to executive or statutory agreements rather than treatieswhen embarking on new foreign policy ventures By 1968 the United States entered into just sixteentreaties as opposed to 266 executive agreements

clined during the early stages of the Cold War The rise of the national secu-rity state spread defense spending around the country leaving members ofCongress who sought to reduce it vulnerable to the charge of subverting na-tional security as well as ignoring the economic interests of their constituentsMoreover in the anti-Communist mindset associated with the McCarthy eracasting a vote against defense spending was often considered a political riskIn the decade from the end of the Korean War to the end of the Kennedypresidency defense bills passed with an average of less than one negative votein both chambers Moreover this decade featured only fteen roll call votes(in the House and Senate combined) on amendments to defense appropria-tions bills most of which addressed insigni cant issues such as an amend-ment to permit rather than mandate the relocation of an army munitions de-pot near Houston32 Some foreign policy roll call votes such as those on jointresolutions seeking advance congressional approval for policy decisions hadthe effect of compromising future congressional power As an outgrowth ofTrumanrsquos bipartisanship strategy the rst such resolution occurred with theTaiwan Straits crisis in 1955 and culminated with the Tonkin Gulf Resolu-tion in 196433

Within Congress the altered environment resulted in a loss of hegemonyfor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee The committee came underchallenge from the newly created Joint Committee on Atomic Energy theSenate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations Commit-tee each of which proved less than zealous in challenging executive policiesWith the expansion of the defense budget the Armed Services Committeebecame particularly important Its strongly pro-defense members aggressivelysought to funnel defense projects to their constituents Mendel Rivers a rep-resentative from South Carolina who chaired the Armed Services Committeewas perceived as so zealous in securing projects for his district that manyjoked that the state capital Charleston would fall into the sea with the weightof the concrete poured for military bases there But as Rivers noted in themid-1950s the committee viewed itself as ldquothe only voice of- cial voice themilitary has in the House of Representativesrdquo The committee often gave

89

Johnson

32 Ann Markusen Scott Campbell Peter Hall and Sabina Deitrick The Rise of the Gunbelt The Mil-itary Remapping of Industrial America (New York Oxford University Press 1991)

33 For the Formosa Resolution see Gordon Chang Friends and Enemies The United States Chinaand the Soviet Union 1948ndash1972 (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1990) and RobertAccinelli Crisis and Containment United States Policy toward Taiwan 1950ndash1955 (Chapel Hill Uni-versity of North Carolina Press 1996) For Congress and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution see WilliamConrad Gibbons The US Government and the Vietnam War Executive and Legislative Roles and Rela-tionships Vol 2 1961ndash1964 (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1984) and Edwin MoiseTonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press1996) pp 252ndash255

open-ended authorizations such as ldquothe Secretary of the Army may procurematerials and facilities necessary to maintain and support the Army in-cluding guided missilesrdquo an arrangement that ensured the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo ofexecutive branch defense proposals as Samuel Huntington lamented in hisacclaimed book on the politics of defense budgeting34 The oversight of otheraspects of the national security state especially the intelligence communitywas equally lax The CIA referred to the informal system as BOGSAT(ldquobunch of guys sitting around a tablerdquo) while Allen Dulles once admittedthat he would ldquofudge the truth to the oversight committeerdquo though he wouldldquotell the chairman the truthmdashif he wants to knowrdquo Generally the chairmendid not Senator Richard Russell called for Congress to take CIA statementsldquoon faithrdquo while his committeersquos ranking Republican Leverett Saltonstall ofMassachusetts commented that he would prefer not to know the details ofCIA activities The senatorrsquos admission ironically helped beat back a 1956 at-tempt to establish a formal Senate committee to oversee the CIA35

Clearly these developments provide fodder for the executive usurpationschool But they also obscure Congressrsquos ability to in uence US foreign poli-cy in less traditional ways even at the height of the Cold War For instance al-though the postwar committee structure generally yielded a less prominentcongressional role in policy making the reverse occurred in some cases Theclearest example came with nuclear diplomacy when the Joint Committee onAtomic Energy largely spurred by the personal ambitions of its chair BrienMcMahon successfully pushed through legislation restricting US efforts toshare nuclear technology with allied states36 In addition as Senator FrankChurch later noted the decline of the Foreign Relations Committee increasedldquothe role of dissent as well as the advocacy of alternative courses to individualsenatorsrdquo It allowed senators who were not on the committee an opportunityto in uence foreign policy decisions and it helped produce a multitude ofsubcommittees dealing with foreign policy matters On domestic issues sub-

90

Johnson

34 Barbara Hinckley Less Than Meets the Eye Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Con-gress (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1994) p 51 Barry Blechman The Politics of National Se-curity Congress and US Defense Policy (New York Oxford University Press 1990) pp 23ndash32 Her-bert Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committees in the Appropriations Process A StudyFocused on the Armed Services Committeesrdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 24 No 2 (Spring1971) p 146 and Christopher Deering ldquoDecision Making in the Armed Services Committeesrdquo inLindsay and Ripley eds Congress Resurgent pp 156ndash170 177 Rivers quoted in James LindsayldquoCongress and Defense Policy 1961 to 1986rdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 13 No 4 (Fall 1987)p 378

35 Frank Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community (Knoxville University of TennesseePress 1990) pp 1ndash24 Thomas Paterson ldquoOversight or Afterview Congress the CIA and CovertActions since 1947rdquo in Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy pp 157ndash158 andBlechman Politics of National Security p 141

36 Loch Johnson A Season of Inquiry Congress and Intelligence (Chicago Dorsey 1988)

committees served as one of the key avenues for individual members of Con-gress to shape legislation and this pattern held on foreign policy issues as wellSenators with as diverse ideological viewpoints as Joseph McCarthy HenryJackson Ernest Gruening and Hubert Humphrey all used subcommittees ofthe relatively weak Government Operations Committee to establish them-selves as authorities on various international questions McCarthy obviouslywas the most prominent of these gures but his activities are perhaps bestviewed as part of a broader trend namely the decentralization of powerwithin Congress on national security matters Overall the number of foreignpolicy subcommittees in the Senate alone grew from seven in 1945ndash1946 tothirty-one by 1965ndash196637

There were thus many ways in which developments during the early yearsof the Cold War actually magni ed the congressional presence in foreign poli-cy decision making Increased public attention to foreign policy issues gaveCongress more opportunities to frame discussions of these issues DeanAcheson later admitted that Truman refrained from seeking congressional ap-proval of the Korean War in part because he feared that public hearings mightproduce ldquoone more question in cross-examination which destroys yourdquo Onceout of power the Democrats remembered this lesson and Averell Harrimanin 1954 encouraged ldquoour senators and congressmen to pursue the tactic ofasking questions which it will be dif cult for the Administration to answersatisfactorilyrdquo Within the new subcommittee structure meanwhile senatorssuch as McCarthy and Jackson also pro ted from the greater public interest innational security matters38

Other congressional actions in the early Cold War such as the resound-ing votes for measures like the Greek and Turkish aid packages and theFormosa and Middle East Resolutions also engendered a more complex rela-

91

Congress and the Cold War

37 Frank Church to Robert Farning 12 January 1966 Frank Church Papers Albertsonrsquos LibraryBoise State University Series 22 Box 9 Roger Davidson ldquoSubcommittee Government New Chan-nels for Policy Makingrdquo in Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein eds The New Congress (Washing-ton DC American Enterprise Institute 1981) pp 99ndash133 and Leroy Reiselbach Congressional Re-form The Changing Modern Congress (Washington DC Congressional Quarterly Press 1994)pp 94ndash146 For a listing of the Senate subcommittees which convened hearings on foreign policy is-sues see Congressional Information Service (CIS) US Congressional Committee Hearings IndexPart V 79th Congressndash82nd Congress 1945ndash1952 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 988ndash998 CISUS Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI 83rd Congressndash85th Congress 1953ndash1958 (Wash-ington DC CIS 1983) pp 876ndash892 and CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI89th Congressndash91st Congress 1st session 1965ndash1969 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 814ndash835

38 Robert Grif th Politics of Fear Joseph McCarthy and the Senate (Amherst MA Universtiy of Mas-sachusetts Press 1987) p 231 Dorothy Fosdick ed Henry Jackson and World Affairs (Seattle Univer-sity of Washington Press 1990) p 53 Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policyrdquo p 19 Harriman quotedin Gary Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissent Democrats and Foreign Policy 1952ndash1956rdquo Political Sci-ence Quarterly Vol 93 No 1 (Spring 1978) p 56 and Kenneth Entin ldquoInformation Exchanges inCongress The Case of the House Armed Services Committeerdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 26No 4 (Winter 1973) pp 427ndash439

tionship between the branches than is apparent at rst glance Because theideological nature of the Cold War struggle seemed to demand unity at home(and thus overwhelming votes of approval) congressional opinion either ac-tual or anticipated could affect executive branch decision making This wasthe case when the question of whether to aid the French in Vietnam came upin 1954 and when the Formosa Straits crisis erupted the following year At thetime Hubert Humphrey commented on the existence of a ldquoremarkable differ-ence of opinion in the Senate way beyond the difference shown by the voteon the resolutionrdquo The importance of the faccedilade of bipartisan unity strength-ened the position of those within the Eisenhower administration who were ar-guing for restraint39 The resolutions in 1954ndash1955 testi ed to the ways inwhich indirect congressional in uence affected the conduct of US diplo-macy during the early Cold War Nuclear policy revealed the same patternmdashBernard Baruch owed his appointment to his close relationship withVandenbergmdashand so did the outcome of the British loan debate Britishof cials not ldquoinclined to risk further debate with Congressrdquo informed theState Department of their willingness to negotiate the loan to meet congres-sional concerns This type of relationship could work the other way as wellCharles Bohlen later asserted that executive branch of cials who favored aharder line against the Soviet Union cited the need to placate Congress as a ra-tionale for their preferred policy40

In addition the proliferation of US bilateral and multilateral securitycommitments (re ected in the expansion of the foreign aid program) thegrowing number of military bases and the surge of executive agreements in-creased the opportunity for congressional oversight and thus provided newtools for Congress to in uence the conduct of foreign policy41 The vast inter-national role of the United States also encouraged transnational alliances link-ing congressional blocs with foreign governments This type of arrangementit should be noted was not peculiar to the postwar period As early as the1830s the British government had retained Daniel Webster then in the Sen-

92

Johnson

39 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 62ndash63 and Robert Accinelli ldquoEisenhower Congress andthe 1954ndash1955 Offshore Island Crisisrdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 20 No 3 (Fall 1990)pp 329ndash344

40 Hoyt Purvis ldquoTracing the Congressional Role US Foreign Policy and Turkeyrdquo in Hoyt Purvisand Steven Baker eds Legislating Foreign Policy (Boulder Westview Press 1984) pp 26ndash29 CharlesBohlen Witness to History (New York Norton 1973) p 261 and John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongressand the Cold War Congressional In uence on the Foreign Policy Process (PhD diss University ofConnecticut 1974) pp 9 141 163ndash164 This type of informal diplomatic inuence appeared withparticular frequency on trade issues See Robert Pastor ldquoCongress and US Foreign Policy Coopera-tive Advantage or Disadvantagerdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 14 No 4 (Autumn 1991) p 105

41 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense Policy pp 30ndash31

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

clined during the early stages of the Cold War The rise of the national secu-rity state spread defense spending around the country leaving members ofCongress who sought to reduce it vulnerable to the charge of subverting na-tional security as well as ignoring the economic interests of their constituentsMoreover in the anti-Communist mindset associated with the McCarthy eracasting a vote against defense spending was often considered a political riskIn the decade from the end of the Korean War to the end of the Kennedypresidency defense bills passed with an average of less than one negative votein both chambers Moreover this decade featured only fteen roll call votes(in the House and Senate combined) on amendments to defense appropria-tions bills most of which addressed insigni cant issues such as an amend-ment to permit rather than mandate the relocation of an army munitions de-pot near Houston32 Some foreign policy roll call votes such as those on jointresolutions seeking advance congressional approval for policy decisions hadthe effect of compromising future congressional power As an outgrowth ofTrumanrsquos bipartisanship strategy the rst such resolution occurred with theTaiwan Straits crisis in 1955 and culminated with the Tonkin Gulf Resolu-tion in 196433

Within Congress the altered environment resulted in a loss of hegemonyfor the Senate Foreign Relations Committee The committee came underchallenge from the newly created Joint Committee on Atomic Energy theSenate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Appropriations Commit-tee each of which proved less than zealous in challenging executive policiesWith the expansion of the defense budget the Armed Services Committeebecame particularly important Its strongly pro-defense members aggressivelysought to funnel defense projects to their constituents Mendel Rivers a rep-resentative from South Carolina who chaired the Armed Services Committeewas perceived as so zealous in securing projects for his district that manyjoked that the state capital Charleston would fall into the sea with the weightof the concrete poured for military bases there But as Rivers noted in themid-1950s the committee viewed itself as ldquothe only voice of- cial voice themilitary has in the House of Representativesrdquo The committee often gave

89

Johnson

32 Ann Markusen Scott Campbell Peter Hall and Sabina Deitrick The Rise of the Gunbelt The Mil-itary Remapping of Industrial America (New York Oxford University Press 1991)

33 For the Formosa Resolution see Gordon Chang Friends and Enemies The United States Chinaand the Soviet Union 1948ndash1972 (Stanford CA Stanford University Press 1990) and RobertAccinelli Crisis and Containment United States Policy toward Taiwan 1950ndash1955 (Chapel Hill Uni-versity of North Carolina Press 1996) For Congress and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution see WilliamConrad Gibbons The US Government and the Vietnam War Executive and Legislative Roles and Rela-tionships Vol 2 1961ndash1964 (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1984) and Edwin MoiseTonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press1996) pp 252ndash255

open-ended authorizations such as ldquothe Secretary of the Army may procurematerials and facilities necessary to maintain and support the Army in-cluding guided missilesrdquo an arrangement that ensured the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo ofexecutive branch defense proposals as Samuel Huntington lamented in hisacclaimed book on the politics of defense budgeting34 The oversight of otheraspects of the national security state especially the intelligence communitywas equally lax The CIA referred to the informal system as BOGSAT(ldquobunch of guys sitting around a tablerdquo) while Allen Dulles once admittedthat he would ldquofudge the truth to the oversight committeerdquo though he wouldldquotell the chairman the truthmdashif he wants to knowrdquo Generally the chairmendid not Senator Richard Russell called for Congress to take CIA statementsldquoon faithrdquo while his committeersquos ranking Republican Leverett Saltonstall ofMassachusetts commented that he would prefer not to know the details ofCIA activities The senatorrsquos admission ironically helped beat back a 1956 at-tempt to establish a formal Senate committee to oversee the CIA35

Clearly these developments provide fodder for the executive usurpationschool But they also obscure Congressrsquos ability to in uence US foreign poli-cy in less traditional ways even at the height of the Cold War For instance al-though the postwar committee structure generally yielded a less prominentcongressional role in policy making the reverse occurred in some cases Theclearest example came with nuclear diplomacy when the Joint Committee onAtomic Energy largely spurred by the personal ambitions of its chair BrienMcMahon successfully pushed through legislation restricting US efforts toshare nuclear technology with allied states36 In addition as Senator FrankChurch later noted the decline of the Foreign Relations Committee increasedldquothe role of dissent as well as the advocacy of alternative courses to individualsenatorsrdquo It allowed senators who were not on the committee an opportunityto in uence foreign policy decisions and it helped produce a multitude ofsubcommittees dealing with foreign policy matters On domestic issues sub-

90

Johnson

34 Barbara Hinckley Less Than Meets the Eye Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Con-gress (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1994) p 51 Barry Blechman The Politics of National Se-curity Congress and US Defense Policy (New York Oxford University Press 1990) pp 23ndash32 Her-bert Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committees in the Appropriations Process A StudyFocused on the Armed Services Committeesrdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 24 No 2 (Spring1971) p 146 and Christopher Deering ldquoDecision Making in the Armed Services Committeesrdquo inLindsay and Ripley eds Congress Resurgent pp 156ndash170 177 Rivers quoted in James LindsayldquoCongress and Defense Policy 1961 to 1986rdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 13 No 4 (Fall 1987)p 378

35 Frank Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community (Knoxville University of TennesseePress 1990) pp 1ndash24 Thomas Paterson ldquoOversight or Afterview Congress the CIA and CovertActions since 1947rdquo in Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy pp 157ndash158 andBlechman Politics of National Security p 141

36 Loch Johnson A Season of Inquiry Congress and Intelligence (Chicago Dorsey 1988)

committees served as one of the key avenues for individual members of Con-gress to shape legislation and this pattern held on foreign policy issues as wellSenators with as diverse ideological viewpoints as Joseph McCarthy HenryJackson Ernest Gruening and Hubert Humphrey all used subcommittees ofthe relatively weak Government Operations Committee to establish them-selves as authorities on various international questions McCarthy obviouslywas the most prominent of these gures but his activities are perhaps bestviewed as part of a broader trend namely the decentralization of powerwithin Congress on national security matters Overall the number of foreignpolicy subcommittees in the Senate alone grew from seven in 1945ndash1946 tothirty-one by 1965ndash196637

There were thus many ways in which developments during the early yearsof the Cold War actually magni ed the congressional presence in foreign poli-cy decision making Increased public attention to foreign policy issues gaveCongress more opportunities to frame discussions of these issues DeanAcheson later admitted that Truman refrained from seeking congressional ap-proval of the Korean War in part because he feared that public hearings mightproduce ldquoone more question in cross-examination which destroys yourdquo Onceout of power the Democrats remembered this lesson and Averell Harrimanin 1954 encouraged ldquoour senators and congressmen to pursue the tactic ofasking questions which it will be dif cult for the Administration to answersatisfactorilyrdquo Within the new subcommittee structure meanwhile senatorssuch as McCarthy and Jackson also pro ted from the greater public interest innational security matters38

Other congressional actions in the early Cold War such as the resound-ing votes for measures like the Greek and Turkish aid packages and theFormosa and Middle East Resolutions also engendered a more complex rela-

91

Congress and the Cold War

37 Frank Church to Robert Farning 12 January 1966 Frank Church Papers Albertsonrsquos LibraryBoise State University Series 22 Box 9 Roger Davidson ldquoSubcommittee Government New Chan-nels for Policy Makingrdquo in Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein eds The New Congress (Washing-ton DC American Enterprise Institute 1981) pp 99ndash133 and Leroy Reiselbach Congressional Re-form The Changing Modern Congress (Washington DC Congressional Quarterly Press 1994)pp 94ndash146 For a listing of the Senate subcommittees which convened hearings on foreign policy is-sues see Congressional Information Service (CIS) US Congressional Committee Hearings IndexPart V 79th Congressndash82nd Congress 1945ndash1952 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 988ndash998 CISUS Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI 83rd Congressndash85th Congress 1953ndash1958 (Wash-ington DC CIS 1983) pp 876ndash892 and CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI89th Congressndash91st Congress 1st session 1965ndash1969 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 814ndash835

38 Robert Grif th Politics of Fear Joseph McCarthy and the Senate (Amherst MA Universtiy of Mas-sachusetts Press 1987) p 231 Dorothy Fosdick ed Henry Jackson and World Affairs (Seattle Univer-sity of Washington Press 1990) p 53 Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policyrdquo p 19 Harriman quotedin Gary Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissent Democrats and Foreign Policy 1952ndash1956rdquo Political Sci-ence Quarterly Vol 93 No 1 (Spring 1978) p 56 and Kenneth Entin ldquoInformation Exchanges inCongress The Case of the House Armed Services Committeerdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 26No 4 (Winter 1973) pp 427ndash439

tionship between the branches than is apparent at rst glance Because theideological nature of the Cold War struggle seemed to demand unity at home(and thus overwhelming votes of approval) congressional opinion either ac-tual or anticipated could affect executive branch decision making This wasthe case when the question of whether to aid the French in Vietnam came upin 1954 and when the Formosa Straits crisis erupted the following year At thetime Hubert Humphrey commented on the existence of a ldquoremarkable differ-ence of opinion in the Senate way beyond the difference shown by the voteon the resolutionrdquo The importance of the faccedilade of bipartisan unity strength-ened the position of those within the Eisenhower administration who were ar-guing for restraint39 The resolutions in 1954ndash1955 testi ed to the ways inwhich indirect congressional in uence affected the conduct of US diplo-macy during the early Cold War Nuclear policy revealed the same patternmdashBernard Baruch owed his appointment to his close relationship withVandenbergmdashand so did the outcome of the British loan debate Britishof cials not ldquoinclined to risk further debate with Congressrdquo informed theState Department of their willingness to negotiate the loan to meet congres-sional concerns This type of relationship could work the other way as wellCharles Bohlen later asserted that executive branch of cials who favored aharder line against the Soviet Union cited the need to placate Congress as a ra-tionale for their preferred policy40

In addition the proliferation of US bilateral and multilateral securitycommitments (re ected in the expansion of the foreign aid program) thegrowing number of military bases and the surge of executive agreements in-creased the opportunity for congressional oversight and thus provided newtools for Congress to in uence the conduct of foreign policy41 The vast inter-national role of the United States also encouraged transnational alliances link-ing congressional blocs with foreign governments This type of arrangementit should be noted was not peculiar to the postwar period As early as the1830s the British government had retained Daniel Webster then in the Sen-

92

Johnson

39 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 62ndash63 and Robert Accinelli ldquoEisenhower Congress andthe 1954ndash1955 Offshore Island Crisisrdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 20 No 3 (Fall 1990)pp 329ndash344

40 Hoyt Purvis ldquoTracing the Congressional Role US Foreign Policy and Turkeyrdquo in Hoyt Purvisand Steven Baker eds Legislating Foreign Policy (Boulder Westview Press 1984) pp 26ndash29 CharlesBohlen Witness to History (New York Norton 1973) p 261 and John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongressand the Cold War Congressional In uence on the Foreign Policy Process (PhD diss University ofConnecticut 1974) pp 9 141 163ndash164 This type of informal diplomatic inuence appeared withparticular frequency on trade issues See Robert Pastor ldquoCongress and US Foreign Policy Coopera-tive Advantage or Disadvantagerdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 14 No 4 (Autumn 1991) p 105

41 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense Policy pp 30ndash31

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

open-ended authorizations such as ldquothe Secretary of the Army may procurematerials and facilities necessary to maintain and support the Army in-cluding guided missilesrdquo an arrangement that ensured the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo ofexecutive branch defense proposals as Samuel Huntington lamented in hisacclaimed book on the politics of defense budgeting34 The oversight of otheraspects of the national security state especially the intelligence communitywas equally lax The CIA referred to the informal system as BOGSAT(ldquobunch of guys sitting around a tablerdquo) while Allen Dulles once admittedthat he would ldquofudge the truth to the oversight committeerdquo though he wouldldquotell the chairman the truthmdashif he wants to knowrdquo Generally the chairmendid not Senator Richard Russell called for Congress to take CIA statementsldquoon faithrdquo while his committeersquos ranking Republican Leverett Saltonstall ofMassachusetts commented that he would prefer not to know the details ofCIA activities The senatorrsquos admission ironically helped beat back a 1956 at-tempt to establish a formal Senate committee to oversee the CIA35

Clearly these developments provide fodder for the executive usurpationschool But they also obscure Congressrsquos ability to in uence US foreign poli-cy in less traditional ways even at the height of the Cold War For instance al-though the postwar committee structure generally yielded a less prominentcongressional role in policy making the reverse occurred in some cases Theclearest example came with nuclear diplomacy when the Joint Committee onAtomic Energy largely spurred by the personal ambitions of its chair BrienMcMahon successfully pushed through legislation restricting US efforts toshare nuclear technology with allied states36 In addition as Senator FrankChurch later noted the decline of the Foreign Relations Committee increasedldquothe role of dissent as well as the advocacy of alternative courses to individualsenatorsrdquo It allowed senators who were not on the committee an opportunityto in uence foreign policy decisions and it helped produce a multitude ofsubcommittees dealing with foreign policy matters On domestic issues sub-

90

Johnson

34 Barbara Hinckley Less Than Meets the Eye Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Con-gress (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1994) p 51 Barry Blechman The Politics of National Se-curity Congress and US Defense Policy (New York Oxford University Press 1990) pp 23ndash32 Her-bert Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committees in the Appropriations Process A StudyFocused on the Armed Services Committeesrdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 24 No 2 (Spring1971) p 146 and Christopher Deering ldquoDecision Making in the Armed Services Committeesrdquo inLindsay and Ripley eds Congress Resurgent pp 156ndash170 177 Rivers quoted in James LindsayldquoCongress and Defense Policy 1961 to 1986rdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 13 No 4 (Fall 1987)p 378

35 Frank Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community (Knoxville University of TennesseePress 1990) pp 1ndash24 Thomas Paterson ldquoOversight or Afterview Congress the CIA and CovertActions since 1947rdquo in Barnhart ed Congress and United States Foreign Policy pp 157ndash158 andBlechman Politics of National Security p 141

36 Loch Johnson A Season of Inquiry Congress and Intelligence (Chicago Dorsey 1988)

committees served as one of the key avenues for individual members of Con-gress to shape legislation and this pattern held on foreign policy issues as wellSenators with as diverse ideological viewpoints as Joseph McCarthy HenryJackson Ernest Gruening and Hubert Humphrey all used subcommittees ofthe relatively weak Government Operations Committee to establish them-selves as authorities on various international questions McCarthy obviouslywas the most prominent of these gures but his activities are perhaps bestviewed as part of a broader trend namely the decentralization of powerwithin Congress on national security matters Overall the number of foreignpolicy subcommittees in the Senate alone grew from seven in 1945ndash1946 tothirty-one by 1965ndash196637

There were thus many ways in which developments during the early yearsof the Cold War actually magni ed the congressional presence in foreign poli-cy decision making Increased public attention to foreign policy issues gaveCongress more opportunities to frame discussions of these issues DeanAcheson later admitted that Truman refrained from seeking congressional ap-proval of the Korean War in part because he feared that public hearings mightproduce ldquoone more question in cross-examination which destroys yourdquo Onceout of power the Democrats remembered this lesson and Averell Harrimanin 1954 encouraged ldquoour senators and congressmen to pursue the tactic ofasking questions which it will be dif cult for the Administration to answersatisfactorilyrdquo Within the new subcommittee structure meanwhile senatorssuch as McCarthy and Jackson also pro ted from the greater public interest innational security matters38

Other congressional actions in the early Cold War such as the resound-ing votes for measures like the Greek and Turkish aid packages and theFormosa and Middle East Resolutions also engendered a more complex rela-

91

Congress and the Cold War

37 Frank Church to Robert Farning 12 January 1966 Frank Church Papers Albertsonrsquos LibraryBoise State University Series 22 Box 9 Roger Davidson ldquoSubcommittee Government New Chan-nels for Policy Makingrdquo in Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein eds The New Congress (Washing-ton DC American Enterprise Institute 1981) pp 99ndash133 and Leroy Reiselbach Congressional Re-form The Changing Modern Congress (Washington DC Congressional Quarterly Press 1994)pp 94ndash146 For a listing of the Senate subcommittees which convened hearings on foreign policy is-sues see Congressional Information Service (CIS) US Congressional Committee Hearings IndexPart V 79th Congressndash82nd Congress 1945ndash1952 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 988ndash998 CISUS Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI 83rd Congressndash85th Congress 1953ndash1958 (Wash-ington DC CIS 1983) pp 876ndash892 and CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI89th Congressndash91st Congress 1st session 1965ndash1969 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 814ndash835

38 Robert Grif th Politics of Fear Joseph McCarthy and the Senate (Amherst MA Universtiy of Mas-sachusetts Press 1987) p 231 Dorothy Fosdick ed Henry Jackson and World Affairs (Seattle Univer-sity of Washington Press 1990) p 53 Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policyrdquo p 19 Harriman quotedin Gary Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissent Democrats and Foreign Policy 1952ndash1956rdquo Political Sci-ence Quarterly Vol 93 No 1 (Spring 1978) p 56 and Kenneth Entin ldquoInformation Exchanges inCongress The Case of the House Armed Services Committeerdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 26No 4 (Winter 1973) pp 427ndash439

tionship between the branches than is apparent at rst glance Because theideological nature of the Cold War struggle seemed to demand unity at home(and thus overwhelming votes of approval) congressional opinion either ac-tual or anticipated could affect executive branch decision making This wasthe case when the question of whether to aid the French in Vietnam came upin 1954 and when the Formosa Straits crisis erupted the following year At thetime Hubert Humphrey commented on the existence of a ldquoremarkable differ-ence of opinion in the Senate way beyond the difference shown by the voteon the resolutionrdquo The importance of the faccedilade of bipartisan unity strength-ened the position of those within the Eisenhower administration who were ar-guing for restraint39 The resolutions in 1954ndash1955 testi ed to the ways inwhich indirect congressional in uence affected the conduct of US diplo-macy during the early Cold War Nuclear policy revealed the same patternmdashBernard Baruch owed his appointment to his close relationship withVandenbergmdashand so did the outcome of the British loan debate Britishof cials not ldquoinclined to risk further debate with Congressrdquo informed theState Department of their willingness to negotiate the loan to meet congres-sional concerns This type of relationship could work the other way as wellCharles Bohlen later asserted that executive branch of cials who favored aharder line against the Soviet Union cited the need to placate Congress as a ra-tionale for their preferred policy40

In addition the proliferation of US bilateral and multilateral securitycommitments (re ected in the expansion of the foreign aid program) thegrowing number of military bases and the surge of executive agreements in-creased the opportunity for congressional oversight and thus provided newtools for Congress to in uence the conduct of foreign policy41 The vast inter-national role of the United States also encouraged transnational alliances link-ing congressional blocs with foreign governments This type of arrangementit should be noted was not peculiar to the postwar period As early as the1830s the British government had retained Daniel Webster then in the Sen-

92

Johnson

39 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 62ndash63 and Robert Accinelli ldquoEisenhower Congress andthe 1954ndash1955 Offshore Island Crisisrdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 20 No 3 (Fall 1990)pp 329ndash344

40 Hoyt Purvis ldquoTracing the Congressional Role US Foreign Policy and Turkeyrdquo in Hoyt Purvisand Steven Baker eds Legislating Foreign Policy (Boulder Westview Press 1984) pp 26ndash29 CharlesBohlen Witness to History (New York Norton 1973) p 261 and John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongressand the Cold War Congressional In uence on the Foreign Policy Process (PhD diss University ofConnecticut 1974) pp 9 141 163ndash164 This type of informal diplomatic inuence appeared withparticular frequency on trade issues See Robert Pastor ldquoCongress and US Foreign Policy Coopera-tive Advantage or Disadvantagerdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 14 No 4 (Autumn 1991) p 105

41 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense Policy pp 30ndash31

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

committees served as one of the key avenues for individual members of Con-gress to shape legislation and this pattern held on foreign policy issues as wellSenators with as diverse ideological viewpoints as Joseph McCarthy HenryJackson Ernest Gruening and Hubert Humphrey all used subcommittees ofthe relatively weak Government Operations Committee to establish them-selves as authorities on various international questions McCarthy obviouslywas the most prominent of these gures but his activities are perhaps bestviewed as part of a broader trend namely the decentralization of powerwithin Congress on national security matters Overall the number of foreignpolicy subcommittees in the Senate alone grew from seven in 1945ndash1946 tothirty-one by 1965ndash196637

There were thus many ways in which developments during the early yearsof the Cold War actually magni ed the congressional presence in foreign poli-cy decision making Increased public attention to foreign policy issues gaveCongress more opportunities to frame discussions of these issues DeanAcheson later admitted that Truman refrained from seeking congressional ap-proval of the Korean War in part because he feared that public hearings mightproduce ldquoone more question in cross-examination which destroys yourdquo Onceout of power the Democrats remembered this lesson and Averell Harrimanin 1954 encouraged ldquoour senators and congressmen to pursue the tactic ofasking questions which it will be dif cult for the Administration to answersatisfactorilyrdquo Within the new subcommittee structure meanwhile senatorssuch as McCarthy and Jackson also pro ted from the greater public interest innational security matters38

Other congressional actions in the early Cold War such as the resound-ing votes for measures like the Greek and Turkish aid packages and theFormosa and Middle East Resolutions also engendered a more complex rela-

91

Congress and the Cold War

37 Frank Church to Robert Farning 12 January 1966 Frank Church Papers Albertsonrsquos LibraryBoise State University Series 22 Box 9 Roger Davidson ldquoSubcommittee Government New Chan-nels for Policy Makingrdquo in Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein eds The New Congress (Washing-ton DC American Enterprise Institute 1981) pp 99ndash133 and Leroy Reiselbach Congressional Re-form The Changing Modern Congress (Washington DC Congressional Quarterly Press 1994)pp 94ndash146 For a listing of the Senate subcommittees which convened hearings on foreign policy is-sues see Congressional Information Service (CIS) US Congressional Committee Hearings IndexPart V 79th Congressndash82nd Congress 1945ndash1952 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 988ndash998 CISUS Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI 83rd Congressndash85th Congress 1953ndash1958 (Wash-ington DC CIS 1983) pp 876ndash892 and CIS US Congressional Committee Hearings Index Part VI89th Congressndash91st Congress 1st session 1965ndash1969 (Washington DC CIS 1983) pp 814ndash835

38 Robert Grif th Politics of Fear Joseph McCarthy and the Senate (Amherst MA Universtiy of Mas-sachusetts Press 1987) p 231 Dorothy Fosdick ed Henry Jackson and World Affairs (Seattle Univer-sity of Washington Press 1990) p 53 Paterson ldquoPresidential Foreign Policyrdquo p 19 Harriman quotedin Gary Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissent Democrats and Foreign Policy 1952ndash1956rdquo Political Sci-ence Quarterly Vol 93 No 1 (Spring 1978) p 56 and Kenneth Entin ldquoInformation Exchanges inCongress The Case of the House Armed Services Committeerdquo Western Political Quarterly Vol 26No 4 (Winter 1973) pp 427ndash439

tionship between the branches than is apparent at rst glance Because theideological nature of the Cold War struggle seemed to demand unity at home(and thus overwhelming votes of approval) congressional opinion either ac-tual or anticipated could affect executive branch decision making This wasthe case when the question of whether to aid the French in Vietnam came upin 1954 and when the Formosa Straits crisis erupted the following year At thetime Hubert Humphrey commented on the existence of a ldquoremarkable differ-ence of opinion in the Senate way beyond the difference shown by the voteon the resolutionrdquo The importance of the faccedilade of bipartisan unity strength-ened the position of those within the Eisenhower administration who were ar-guing for restraint39 The resolutions in 1954ndash1955 testi ed to the ways inwhich indirect congressional in uence affected the conduct of US diplo-macy during the early Cold War Nuclear policy revealed the same patternmdashBernard Baruch owed his appointment to his close relationship withVandenbergmdashand so did the outcome of the British loan debate Britishof cials not ldquoinclined to risk further debate with Congressrdquo informed theState Department of their willingness to negotiate the loan to meet congres-sional concerns This type of relationship could work the other way as wellCharles Bohlen later asserted that executive branch of cials who favored aharder line against the Soviet Union cited the need to placate Congress as a ra-tionale for their preferred policy40

In addition the proliferation of US bilateral and multilateral securitycommitments (re ected in the expansion of the foreign aid program) thegrowing number of military bases and the surge of executive agreements in-creased the opportunity for congressional oversight and thus provided newtools for Congress to in uence the conduct of foreign policy41 The vast inter-national role of the United States also encouraged transnational alliances link-ing congressional blocs with foreign governments This type of arrangementit should be noted was not peculiar to the postwar period As early as the1830s the British government had retained Daniel Webster then in the Sen-

92

Johnson

39 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 62ndash63 and Robert Accinelli ldquoEisenhower Congress andthe 1954ndash1955 Offshore Island Crisisrdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 20 No 3 (Fall 1990)pp 329ndash344

40 Hoyt Purvis ldquoTracing the Congressional Role US Foreign Policy and Turkeyrdquo in Hoyt Purvisand Steven Baker eds Legislating Foreign Policy (Boulder Westview Press 1984) pp 26ndash29 CharlesBohlen Witness to History (New York Norton 1973) p 261 and John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongressand the Cold War Congressional In uence on the Foreign Policy Process (PhD diss University ofConnecticut 1974) pp 9 141 163ndash164 This type of informal diplomatic inuence appeared withparticular frequency on trade issues See Robert Pastor ldquoCongress and US Foreign Policy Coopera-tive Advantage or Disadvantagerdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 14 No 4 (Autumn 1991) p 105

41 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense Policy pp 30ndash31

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

tionship between the branches than is apparent at rst glance Because theideological nature of the Cold War struggle seemed to demand unity at home(and thus overwhelming votes of approval) congressional opinion either ac-tual or anticipated could affect executive branch decision making This wasthe case when the question of whether to aid the French in Vietnam came upin 1954 and when the Formosa Straits crisis erupted the following year At thetime Hubert Humphrey commented on the existence of a ldquoremarkable differ-ence of opinion in the Senate way beyond the difference shown by the voteon the resolutionrdquo The importance of the faccedilade of bipartisan unity strength-ened the position of those within the Eisenhower administration who were ar-guing for restraint39 The resolutions in 1954ndash1955 testi ed to the ways inwhich indirect congressional in uence affected the conduct of US diplo-macy during the early Cold War Nuclear policy revealed the same patternmdashBernard Baruch owed his appointment to his close relationship withVandenbergmdashand so did the outcome of the British loan debate Britishof cials not ldquoinclined to risk further debate with Congressrdquo informed theState Department of their willingness to negotiate the loan to meet congres-sional concerns This type of relationship could work the other way as wellCharles Bohlen later asserted that executive branch of cials who favored aharder line against the Soviet Union cited the need to placate Congress as a ra-tionale for their preferred policy40

In addition the proliferation of US bilateral and multilateral securitycommitments (re ected in the expansion of the foreign aid program) thegrowing number of military bases and the surge of executive agreements in-creased the opportunity for congressional oversight and thus provided newtools for Congress to in uence the conduct of foreign policy41 The vast inter-national role of the United States also encouraged transnational alliances link-ing congressional blocs with foreign governments This type of arrangementit should be noted was not peculiar to the postwar period As early as the1830s the British government had retained Daniel Webster then in the Sen-

92

Johnson

39 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 62ndash63 and Robert Accinelli ldquoEisenhower Congress andthe 1954ndash1955 Offshore Island Crisisrdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 20 No 3 (Fall 1990)pp 329ndash344

40 Hoyt Purvis ldquoTracing the Congressional Role US Foreign Policy and Turkeyrdquo in Hoyt Purvisand Steven Baker eds Legislating Foreign Policy (Boulder Westview Press 1984) pp 26ndash29 CharlesBohlen Witness to History (New York Norton 1973) p 261 and John Terrence Rourke ldquoCongressand the Cold War Congressional In uence on the Foreign Policy Process (PhD diss University ofConnecticut 1974) pp 9 141 163ndash164 This type of informal diplomatic inuence appeared withparticular frequency on trade issues See Robert Pastor ldquoCongress and US Foreign Policy Coopera-tive Advantage or Disadvantagerdquo Washington Quarterly Vol 14 No 4 (Autumn 1991) p 105

41 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense Policy pp 30ndash31

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

ate to help shape US public opinion on the Canadian boundary dispute42

The China Lobby of the late 1940s and early 1950s remains the most com-prehensively studied of these Cold War alliances The representatives of theDominican Republic and Israel also became well known for their in uenceArthur Vandenbergrsquos comment in 1949 that bipartisanship ldquodid not apply toeverythingmdashfor example not to Palestine or Chinardquo is therefore not surpris-ing In addition the increasing frequency of congressional overseas tripswhich totaled nearly two hundred per annum by the end of the 1950s pro-vided another opportunity for legislators to conduct personal diplomacy43

Finally the foreign aid program was largely shaped by Congress throughits power over appropriations Congress enjoyed far-reaching in uence onthis matter for the simple reason that foreign aid never enjoyed the publicsupport that defense spending did The program allowed the body in whichall scal matters originate the House of Representatives to play a greater for-eign policy role than was usually the case before World War II Otto Passmanthe chair of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee regularly secured a reduc-tion of 20 to 25 percent of the total requested by the executive Moreover be-ginning in the late 1950s Congress also began attaching policy riders to for-eign aid legislation much as it had done with defense bills in the prendashWorldWar II era The riders dealt with issues as diverse as economic nationalismmilitary coups and the human rights policies of Latin American govern-ments and this meant that the foreign aid bill developed into what one com-mentator described as ldquothe nearest thing Congress has to a State of the WorldMessagersquordquo44

Such efforts demonstrated how Congress adjusted to the altered ColdWar environment But how signi cant were these actions Determining con-gressional in uence on international affairs has never been easy Inpathbreaking studies of the turn-of-the-century imperialist surge in theUnited States Ernest May appropriately has con ned himself to the vague

93

Congress and the Cold War

42 Howard Jones To the Webster-Ashburton Treaty A Study in Anglo-American Relations 1783ndash1843(Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1977) pp 36ndash43

43 Henry Berger ldquoBipartisanship Senator Taft and the Truman Administrationrdquo Political ScienceQuarterly Vol 90 No 3 (Fall 1975) p 224 John Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvement in Congres-sional Foreign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 89ndash90

44 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report 26 February 1960 pp 298ndash307 Rudolph Robert Rous-seau ldquoFactors Affecting Decisions of the United States Senate on Bilateral and Multilateral ForeignAssistance Legislation 1965 to 1974rdquo (PhD diss Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1976)Robert Pastor ldquoCoping with Congressrsquo Foreign Policyrdquo Foreign Service Journal Vol 52 No 12 (De-cember 1975) pp 15ndash18 For various policy-related riders see 109 CR 88th Cong 1st sesspp 21840ndash21842 (14 November 1963) 113 CR 90th Cong 1st sess p 22968 (17 August 1967)and Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton NJPrinceton University Press 1981) p 193

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

statement that ldquoCongress played a large but ill-de ned rolerdquo45 Apart fromanalysis of roll call votes an assessment of the role of Congress on foreign pol-icy requires a scholar to explore the intentions of congressional activists to as-certain whether procedural changes mandated by Congress increased legisla-tive in uence to gauge the effect of speeches and open hearings on Congressrsquosability to frame the discussion of foreign policy issues and to determinewhether fear of congressional retaliation restrained executive branch of cialsfrom undertaking foreign policy initiatives they might otherwise havelaunched46 In addition skirmishes between committees tactical divisionsamong opposition legislators about how forcefully to assert congressionalpower and the network of alliances between the national security bureau-cracymdashespecially the militarymdashand members of Congress make it dif cult tospeak of Congress as a uni ed body on any foreign policy matter after 1945Precision about the congressional role in the early stages of the Cold War isalso thwarted because the Cold War made clear measurements of congressio-nal in uence such as roll call votes inherently unreliable guides47 Diplo-matic crises and the decline of formal powers like warmaking or treaties donot illuminate the more subtle ways in which the Cold War Congressin uenced foreign policy issues Historians need to move beyond such mea-surements in evaluating the legislaturersquos impact on US foreign policy48 Theappropriations power played an especially important role since arms transfersand military aid often became substitutes for formal defense treaties duringthe Cold War49

A closer examination of Congressrsquos role in the early Cold War is neededfor another reason As the foreign aid ldquorevoltrdquo of 1963 revealed the pattern ofcongressional deference had begun to break down well before the surge of

94

Johnson

45 Ernest May Imperial Democracy The Emergence of America as a World Power (New York HarcourtBrace amp World 1961) p 225

46 James Lindsay ldquoCongress Foreign Policy and the New Institutionalismrdquo International StudiesQuarterly Vol 38 No 3 (August 1994) p 287

47 For instance in analyzing Trumanrsquos foreign policy Thomas Paterson has observed that Congressset ldquovery broad and imprecise limits on presidential activity in international affairsrdquo Paterson ldquoPresi-dential Foreign Policyrdquo p 2

48 Reichard ldquoDivisions and Dissentrdquo pp 51ndash55 James Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of theDepartment of Defense Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdomrdquo Armed Forces amp Society Vol 17No 1 (January 1990) pp 15ndash16 and Christopher Gerard ldquoOn the Road to Vietnam `The Loss ofChina Syndromersquo Pat McCarran and J Edgar Hooverrdquo Nevada Historical Quarterly Vol 37 No 4(Fall 1994) pp 247ndash262 For the limited usefulness of an analysis focused heavily on roll call votessee James McCormick and Eugene Wittkopf ldquoAt the Waterrsquos Edge The Effects of Party Ideology andIssues on Congressional Foreign Policy Activity 1947ndash1988rdquo American Politics Quarterly Vol 20No 1 (Spring 1992) pp 26ndash53

49 Blechman The Politics of National Security pp 77 118 Blechman ldquoThe New Congressional Rolein Arms Controlrdquo in Mann A Question of Balance p 110 and Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight ofthe Department of Defenserdquo pp 9ndash18

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

congressional activity in the late 1960s and early 1970s The clash over for-eign aid itself derived from increasing doubts about many of the assumptionsof the containment doctrine particularly among a small but articulate bandof Senate liberals Moreover the changes within Congress were not con nedto the foreign aid program In 1959 for instance an amendment sponsoredby Richard Russell to require authorization for some aspects of the militaryprocurement budget provided the rst signi cant enhancement of the SenateArmed Services Committeersquos authority over the defense budget Five yearslater ve members of the House Armed Services Committee dubbed theldquoFearless Fiverdquo led the rst minority report in the committeersquos history50 Bi-partisanship also became less common and critics such as JacksonHumphrey Stuart Symington and even Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson be-came more assertive as the Eisenhower administration discovered in the late1950s51 Because congressional reformers in the 1960s and 1970s generallyemployed tactics pioneered earlier an understanding of the bureaucratic sys-tem that Congress established during the early Cold War is critical to analyz-ing the wave of activism after 1965 Unfortunately for historians virtually allwork on the relationship between Congress and the national security state hasbeen done by political scientists

For the most part historians who have looked at the post-1965 periodhave focused mainly on what has been described as Congressrsquos ldquoglorious revo-lutionrdquo the attempt by the legislature to reclaim a greater role in foreign poli-cy functions that it shared with the executive branch under the terms of theConstitution52 As with other shifts in the balance between presidency andCongress this one also resulted from a new domestic and international cli-mate which in turn shook the ideological underpinnings of postwar foreignpolicy If judged in terms of legislation passed the accomplishments of the eraseem to con rm the techniques used by proponents of the executive usurpa-tion thesis such as measuring congressional in uence through issues likewarmaking and treaty-making53 Ultimately though these changes did sur-

95

Congress and the Cold War

50 Kenneth Entin ldquoThe House Armed Services Committee Patterns of Decisionmaking during theEisenhower Yearsrdquo Journal of Political and Military Sociology Vol 2 No 1 (Spring 1974) pp 83ndash89and Stephens ldquoThe Role of the Legislative Committeesrdquo p 148

51 Thomas Gaskin ldquoSenator Lyndon B Johnson the Eisenhower Administration and US ForeignPolicy 1957ndash1960rdquo Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 24 No 4 (Fall 1994) pp 341ndash348 andBlechman The Politics of National Security p 25

52 Thomas Franck and Edward Weisband Foreign Policy by Congress (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1979) p 84

53 US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations United States Security Agreements and CommitmentsAbroad Hearings 91st Cong 1st sess 1971 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 149ndash151 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Woods Fulbright pp 410ndash470and Michael Glennon Constitutional Diplomacy (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1990)

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

prisingly little to alter the fundamental balance between the two branches inpart because the legislation placed such a high priority on abstract constitu-tional concerns Legislation still could not restrict the executiversquos foreign pol-icy powers as the erarsquos more ambitious undertakings on the constitutionalfront illustrated The sponsors of the Cooper-Church Amendment which cutoff funds for the Nixon administrationrsquos secret incursion into Cambodia re-peatedly denied that the amendment would constrain the powers of the com-mander-in-chief Moreover they declined to call for an instant cutoff of fund-ing for the incursion and they consented to a modifying amendment thatwould uphold the presidentrsquos power to ldquoact in emergency situationsrdquo whenevents ldquomade it impracticable for him to rst consult with Congressrdquo Similarcomplications frustrated congressional attempts to pass a restrictive war pow-ers measure Negotiations between the House and Senate produced a law lim-iting the amount of time the president could unilaterally deploy US troopsoverseas in hostile situations (90 days) but the law contained no discussion ofjusti cations for such action The bill also enabled the president to decidewhen troops were introduced into harmrsquos way thus allowing the executivebranch to establish the start of the time limit An amendment to include theCIA under the terms of the bill failed54

Many of the same dif culties prevented Congress from assuming an ac-tive role throughout the 1970s and 1980s Congressional investigations of theintelligence community produced less comprehensive reforms and more po-litical problems for the investigators than was anticipated when the hearingswere launched in 197555 Although both chambers ultimately formed com-mittees to oversee the CIA and other intelligence agencies old attitudes lin-gered William Casey Ronald Reaganrsquos rst director of the CIA asserted in1984 that ldquothe business of Congress is to stay out of my businessrdquo As in ear-lier years many members of Congress agreed Senator Barry Goldwater usingthe rhetoric of Leverett Saltonstall three decades earlier declared that ldquothereare many bits of [intelligence] information that I would rather not knowrdquo56

These problems culminated in the Iran-contra scandal but even when this af-

96

Johnson

54 Thomas Eagleton interview 22 October 1996 Ashby and Gramer Fighting the Odds pp 305ndash329 Fisher Presidential War Power pp 114ndash133 Franck and Weisband Foreign Policy by Congresspp 117ndash131 Smist Congress Oversees the Intelligence Community pp 167ndash201 and Sundquist TheDecline and Resurgence of Congress

55 Kathryn Olmsted Challenging the Secret Government The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIAand FBI (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 1996) and Johnson A Season of Inquiry

56 Casey quoted in Hinckley Less than Meets the Eye pp 4 54 Goldwater quoted in MichaelGlennon ldquoInvestigating Intelligence Activities The Process of Getting Information for Congressrdquo inThomas Franck ed The Tethered Presidency Congressional Restraints on Executive Power (New YorkNew York University Press 1981) pp 144ndash146

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

fair highlighted the executiversquos disregard for congressional authority Congresssharply limited the scope of its own inquiry57

Meanwhile the War Powers Act whether because of the compromisesnecessary to ensure its passage or the unwillingness of presidents to accept itsconstitutionality failed to restore a balance between the branches in thewarmaking power a point con rmed by suggestions in early 1991 thatGeorge Bush was prepared to go to war with Iraq regardless of the congressio-nal vote58 In line with precedent moreover the Supreme Court proved un-willing to involve itself in foreign policy battles between the two otherbranches The few decisions that the Court has rendered on the matter suchas INS v Chadha in 1983 which struck down the so-called legislative vetoincluded in numerous statutes have weakened congressional in uence in for-eign policy making59

At the same time however the post-Vietnam era did see Congress buildon the tactics pioneered in the early stages of the Cold War to wield often de-cisive in uence on a wide array of foreign policy issues Most frequently con-gressional members used the power of the purse During the 1970s the breadthbreadth of pro-human rights amendments sponsored by congressional reform-ers such as Representatives Donald Fraser and Tom Harkin caused a Europeandiplomat to observe that ldquoit isnrsquot just the State Department or the Presidentanymore Itrsquos Congress nowrdquo60 The human rights legislation had its greatestimpact on US policy toward Latin America as shown in a somewhat datedbut nonetheless penetrating book by Lars Schoultz61 By the 1980s decreasesin funding and dif culties in passing legislation rendered foreign aid bills less

97

Congress and the Cold War

57 Theodore Draper A Very Thin Line The Iran-Contra Affairs (New York Hill and Wang 1991)and Timothy Cole ldquoCongressional Investigation of American Foreign Policy Iran-Contra in Perspec-tiverdquo Congress and the Presidency Vol 21 No 1 (Spring 1994) pp 29ndash48

58 Jean Edward Smith George Bushrsquos War (New York H Holt 1992) and Robert Gates From theShadows The Ultimate Insiderrsquos Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York Si-mon and Schuster 1996) p 499

59 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense p 144 and Thomas Franck and Clifford BobldquoThe Return of Humpty-Dumpty Foreign Relations Law after the Chadha Caserdquo American Journalof International Law Vol 79 No 4 (Fall 1985) pp 912ndash960 As one House staffer conceded afterRonald Reaganrsquos refusal to invoke the War Powers Act when sending the Marines to Lebanon in 1983ldquoWar Powers is a law that simply doesnrsquot work in conventional terms If it works at all it does so inmysterious waysrdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 183

60 Paul Sigmund The United States and Democracy in Chile (Baltimore Johns Hopkins UniversityPress 1989) pp 88ndash107 Patricia Fagen ldquoUS Foreign Policy and Human Rights The Role of Con-gressrdquo in Antonio Cassesse ed National Control over Foreign Policy Making (Leyden Sijthoff andNoorhoff 1979) Lars Schoultz Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) pp 195ndash197 David Forsythe Human Rights and USForeign Policy Congress Reconsidered (Gainesville University of Florida Press 1988) pp 36ndash60 andPastor Congress and the Politics of US Foreign Economic Policy pp 265ndash317

61 Schoultz Human Rights

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

useful vehicles for asserting congressional power but aggressive members ofCongress by then had already turned their attention to defense appropriationsmeasures62 Perhaps the most spectacular example of the use of the defense ap-propriations bill to in uence broader foreign policy concerns came in 1975when an amendment sponsored by Senator John Tunney cut off funding forthe US covert operation in Angola Similar measures were proposed through-out the 1980s most obviously with the Boland Amendment to halt covert aidto anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua63 In addition a more exible defenseauthorization process generated an explosion of oor amendments concern-ing both policy and funding matters on defense bills ending once and for allthe days of the ldquoinviolabilityrdquo of executive requests on such matters64

In the aftermath of Vietnam the political consequences of foreign policyactivism were signi cant A perception of excessive interest in international is-sues continued to pose political risks After Hubert Humphrey left a hearingin the mid-1970s on US covert operations in Chile he announced that hehad to go try ldquoto get jobs for four hundred people in Minnesota todayrdquo a taskldquoa great deal more important to me right now than Chilerdquo65 But the growingpower of the peace and defense lobbies also t foreign policy issues ldquointo thebread and butter of routine political businessrdquo as John Culver later describedit66 Increased public attention on foreign policy matters enhanced Congressrsquos

98

Johnson

62 James McCormick ldquoDecision Making in the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committeesrdquoin Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 118ndash148 and Blechman The Politics of NationalSecurity p 106

63 Cynthia Arnson Crossroads Congress the Reagan Administration and Central America (New YorkPantheon 1989) chas 3ndash5 and Neil Livingston and Manfred von Nordheim ldquoThe US Congressand the Angolan Crisisrdquo Strategic Review Vol 5 No 1 (January 1977) pp 1ndash11

64 Hoyt Purvis and Tura Campanella ldquoCongress Country X and Arms Salesrdquo in Purvis and Bakereds Legislating Foreign Policy pp 107ndash126 Robert Art ldquoCongress and the Defense Budget En-hancing Policy Oversightrdquo Political Science Quarterly Vol 100 No 2 (Summer 1985) p 234Lindsay ldquoCongressional Oversight of the Department of Defenserdquo p 60 A few statistics illustrate thestartling nature of the shift From 1976 to 1983 the two armed services committees and defense ap-propriations subcommittees alone made over 10000 changes in dollar gures submitted by the presi-dent From 1969 to 1985 the number of reports requested by Congress from the Pentagon increasedby 1778 percent the instances of directed actions escalated by 922 percent and changes in provisionsto defense-related laws soared by 255 percent

65 Humphrey quoted in Paterson ldquoOversight or Aftervisionrdquo p 167 Perhaps the most obvious in-stance of congressional parochialism came after the Pueblo incident in 1968 when Senator JohnStennis sent an urgent message to Lyndon Johnson in the White House Situation Room Expressingconcern about the political damage of the operation to Democrats in an election year the senator de-livered the following advice ldquoFor Godrsquos sake do somethingrdquo Johnson looked up and muttered to anaide to ldquoplease thank the senator for his helpful advicerdquo Blechman Politics of National Security p 202

66 Culver quoted in Blechman Politics of National Security p 114 Blechman ldquoThe New Congres-sional Role in Arms Controlrdquo pp 121ndash122 Lindsay ldquoCongress and Defense Policyrdquo pp 385ndash387and Eileen Burgin ldquoThe In uence of Constituents Congressional Decision Making on Issues of For-eign and Defense Policyrdquo in Ripley and Lindsay eds Congress Resurgent pp 68ndash76 The old rulesconcerning overactivity on foreign policy issues of course were not entirely superseded For instancein an unsuccessful bid for reelection in 1978 Dick Clark the Senatersquos most persistent critic of US in-

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

traditional ability to frame consideration of diplomatic issues Two senatorswith diverse ideological viewpoints became especially active in foreign policydebates Christopher Dodd a liberal Democrat from Connecticut who ledthe opposition to Ronald Reaganrsquos policy in Central America and RichardLugar a moderate Republican from Indiana who played a key role in endingUS support for Fidel Marcosrsquos regime in the Philippines67 Questions such asthe nuclear ldquofreezerdquo also demonstrated Congressrsquos ability to bring domesticcultural issues and ideological forces into the foreign policy-making appara-tus This role expanded during the 1970s as newly energized groups such ascivil rights activists began turning their attention to international affairs68 Inaddition congressional debates illustrated the ability of transnational alliancesto affect the day-to-day conduct of US diplomacy With the decline of theChinese and Dominican lobbies Israeli interests emerged as the most power-ful foreign lobby on Capitol Hill where they frequently succeeded in eitherblocking or scaling back executive requests for arms sales to Arab states Otherforeign and ethnic lobbies hoped to imitate the success of organizations likethe American Israel Public Affairs Committee Roughly 125 former govern-ment of cials represented Japan as lobbyists in the mid-1980s and Kuwaitpaid 12 million dollars for a public relations rm in 199069

At the most basic level then diplomatic historians cannot aspire to pro-duce an adequate synthesis of American foreign policy during the Cold Warwithout including the congressional perspective The constitutional powers ofCongress have given it a role to play in virtually all foreign policy decisions Atthe very least Congress acted to modify executive policies on the domesticscene in much the same way that the policies of US allies did in the interna-tional arena At most as with human rights policies and other initiatives inthe immediate aftermath of Vietnam Congress imposed major restrictions on

99

Congress and the Cold War

volvement in Angola and champion of a more liberal US policy toward Africa came under attack asthe ldquosenator from Africardquo See Patsy Mink ldquoInstitutional Perspective Misunderstandings Myths andMisperceptionsrdquo in Franck ed Tethered Presidency p 65

67 Lindsay Congress and the Politics of US Defense pp 119ndash135 and Bruce Jentleson ldquoAmericanDiplomacy Around the World and Along Pennsylvania Avenuerdquo in Mann ed A Question of Balancep 197

68 David Meyer A Winter of Discontent The Nuclear Freeze Movement and American Politics (NewYork Praeger 1990) and Stephen Metz ldquoCongress the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixonrdquo Dip-lomatic History Vol 12 No 2 (Spring 1988) pp 166ndash196 In general Congress has been anunderused resource for historians who explore domestic actors such as peace movements or womenand foreign policy For the lack of attention to Congress in such literature see ldquoCulture Gender andForeign Policy A Symposiumrdquo Diplomatic History Vol 18 No 1 (Winter 1994) pp 47ndash124 andLawrence Wittner ldquoPeace Historians and Foreign Policy The Challenge to Diplomatic HistoriansrdquoDiplomatic History Vol 11 No 4 (Fall 1987) pp 355ndash370

69 Tierney ldquoInterest Group Involvementrdquo pp 95ndash109 and Melvin Small Democracy and Diplo-macy The Impact of Domestic Politics on US Foreign Policy 1789ndash1994 (Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity Press 1996) p 135

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998

executive actions In either case historians need to go beyond citing such an-ecdotes as Arthur Vandenbergrsquos advice to Harry Truman that the best way toobtain congressional support for US aid to Greece and Turkey was to ldquoscarethe hellrdquo out of the American people (Whether the Michigan senator actuallyuttered the phrase is unclear) As Ernest May recently observed key congres-sional shifts in policy from the late 1940s and early 1950s remain a ldquomys-teryrdquo70 But as Senator Moynihan recognized a decade ago this type of over-sight should come as no surprise Despite the productive work on the topicthat has been done in the last ten to fteen years historians of US foreign re-lations are still a long way from solving the mystery of Congressrsquos role in USCold War policy

100

Johnson

70 Ernest May Address to the Charles Warren Center Seminar on International History CambridgeMA 20 March 1998