“What does the president think he is negotiating if he intends to keep Congress in the dark and present a fait accompli?
instanpundit
In all the hyperventilating over 47 Republican senators’ letter about President Obama’s powers to make a unilateral deal without Congress, Obama’s defenders have lost track of several key points.
First, the letter was “open” — that is, akin to an op-ed, not dropped in the mail with a Tehran address. This is not a private negotiation or even a message primarily to the Iranians; it was a statement concerning the president’s powers, in contravention of prior promises, to make an critically important deal without Congress.
.....................
Moreover, critics of the letter, including Hillary Clinton, are bent on characterizing the letter as helping the mullahs and hurting the president. The reverse is actually true. Republicans are saying to the mullahs they’d better not sucker the president into a sweetheart deal because ultimately that deal will have to pass muster with Congress. Any savvy negotiator would use that to say to the mullahs they need to deliver more, not less, because of the ornery lawmakers. But Obama is so determined to give the mullahs whatever they demand he cannot recognize bargaining leverage when it is staring him in the face. It is only when you are trying to give away the store that you consider a letter warning the mullahs the bar will be high for a deal to be “sabotage.”
The letter was meant to highlight a point about which critics have not quarreled: The president can have a binding treaty with Senate approval, or he can have an executive agreement that may be null and void when he leaves office. (If he has told the Iranians otherwise, either he is confused or he is selling snake oil.) Here it was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker who hit the nail on the head. “Republicans need to ensure that any deal President Obama reaches with Iran receives congressional review,” he said in a statement. “Unless the White House is prepared to submit the Iran deal it negotiates for congressional approval, the next president should not be bound by it.”
....................
The letter and the faux horror it has induced should not obscure a key question: What does the president think he is negotiating if he intends to keep Congress in the dark and present a fait accompli? The State Department spokeswoman was unintelligible on the point in the daily briefing:
QUESTION: Jen, if there is an Iran agreement, it could very well last for 15 years, which would be through the next presidency and beyond and several presidents could have to administer this agreement, then there could be actions required by the Congress in terms of removing sanctions. Why shouldn’t an agreement of that duration, which requires some congressional action at some point to remove sanctions, be submitted to the Congress in some form for approval or a vote of some kind?
MS. PSAKI: Well, we have envisioned – I will get to your question, but let me just reiterate: We have envisioned a role for Congress – there has been in the past, there is right now, and there will be in the future. Congress had a role in building the sanctions regime, to your point, and so at some point in the duration of this agreement, Congress will be heard on the sanctions relief and there will be a role for Congress to play in lifting sanctions down the line as part of the agreement.
That seemed to suggest the agreement would not be approved by Congress, but it would have to repeal sanctions down the road. That did not sit well with the Foggy Bottom reporters:
MS. PSAKI: . . . Let me also just speak to some historical examples, which may help you a little bit, Brad, under – or perhaps not. I don’t want to speak to what will help you or not. But historically, under many administrations, the United States has pursued important international security initiatives through nonbinding arrangements where that has been in our national interest. In the arms control and nonproliferation area alone, some representative examples include the U.S.-Russia deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria, the Proliferation Security Initiative, the Nuclear Supplier Group Guidelines, the Missile Technology Control Regime. There’s a lot of precedent for this being political commitments made by all sides.
QUESTION: In that statement you just described them as nonbinding. …
QUESTION: Wait. Just to clarify, is it legally binding or not, this Iran agreement? Will it be legally binding from an international legal perspective if you negotiate this agreement, or will it be something lesser than that, a political commitment?
MS. PSAKI: I understand your question, Michael. What I’m referring to is the political commitments in terms of what the next additional steps would be. I’m not sure how much farther or more information we would have. I’m certainly happy to check with our team and see if there’s more we can clarify.
In short, the administration either will not say or does not know what it is negotiating — a binding treaty? An executive understanding? Maybe Democrats might stop their huffing and puffing long enough to ask the White House what it is doing, what legal status it thinks it will have and what happens if Congress does not approve a deal. Those are some pretty basic and serious questions that deserve an answer rather than a loud screech from the administration.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/03/11/a-distracting-fuss-over-a-letter/
|
