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The return of the deferential Congress after September 11 was another chapter in the fluctuating balance of power in executive-legislative relations on foreign policy. The reason for this ebb and flow lies not in the Constitution but in politics. How aggressively Congress exercises its formal foreign policy powers turns foremost on whether the country sees itself as threatened or secure and to a lesser extent on how well the president handles foreign policy. Congress's action on the 2001 Use of Force Resolution, the 2002 Iraq Resolution, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and other issues illustrates the nature of, and limits to, congressional deference.
The presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush contrast in many ways, perhaps no more so than in their divergent experiences in dealing with Congress on foreign policy. Clinton confronted a Congress that frequently sought to defy his initiatives and at times seemed to take glee in doing so. His list of defeats on Capitol Hill is long. Congress forced him to withdraw U.S. troops from Somalia in 1994. It slashed his foreign aid requests. It refused to grant him fast-track trade negotiating authority. It forced him to accept national missile defense and regime change in Iraq as goals of U.S. foreign policy even though he and many of his advisers doubted the wisdom and practicality of both. It blocked his efforts to pay U.S. back dues to the United Nations. The Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Even when Congress backed Clinton on foreign policy, as with the dispatch of U.S. peacekeepers to Bosnia and the Senate's approval of the Chemical Weapons Convention and NATO enlargement, the victories seemed to require inordinate administration effort.
Bush's experience has been far different. Congress was eager to defer to his leadership on many foreign policy issues. It overwhelmingly authorized him to wage not one but two wars. It acceded to his decisions to leave the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and move to develop an expansive new national missile defense. It gave him most everything he requested for defense and foreign affairs spending. It embraced his request to begin the largest reorganization of the federal government in more than a century. It gave him the trade-promotion (formerly fast-track) authority it had denied...