Who Congress Should Really Listen to on Foreign Policy: Voters

Kristofer Harrison

Politics, Americas

Unless Congress relearns how to influence foreign policy, the country will sleepwalk into Hillary Clinton’s proposed half-baked military solution.

Think the public doesn’t care about foreign policy? Ask Barack Obama, who built his 2008 campaign on a foundation of popular anger over Iraq. Yet, Congress—the people’s representatives and the branch closest to the mood of the country—routinely cedes foreign policy decision-making to executive branch bureaucrats. 

Like everything else, the Founders subjected foreign policy power to checks and balances, but Congress routinely leaves its most powerful tools fallow. Now and then, the House of Representatives threatens to withhold funds for a significant foreign policy issue (e.g. Iraq), and, occasionally, the Senate will block an ambassador about whom nobody cares. But otherwise, the Congress seems to throw its hands up and give the executive free reign.

Syria presents a looming civics lesson. All indicators point to a Clinton presidency, which means a push for no-fly zones in Syria. Congress had better be careful. Voters may not support a no-fly zone, and if Congress becomes complicit in pushing one forward, the country's politics will look far Trumpier than even now.

Unless Congress relearns how to influence foreign policy, the country will sleepwalk into Hillary Clinton’s proposed half-baked military solution just because the think tank community wants it and because it appears to be the opposite of President Obama’s Alfred E. Neuman approach to Syria. If public opinion gels against it, the GOP will pay dearly at the polls. Congress needs to do its political due diligence. Be wary of following experts over a cliff.

The first thing Congress should do is knock off the nonsense that resistance to no-fly zones means someone is an isolationist, pro-Russian or okay with genocide. Those are infuriating arguments for opponents (i.e. voters) whose concern typically revolves around a no-fly zone’s efficacy—why are we doing it?—or mission creep.

The GOP has still not come to terms with Iraq. Witness Sen Rubio. He ran for president on a platform that the Iraq war was a good thing and that Syria needs similar medicine.  Understandably, voters view GOP foreign policy with a skeptical eye. “What is the goal?” "How do no-fly zones achieve it?" “Would this not only reprise the 1990s creeping mission against Saddam Hussein?” If the public approves of those answers, proceed.