[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 188 (Tuesday, November 28, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17550-S17551]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 BOSNIA

  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, we have been discussing the Bosnian 
situation. I was critical of President Bush for not responding right 
away. I was critical of Bill Clinton when he became President for not 
responding. I joined those who voted for lifting the arms blockade. But 
I believe the President is acting in the national interest now, and we 
have to recognize the great threat to the future of our country in 
terms of security is no longer nuclear weapons, I am happy to say, it 
is instability. We are not going to get stability in Bosnia without 
United States leadership and involvement.
  To the credit of the President, Warren Christopher and others, there 
is a peace agreement, which evolved in Dayton, OH, the Midwest of the 
United States, and I think it is imperative that we move ahead.
  Last night, I was reading the Weekly Standard, Irving Crystal's new 
magazine. I try to get a diverse readership, and I hope it will not 
shock him that I am reading his publication. I ask unanimous consent to 
have printed in the Record the lead editorial.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Weekly Standard, Dec. 4, 1995]

                     Bosnia: Support the President

       Bosnian peace diplomacy, brokered by the United States, has 
     passed a significant checkpoint in Dayton, Ohio. Now what? 
     Administration advocates of the new accord oversell its 
     merits. Secretary of State Christopher proclaims the 
     agreement ``a victory for all those who believe in a 
     multiethnic democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina.'' Another U.S. 
     official calls it a ``fantastic deal'' for the Bosnian 
     Muslims.
       That's saying too much. U.S. policy has never been devoted 
     to reversing all Serbian military encroachments on Bosnian 
     government-held territory. The pact signed in Dayton ratifies 
     most of those Serbian land-grabs--and, in effect, the 
     demonically ethnicized regional politics that impelled them. 
     The country is to be divided along ethnic lines. Its new 
     central government begins life enfeebled. The agreement's 
     free-movement and resettlement promises appear fanciful.
       But what the peace plan can possibly accomplish--a 
     pacification of Balkan brutality sufficiently complete and 
     lengthy to take root--is good enough. And better than much of 
     the surprisingly strident, even cavalier, Republican 
     opposition to the plan allows.
       Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich expect the White House to 
     request a non-binding resolution of congressional endorsement 
     for the U.S. peacekeeping deployment required by the Dayton 
     accord. Both men have their legitimate questions about that 
     operation's details and contingencies, and about Balkan 
     diplomacy's ultimate prospects. But they are holding open 
     their options, and seem seriously concerned to maintain, as 
     best they can, a bipartisan and muscular American foreign 
     policy under presidential leadership.
       Not so some of their vocal Republican colleagues. Phil 
     Gramm, revealing previously undetected powers of 
     international prognostication, somehow just knows that an 
     American troop presence in Bosnia can only bring total 
     disaster. He has ``no confidence'' in the president, whom he 
     bitterly mocks with quotes reprinted in every American 
     newspaper. Aside from Dick Lugar, measured and diplomatic as 
     always, the rest of the GOP's presidential contenders are 
     quick to agree. All firmly oppose Bosnian troop deployment. 
     The Republican House of Representatives has already twice 
     voted to defund the troops if it is not first granted the 
     power to block them outright.
       If cooler heads are to prevail, they had better open their 
     mouths fast. It is obviously true, as Alan Keyes pointed out 
     in the Florida presidential campaign debate a couple of weeks 
     back, that for Bosnia and the rest of the world ``there is a 
     God'' and U.S. military forces ``are not Him.'' It is also 
     true that there is a serious case against the troop 
     deployment. Charles Krauthammer makes that case elsewhere in 
     these pages.
       But he does so while candidly conceding the damage such a 
     last-minute withdrawal would do--first to American 
     international credibility generally, and also to the NATO-led 
     European security arrangements in which our national interest 
     is inextricably intertwined. We may not be God, but where 
     global security arrangements are concerned, we are the 
     closest thing there is. And the United States would be a 
     niggardly superpower indeed were we to withhold our mastery 
     and muscle when they are asked for and widely expected to 
     help halt horrifying bloodshed in Europe.
       We are in Bosnia already. A high-profile regional peace 
     accord, husbanded by American diplomacy, concluded on 
     American soil, and announced in the Rose Garden of the White 
     House, calls for us to go in deeper. To prevent it, at this 
     point, Republicans would be forced to provoke a presidential 
     foreign policy humiliation the likes of which probably have 
     not been seen since the failure of Woodrow Wilson's League of 
     Nations. And they would inescapably signal, in the process, 
     that America is badly confused about its global status. And 
     that an American president can no longer reliably serve as 
     representative of his nation before the world.
       Such a drastic diminution of presidential authority is 
     dangerous. The Bosnia operation is a judgment call. The 
     strongest case made by Bosnia doves still can't make it 
     anything more than a judgment call. And in 

[[Page S 17551]]
     foreign policy judgment calls, prudence dictates a prejudice for 
     presidential prerogative. Mr. Clinton cannot make that 
     argument all by himself. He can and should, as George Bush 
     did before him during the Kuwait crisis, make a strong appeal 
     to the American people that U.S. national interests are at 
     stake--and that he has a reasonable strategy to fulfill them.
       Congress, for its part, should hold its hearings and 
     delineate whatever conditions on deployment it believes 
     appropriate. But while they're at it, Republicans should 
     remember why it is they have spent the past 15 years 
     defending presidential leadership in foreign affairs. At the 
     end of the day, the Republican Congress should support the 
     president on Bosnia.

  Mr. SIMON. The lead editorial, Mr. President, says: ``Bosnia: Support 
the President.'' This is a magazine, as the Presiding Officer knows, 
that is primarily oriented to people of conservative view and primarily 
to Republicans. The final paragraph says:

       Congress, for its part, should hold its hearings and 
     delineate whatever conditions on deployment it believes 
     appropriate. But while they're at it, Republicans should 
     remember why it is they have spent the past 15 years 
     defending Presidential leadership in foreign affairs. At the 
     end of the day, the Republican Congress should support the 
     President on Bosnia.

  I was pleased last night, Mr. President, when I heard the interview 
on CBS, Dan Rather's interview with Senator Dole. Senator Dole, 
obviously, could benefit politically right now by denouncing President 
Clinton and the move that was made. Senator Dole, to his credit, did 
not take that posture. It was a statesmanlike response.
  I think insofar as possible--obviously, we all have to make judgments 
on these things, and I respect those whose judgments differ from me on 
this--but insofar as possible, we should have bipartisan foreign 
policy. That does require the President to work with Congress and, 
frankly, I think more than has been done up to this point by this 
administration.
  But the lessons from Woodrow Wilson are that the executive branch has 
to work with Congress, but the other lesson is a lesson from right 
after World War II when we had a Democratic President and a Republican 
Congress, and President Truman, through General Marshall at the Harvard 
commencement, suggested the Marshall plan, which we look back upon with 
great pride.
  After that was announced, the first Gallup Poll showed 14 percent of 
the American public supporting the Marshall plan, a plan that 
ultimately saved western Europe from communism and helped to bring 
about the demise of communism in Europe.

  In the U.S. Senate there was a Republican Senator by the name of 
Arthur Vandenberg. The Presiding Officer is nodding as though he 
remembers that. He is too young to remember when Arthur Vandenberg was 
a member of this body, but I remember it well. Arthur Vandenberg did 
not take advantage of the situation but worked with the President for 
the best interests of this Nation and the best interests of the world.
  I think that is what we have to do at this point, Mr. President. I 
hope we will. We are going to differ and differ strongly on this thing. 
That is the way it should be. I hope it will not be on a partisan 
basis.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________