[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 146 (Monday, October 25, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13090-S13092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. GRASSLEY (for himself and Mr. Helms):
  S. 1775. A bill to amend section 490 of the Foreign Assistance Act to 
1961 to modify the matters taken into account in assessing the 
cooperation of foreign countries with the counter drug efforts of the 
United States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations.
 Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I am introducing today for 
Senator Helms and myself legislation to help the Administration better 
understand the importance of representing the US national interest. I 
am sending to the desk a bill on additional considerations for 
assessment of cooperation of foreign countries with United States 
counter-drug efforts. The purpose of this bill is to help the 
Administration get its act together when it comes to the certification 
process on illegal drugs. Recent statements by the Drug Czar and other 
Administration officials on certification, along with their actions in 
regard to such countries as Syria and Iran, show that they may have 
misplaced US national interests when it comes to drug policy. I want to 
help them find it again.
  Over a decade ago, Congress passed measures in the Foreign Assistance 
Act that require US Administrations to certify whether other countries 
are taking serious steps to deal with major illegal drug production or 
trafficking in their territories. The view behind this legislation was 
to force an accounting, at least once a year, of what the US and other 
countries were doing to address a major foreign policy concern that, in 
the view of Congress, governments here and abroad would just

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as soon have ignored. Administrations do not like accounting for 
themselves. Not many foreign countries welcome it either. They would 
prefer that legislatures and the public give them the money and 
approval they want with no questions asked. It's less troubling than 
having to explain actions, account for shortfalls, or demonstrate that 
the money being provided is achieving anything. Congress, however, 
thinks differently. It should and it must, in my view.
  Today, the Clinton Administration, like its predecessors, is trying 
both to ignore certification as a genuine responsibility and to undo it 
where it can. It has made efforts to get Congress to scuttle the 
requirement. It has poor-mouthed the idea internationally while denying 
it has done so. It has resorted to lawerly gimmicks and low tricks to 
drop from certification some of the worst countries imaginable. And 
lately it has been trying to broaden, as it says, the evaluation and 
accountability process in the Western Hemisphere to make it fairer by 
participating with the Organization of American States in the creation 
of what is called the Multinational Evaluation Mechanism (MEM). This is 
a subterfuge for trying to get rid of the process by calling it 
something else. Given this Administration's poor performance on 
international drug control, I am not surprised at an effort to disguise 
shortcomings in some artful bureaucratic way. I am not surprised, but I 
am disappointed.
  As part of the effort to discredit certification, the Administration 
has resorted to distortions and misrepresentations about what it 
involves and has enlisted a set of arguments that, while sounding 
plausible, are really little more than the old magician's trick of 
``watch the birdie'' while hoping that you will not notice what he is 
really doing with his other hand. Well, we deserve better than sleight-
of-hand on an issue as important as this one. I thought it might be 
useful to provide an antidote to these shenanigans with a few home 
truths.
  There are many arguments advanced against certification, and I have 
addressed many of these in earlier statements on this floor, but the 
best one argues that while certification may once have been  useful--
time unspecified--it has served its purpose and is counter-productive 
because it hampers further cooperation with other countries that resent 
being subject to a unilateral, U.S. judgment of their performance. 
Mexico is often advanced as an example. This view is fine if you are 
working from the idea--which seems to be so much of the philosophy 
behind our present foreign policy--that we should be guided by everyone 
in the world's interests before our own or in spite of our own.

  Now, I have no doubt that other countries resent being evaluated. In 
my experience, they resent being evaluated by any individual country or 
collectively. This is not new, whether we are talking drugs or policies 
on intellectual properties or nuclear proliferation. And I am sure that 
this resentment over being judged can complicate negotiations. Both 
these points, however, are irrelevant to the circumstances under 
consideration. As a matter of our national interest, we are obliged to 
make judgments about the actions of other countries whether they like 
it or not. Let me try to make this point clearer in a different 
context.
  The United States is currently embroiled in a controversy with the 
European Union over rules governing the importation of bananas. I am 
not going to comment on the merits of the particulars of the case, 
apart from noting that the United States, the present Administration, 
has determined--has judged--that EU restrictions, quotas, and 
preferences on the importation of bananas are unfair and prejudicial. 
This, folks, is an evaluation. And it is one deeply resented in Europe, 
as an infringement of the rights of not just one country but of an 
association of many countries, which happen to be our major allies. 
Nevertheless, the Administration is prepared to pursue the case in the 
teeth of this resentment to force a change it wants. And in doing this 
it is prepared to invoke sanctions to achieve its goals.
  Similarly, the Administration is prepared to condemn a gaggle of 
other countries for permitting the pirating of various intellectual 
properties, such as books, videos, and copyrighted products. It is 
prepared to pursue sanctions to achieve a remedy. I can extend this 
list to judgments about states that support terrorism or are engaged in 
systematic human rights abuses. This Administration involved this 
country in a major military engagement--the ultimate sanction--to stop 
what it regarded as gross violations of human rights. I have no doubt 
that Slobodan Milosevic and his cronies deeply resented U.S. judgments 
about the fitness of his actions and even more objected to the steps we 
took to change his behavior. I do not detect that this resentment at 
being judged or the knowledge that there were objections to the actions 
then taken based on that judgment carried any weight in the decisions 
made by this Administration to bomb and strafe military and civilian 
targets in the former Yugoslavia.
  What these examples show is that even this Administration 
understands, when it wants to, that there are matters of such import 
requiring judgments about the actions of other countries and involving 
responses based on those judgments that resentment or objections by 
others do not signify when it comes to deciding what we should do to 
protect interests we regard as important. Now, certification only 
requires that we make the involvement of other countries in the 
production and transit of illegal drugs--which kill more Americans 
every year that all the terrorists have in the last ten years or more 
than Mr. Milosevic did at any time--a matter of judgment and possible 
action of a degree at least as important as bananas. I happen to 
believe that judgments about drugs coming to the U.S. are at least as 
much in our interest as judgments about bananas going to Europe.
  I am puzzled by the Administration's reluctance to apply meaningful 
standards of judgment to the actions of other countries when it comes 
to drug policy. I am further puzzled by its willingness to be so moved 
by the resentment of other countries when it comes to judgments about 
drug policies and programs. The requirements in the law are not written 
in some mysterious dialect nor apply unfamiliar concepts. The idea is 
not so alien to our experience or even to this Administration's own 
actions as to be beyond comprehension. Yet, the Administration seems to 
have its own sources of bemusement when it comes to taking this issue 
seriously.
  In essence, what the law requires is that the Administration 
determine first whether countries are major producing or transit areas 
for illegal drugs. You would not think this terribly difficult or 
controversial, or too intrusive on the feelings of others. It then asks 
for the Administration to determine whether these countries are acting 
in good faith to enforce their own domestic laws against these 
practices; are acting in conformity with any bilateral agreements with 
the United States to address these activities; or are doing what is 
reasonable and responsible to do in light of international law that 
governs the conduct of all countries on this issue. I am hard pressed 
to see how this infringes on the sovereignty of other countries or what 
in it is so outrageous as to occasion abandonment of the effort.
  The law then requires that if, in the judgment of the Administration, 
any given country is not acting in good faith, it may then be subject 
to sanctions. The law does not require that the efforts of another 
country be successful in order to be certified. It does not require 
that judgments be without consideration of other national interests. It 
does ask, on this very important question, that the Administration 
supply to Congress and the American people at least once a year its 
considered opinion of whether other countries where a truly pernicious 
practice is being engaged in that affects directly the lives of U.S. 
citizens each and every day are, as a matter of fact, doing all that is 
reasonable to stop this practice. It then requires that if these 
countries are receiving U.S. assistance--that is, money from U.S. 
taxpayers--that this money be cut off--unless it is humanitarian aid or 
this self-same counter-drug assistance.
  While I understand perfectly why an aid recipient might squawk, I do 
not know what act of imagination it requires to manufacture outrage on 
behalf of other countries threatened with

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losing this assistance because in our judgment they are doing less than 
their best to cooperate with us. But that outrage is trotted out as an 
argument against certification. That aside, the most onerous part of 
the certification decision, and what other countries truly object to, 
is what world opinion makes of a U.S. judgment that a particular 
country is not cooperating with U.S. and international efforts to stop 
drug production or trafficking. What the Administration would have us 
do is forgo this judgment lest it hurt the feels of other countries. 
And yet, it is this judgment or the threat of it that has, in fact, 
been the primary impetus to encourage the very cooperation that the 
Administration says we do not need the certification process to 
achieve.
  What the Administration would really like to do is to stop accounting 
to Congress and the public for its international drug policy. It knows 
that this is a non-starter. So it has proposed instead to bury this 
accountability in an elaborate ruse in cooperation with the OAS to 
neuter the process. In doing this, it has helped to devise through the 
OAS a list of over 80 evaluation items to help in developing a so-
called multinational evaluative mechanism. There are, of course, no 
teeth in the evaluation  process, and each of the member states 
involved has an effective veto over any adverse judgments of their 
respective efforts. In this regard, I am reminded of the inhabitants of 
Garrison Keiller's Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above 
average. The details behind the evaluation are to be kept confidential, 
which is okay since no one has much faith in the ability of most of the 
countries party to the evaluation to actually collect and evaluate the 
information in the first place. The countries involved lack the 
necessary reporting mechanisms, the budgets to sustain them, or the 
staffs to ensure ongoing, consistent information. This farrago is then 
supposed, gradually, to substitute for certification, somehow being 
fairer and more likely to ensure cooperation.

  Ironically, the premise underlying this process is the same as that 
informing certification, that is, that a judgment about performance 
does need to be made. The difference here is that somehow a 
multilateral judgment would be better, and it wouldn't be offensive 
since it would be collaborative. In my view, it won't be offensive 
because it won't be effective. You can make what you want to of a 
process that is supposed to involve judgments about the effectiveness 
of actions that are designed not to offend anyone being judged. But I 
am not reassured. And if this is the face of cooperation, then we are 
in for some rude shocks in our international relations.
  Having said this, I am prepared to help the Administration in its 
efforts. In order to give the Multinational Evaluation Mechanism some 
chance of effective implementation, I am, along with Senator Helms, 
today introducing legislation that would require that in future 
certification decisions the Administration incorporate the MEM as part 
of its deliberations in determining whether to certify other countries 
or not. Taking the Administration at its word that the mechanism is not 
an attempt to replace certification, but rather an effort to complement 
it, I offer this bill to enhance the process.
                                 ______