Foreign Policy

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) neared victory Thursday in a long-running vendetta against the U.S. foreign policy establishment when Senate and House negotiators reached agreement on a compromise bill to abolish the Agency for International Development, the U.S. Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Helms said the bill would save $1.

Just a few days before China said it would conduct live-ammo exercises off Taiwan and Washington sent gunboats to the area, I'm at a table at the Bel-Air Hotel enjoying lunch and maybe the best weather anywhere. The sun is splashing and the breeze is blowing and at the next table is Robin Williams and at the next one is Bob Newhart and so on. And there, amid all this splendor and tinsel, what do I start thinking about? I'm thinking about war in the Taiwan Strait, of course.

House Republicans should not be making foreign policy, especially in this time of tension between China and Taiwan. Nevertheless, they have chosen to introduce a resolution calling for explicit guarantees of a U.S. military defense of Taiwan should the island be attacked by China. The nonbinding resolution, the 40-member House Republican Policy Committee said, would express the sense of Congress.

STRONG VOICE: Although Defense Secretary William J. Perry was widely dismissed when he took office as a technocrat with little experience in making foreign policy, he is quietly emerging as a force in the Clinton administration. Since assuming the post two years ago, Perry has gradually earned his stripes and now has considerable clout inside the Oval Office, administration officials say.

The foreign policy of the most powerful nation on earth should be formulated in Washington, not on Miami's Calle 8, the heart of the Cuban exile empire. The decision by a coalition of angry exiles to send ships and civilian planes on Saturday to the general area off Cuba where two of their planes were shot down is a dangerous proposition, one that could turn last week's outrage and tragedy into this week's political blunder.

By ties of blood and trade and geography, foreign policy in California looks to the Pacific. Mexico, countries to its south and Asia are the largest sources of immigration into California. The six largest markets for California exports are all nations that border the Pacific Ocean.

After more than a decade of whiplash-inducing swings in Russian foreign policy, says prominent Sinologist Mikhail L. Titarenko, this country's trademark eagle finally has its heads on straight. "The traditional crest of Russia is a two-headed eagle, but for the past few years both heads have been turned toward the West," the director of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies says mockingly of the policies of former foreign ministers Andrei V. Kozyrev and Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

New Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov on Friday moved swiftly to define himself as a tough-minded nationalist--no weak-willed lackey of the West--by vowing to fight U.S. plans to include former Soviet Bloc nations in NATO. "It is vitally important for Russia to fend off developments that could bring NATO's military infrastructure closer to our territory, closer to our border," Primakov said.

President Clinton's State of the Union address made it abundantly clear that foreign affairs now enjoys little more than ghetto status in the national scale of priorities. Wedged awkwardly between passages on the environment and reinventing government, the speech's foreign policy section was merely a perfunctory recitation of some of the administration's claimed successes in a ragbag of places like Haiti, Northern Ireland and Bosnia.

Though U.S. troops are now being deployed in Bosnia, a troubling question remains: Why did Congress not more forcefully oppose a policy it has grave misgivings about? The question remains relevant for three reasons. First, the proper role of Congress in foreign policy-making remains unresolved. Second, Bosnia raises fundamental questions about the nature of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War world, and Congress is an appropriate forum for such a debate.