Congresses and Parliaments

As 2013 comes to a close, here are ten influential U.S. foreign policy figures who passed away this year. 

President Obama’s “historic” deal with Iran is getting panned on Capitol Hill. And not just by Republicans. Senator Chuck Schumer, the number three Senate Democrat, and Senator Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, are promising to work with their Republican colleagues on new sanctions legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said last week he would schedule a sanctions vote when the Senate returns in two weeks from its Thanksgiving break. Does this mean that Congress is going to take Iran policy out of Obama’s hands? Not quite. Any sanctions bill could be vetoed, something the president presumably would do to save his signature diplomatic initiative. The odds that sanctions proponents could override a veto aren’t good. Congress hasn’t overridden one in foreign policy since it imposed anti-apartheid sanctions on South Africa over Ronald Reagan’s objections back in 1986. In that respect, Obama is in a much stronger position than he was back in September when he sought to persuade Congress to authorize a military strike on Syria. Then the difficulties of passing legislation worked against him; now they work for him. One reason Obama should be able to make a veto stick is party loyalty. Many congressional Democrats won’t see it in their interest to help Republicans rebuke him, and he only needs thirty-four senators to stand by him. Senator Reid has already begun to soften his commitment to holding a sanction vote. As Majority Leader he has considerable freedom to slow down bills and to keep them from being attached to must-pass legislation that would be politically hard for Obama to veto. By the same token, however, daring Congress to override a veto is a high-risk strategy. That’s especially the case for a president whose public approval ratings are dropping and whose diplomatic initiative rests on the cooperation of a hostile and potentially unreliable foreign capital. Gloating from Iran or an unwelcome news leak about Iran’s nuclear progress could change the politics at home and send the president’s supporters rushing to the exits. That’s why the most likely outcome of the battle brewing on Pennsylvania Avenue is not a duel at dawn but a negotiated settlement. The White House, with the help of its congressional allies, will look to shave off the most noxious provisions in the proposed legislation and fight for waiver provisions that maximize Obama’s discretion in implementing the law once it goes into effect. The result may complicate Obama’s diplomacy, but it likely won’t torpedo it. However the battle plays out, the fight should strengthen Obama’s leverage with Iran in the near term. Congress is playing the “bad cop” to his “good cop.” If Iranian hardliners think their negotiators could have struck a better deal, the answer coming from Capitol Hill is a resounding no.

Yesterday marked the 94th anniversary of one of the most significant turning points in American foreign policy history: the Senate’s vote to reject the Treaty of Versailles. By coincidence, yesterday also saw World Politics Review publish a piece I wrote entitled “Backseat Driving: The Role of Congress in American Diplomacy.” Here is an excerpt to give you a flavor of the argument: Diplomacy in the American political system is frequently described as the exclusive province of presidents. Thomas Jefferson, America’s first secretary of state, wrote in 1790, “The transaction of business with foreign nations is executive altogether. . . . Exceptions are to be strictly construed.” A decade later, John Marshall, who would go on to become the most influential chief justice in U.S. history, declared on the floor of the House of Representatives, “The president is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” Justice George Sutherland noted Marshall’s claim in United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation (1936), perhaps the most frequently cited case dealing with foreign affairs, concluding that the president “alone negotiates: Into the field of negotiation, the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it.” The practice of American diplomacy, however, has always been far more complicated than the words of Jefferson, Marshall and Sutherland suggest. The ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program offer a textbook example. As U.S. negotiators meet with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, administration officials back in Washington lobby Congress to set aside tough new sanctions legislation that would complicate, if not kill, the talks. Meanwhile, the White House knows it must craft its offer to Tehran with an eye toward what will be acceptable to a Congress that could be asked to repeal sanctions already on the books. And while administration officials play the inside game on Capitol Hill, they also play the outside game in the media against critics who have taken to the airwaves to argue that Iran can never be trusted. The broader lesson here is that while Congress has no direct role in the conduct of diplomacy, it has ample indirect means to shape what presidents say to foreign governments or if they say anything at all. The Senate can refuse to consent to treaties. Congress can use its power of the purse and its power to legislate to constrain the president’s freedom of maneuver or even impose a new approach entirely. Lawmakers can influence public opinion and thereby dissuade presidents from pursuing their favored policies. And at times lawmakers may even invade the field of negotiations, Sutherland’s injunction notwithstanding. In short, while Congress takes a back seat to the president when it comes to diplomacy, it nonetheless can still have a say over the diplomatic road the United States travels. The full article discusses when presidents can likely get away with ignoring sentiments on Capitol Hill as well as the circumstances under which Congress is likely to make its views felt.

President Obama hopes to use his nationwide address tonight to persuade Americans of the necessity to punish Syria for using chemical weapons. But two polls out this morning suggest that it is a daunting task, and not one he is likely to accomplish. The New York Times/CBS News poll finds that six-in-ten Americans oppose airstrikes against Syria.  Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that 58 percent of Americans believe that Congress should not approve military action against Syria. The level of public opposition that the Times/CBS and WSJ/NBC report is greater than what Gallup (51 percent) and Pew (48 percent) found in their latest polls and roughly the same as what the Washington Post/ABC News (59 percent) found. Depending on how you prefer to frame this story, the president is either not making progress in building public support or losing ground. Neither storyline is good news for the White House. The problem President Obama faces isn’t that Americans doubt his claim that the Assad government used chemical weapons against its people. The Times/CBS poll found that three out of four Americans agree that it did. His problem instead is that Americans aren’t persuaded that a military strike makes sense. The president presented the case for military action when he announced his request for congressional authorization and at his press conference at the G-20 Summit. Various administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, and UN Ambassador Samantha Power have repeated those arguments. Nonetheless, the WSJ/NBC News poll found that 54 percent of Americans don’t believe that the White House has made a convincing case. The Times/CBS News poll finds that nearly eight-in-ten Americans believe that the administration has not adequately explained the need to attack Syria. Americans look to be especially doubtful of the administration’s assurance that airstrikes would not entail broader U.S. involvement in Syria. The Times/CBS News poll finds that 66 percent of Americans say they are "very" concerned that military action in Syria would be long and costly, and 21 percent are "somewhat" concerned. The late-breaking diplomatic effort to have Syria relinquish control of its chemical weapons may spare President Obama from having to overcome these doubts in tonight’s speech. But if not, he faces tough odds. As I noted in a post last week, the political science literature suggests that the power of the presidential bully pulpit is exaggerated.  If the political scientists are right, and sometimes they are, the odds grow dimmer that Congress will give the president the authorization he has requested. On that score, the WSJ/NBC News poll has more bad news for the president: 59 percent of Americans say they would oppose his ordering strikes against Syria over Congress’s objection. So while the White House has carefully left the door open to striking Syria no matter how Congress votes, that looks to be a door better left closed.

Gallup is out with a new poll on what Americans think about military strikes against Syria.  Unlike the Pew Research Center and Washington Post/ABC News polls released on Tuesday, Gallup started questioning Americans after President Obama announced on Saturday that he was asking Congress to approve military action. But like the Pew and Post/ABC polls, Gallup found that far more Americans (51 percent) oppose military strikes than support them (36 percent). By Gallup’s polling, Syria stands as the least popular proposed use of military force in the past fifteen years. No other military action has had such a low level of public support before it began. The only one that comes close is airstrikes against Serbia in 1999 for its actions in Kosovo. But even then opponents barely edged out supporters. The Gallup poll does have some good news for the White House. Whereas the Pew and Post/ABC polls found Democrats opposed to airstrikes by wide margins, Gallup found that a slight majority of Democrats favored them (45 percent to 43 percent). So some Democrats have rallied to the president’s side, making it easier politically for Democratic lawmakers to vote to authorize military action. But the Gallup poll also has bad news for the White House. It shows Republicans opposing military action by a margin of twenty-seven percentage points (58 to 31 percent), a far larger margin than either the Pew (5 percentage points) or Post/ABC (12 percentage points) polls. If that is a real trend, then Republican lawmakers are facing intensifying pressure to vote no on Syria. President Obama will have his chance to change some minds when he addresses the nation next Tuesday. That could be a challenge. While Washington insiders love to talk about the president’s bully pulpit, a fair amount of political science research suggests that presidential speeches rarely move public opinion.

Sometimes polls tell you what you already know. That’s the case with the polls that the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post and ABC News just released on Syria. Pew found that Americans oppose conducting military strikes against Syria by a margin of 48 percent to 29 percent. By a virtually identical margin (48 percent to 32 percent) they believe that President Obama has not explained clearly why the United States should attack Syria. Meanwhile, the Washington Post-ABC News poll found that Americans opposed military strikes by a margin of 59 percent to 36 percent. The results come with a caveat. Both surveys began in the middle of last week, before President Obama made his surprising announcement on Saturday that he would ask Congress to approve military action. It’s unclear what effect that might have had, positive or negative, on public opinion. Pew and Washington Post/ABC News got different results when it comes to how opinion breaks down by party. Pew found that Democrats and Independents looked like each other and the nation as a whole, with Republicans more divided about the merits of military strikes (see below).  Conversely, Washington Post/ABC News found that Democrats and Republicans looked alike, while Independents were much more opposed to attacking Syria. The Washington Post/ABC News poll had one piece of good news for President Obama. Public support for military strikes goes up by ten percentage points when Americans are told that Britain and France will join any military operation. Britain will not be participating in any military operations against Syria, but France still says it will. These poll results don’t mean that Congress is destined to reject President Obama’s request. Although polls over the past two years consistently show Americans to be skeptical of the merits of intervening in Syria, public opinion can and has moved dramatically on foreign policy issues in the past. Also, polls tell us people’s preferences and not the intensity of those preferences. Six-in-ten Americans opposed intervening in Libya’s civil war back in March 2011. Obama ignored public sentiment, and Operation Odyssey Dawn never became an issue in his march to reelection. It is easier for elected officials to disregard what voters think when there is no perceived penalty for doing so. In any event, lawmakers are less interested in what the nation as a whole thinks and much more about what the people in their state or district who vote for them think. But the most important reason not to make too much of these poll results is that members of Congress could face a different question than the one Pew and Washington Post/ABC News posed. The polls asked Americans what policy they favored in the abstract. The president and his supporters will be working hard to reframe the question in a more pointed way: are you willing to vote no knowing that your vote will embolden America’s adversaries in the Middle East (think Iran) and endanger its allies (think Israel)?  Different questions can elicit different answers.

Many people inside the Beltway doubt that President Obama will succeed in convincing Congress to authorize a military strike against Syria. Which raises a question. If the skeptics turn out to be right, would Obama be the first president to have Congress turn down his request to authorize military action? No, but he would be the first one in a very long time. Presidents before World War II were much more scrupulous than their successors about asking Congress to authorize military action. The downside to this deference to Capitol Hill is that sometimes Congress said no. Here are a few examples: In 1805, Thomas Jefferson urged Congress to authorize him to take action against Spain in a dispute over the boundary separating Florida (then Spanish territory) and Louisiana. Congress did nothing. In 1831, Andrew Jackson asked Congress for authority to order reprisals against French shipping and property if France continued to avoid paying damage claims that dated back to the Napoleonic era. The Senate voted unanimously against the request. Jackson let the issue drop. In 1859, James Buchanan asked Congress to authorize sending troops into Mexico to punish Indians who were conducting cross-border raids. Congress said no. In 1891, Benjamin Harrison asked Congress for authority “to take such action as may be deemed appropriate” to punish Chile for refusing to apologize after a mob killed two American sailors. Congress declined to authorize hostilities. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for authority to arm American-owned merchant vessels so they could sink German U-boats that had been preying on American shipping. Senators Robert La Follette (R-Wis.) and George Norris (R-Neb.) led a filibuster that killed the bill. In the first four instances, the president accepted defeat and moved on. Wilson took a different tack. He denounced his opponents as “a little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own.” Then in a move that post-World War II presidents would emulate more than once, he determined that an obscure federal statute—in his case, one written in 1819—gave him the authority Congress just denied him. No constitutional crisis erupted because Congress voted to declare war on Germany less than a month later. No president since Wilson has had Congress reject a war power request. But with modern presidents far less willing to ask for permission and with Congress far less willing to defend its prerogatives, there haven’t been many opportunities. In the few instances (Kosovo, Libya) in which the president favored military action in the face of a skeptical Congress, presidents acted and left Congress to grumble and withhold its blessing. Syria looked to be headed for a repeat of that practice until President Obama’s surprise announcement on Saturday. If Congress does say no to military strikes on Syria, don’t expect President Obama to emulate Woodrow Wilson and go ahead anyway. True, the president did say on Saturday that “I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization.” (He did not say whether that power is rooted in statute or in the inherent powers of the presidency.) However, ignoring a “no” vote from Congress would have enormous political costs. When Wilson acted in 1917 he had substantial majorities in Congress and the American public on his side. Obama has neither.

President Obama’s determination that the United States should take military action to punish the Syrian government for using chemical weapons has revived the perennial debate over how the Constitution allocates the war power between Congress and the White House.  President Obama says he has “the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization,” but nonetheless is asking Congress to vote anyway. Some commentators have hailed this decision; others have criticized it for undermining presidential authority. The question at the core of the debate is, when can presidents unilaterally take the country from peace to war? No constitutional question arises when Congress authorizes the president to use force. Presidential authority is at its zenith when backed by explicit congressional consent. And no one seriously disputes the claim that presidents can order U.S. troops to fight when the country is attacked. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. When neither of these conditions prevails, however, the arguing begins. And there has been a lot of arguing over the years. When President Obama launched Operation Odyssey Dawn back in 2011, I examined five questions that frequently get asked whenever the subject of unilateral presidential decisions to use force comes up. If you want to brush up on the topic, here are links to the posts with the summary answers appended: Did the Framers want the president to have an independent authority to initiate hostilities against another country? Short answer: no.  Just ask Pierce Butler. He offered a motion at the Constitutional Convention to give the president that power explicitly. No other delegate seconded his idea. What do proponents of unilateral presidential authority to initiate hostilities base their claim on? Short answer: either that the Constitution gives presidents that authority, or more commonly, that presidents gained the power over time through unchallenged practice. Have presidents always taken an expansive view of their constitutional authority to initiate the use of force? Short answer: no. Harry Truman and his successors have made more of being commander in chief than their predecessors did. Can the United Nations, another international organization, or a treaty of alliance authorize the president to initiate hostilities that he otherwise would not have the constitutional authority to start? Short answer: no. The UN Charter and the treaties of alliance that the United States has signed and ratified all have clauses that stipulate that the signatories will carry out the obligations they are assuming in accordance with their respective constitutional processes. Why don’t the courts settle the question of what presidents can do once and for all? Short answer: the courts believe this issue is best left to the two political branches to sort out. While Syria provides more grist for these debates, it is not likely to settle any of them.  So you may want to bookmark this post for future reference. The odds are good that the war powers debate will resurface in the future.

President Obama’s announcement that he is asking Congress to authorize the use of military force against Syria comes as welcome news to proponents of the view that presidents cannot unilaterally initiate the use of military force. Although Obama endorsed that view back in 2007 before he became president, he pointedly declined to ask Congress to authorize U.S. military action against Libya in 2011. The timing of a congressional vote remains to be determined. Lawmakers aren’t scheduled to return from their summer recess until September 9. Congressional leaders have not said whether they will call members back sooner. Indeed, they may be surprised that Obama asked for a vote. The letter House Speaker John Boehner sent the president this week asked for consultations on Syria; it didn’t demand a vote. (Congressional leaders also have fit Syria into a tight calendar. Congress is scheduled to be in session for just nine legislative days in September; most of those days were supposed to be spent trying to find a way to keep the government running once the new fiscal year starts on October 1.) Will Congress give Obama the authority he is seeking? The odds are it will. Most Democrats are likely to stand by him, even if only out of party loyalty. Skeptical lawmakers on both sides of the aisle will also confront the argument that a “no” vote would gravely damage U.S. credibility in dealing with Iran, North Korea, and other potential threats. Still, widespread doubts about the wisdom of a military strike against Syria make a “yes” vote far from certain—or easy to obtain. The memories of the bad intelligence on Iraq could prompt tough questions about the evidence the White House has today. White House officials will understandably be reluctant to discuss the details of its planned military operations. That might not satisfy members who fear that the administration will go too far or that it has no strategy for what to do if Syria persists in using chemical weapons. And writing authorizing legislation that satisfies the administration while being sufficiently limited to assure lawmakers that they aren’t giving the White House a blank check they might later regret—as happened with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Iraq War authorization—could prove difficult. However the Syria vote goes, it sets a precedent. Any future effort to initiate the use of military force will come with heightened public expectations that the president, whether Obama or his successors, will first go to Congress. But it hardly guarantees they will. Syria lacks many of the attributes that presidents and their lawyers have traditionally cited when justifying unilateral presidential military action: it is not an act of self-defense; it is not pursuant to a UN Security Council authorization (as Obama argued in Libya) or a regional organization (as Bill Clinton claimed with NATO in Kosovo); it does not involve protecting American lives or property (as Ronald Reagan claimed in Grenada and George H.W. Bush argued in Panama); and time is not of the essence. Given different circumstances, future administrations might dispute the premise that presidents have to look to Capitol Hill before ordering the military into combat. Finally, if the White House is hoping a vote on Syria will protect Obama politically in the event a military attack goes wrong, it should prepare to be disappointed. A vote for war has never stopped members of Congress (or the American public) from turning on a president when things go badly. Just ask George W. Bush.

When one door closes another one opens. Susan Rice can certainly vouch for that pithy piece of advice. Early last fall the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations looked to be a shoe-in to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Then came Benghazi.  By December it was clear that Senate Republicans would block her nomination. So in keeping with Washington tradition, she withdrew her name from consideration. But today a door opened. President Obama named Rice to succeed Tom Donilon as national security adviser—a position that is potentially more influential than secretary of state even if it is less prestigious. Rice takes up her new post in early July. Many of her critics are panning Obama’s decision to move her from Turtle Bay to the White House, but there is not much they can do about it. While presidents need Senate consent to appoint cabinet secretaries, they can appoint anyone they wish to staff jobs. The Basics: Name: Susan Elizabeth Rice Date of Birth: November 17, 1964 Place of Birth: Washington, DC Political Party: Democratic Party Marital Status: Married to Ian Cameron Children: Two children, daughter Maris and son Jake. Alma Mater: Stanford University (Rice was named a Rhodes Scholar and subsequently earned her doctorate in international relations from Oxford University) Political Offices Held: U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2009-2013),  U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs (1997-2001), Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs at National Security Council (1995-1997), Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping  on the National Security Council (1993-1995) What Supporters Say: When you work directly for the president of the United States, his opinion of your abilities trumps all else. And President Obama is a big fan of Susan Rice. Here is what he said about her at today’s announcement ceremony: Susan was a trusted adviser during my first campaign for president. She helped to build my foreign policy team and lead our diplomacy at the United Nations in my first term. I am absolutely thrilled that she will be back at my side leading my national security team in my second term. With her background as a scholar, Susan understands that there is no substitute for American leadership.  She is at once compassionate and pragmatic.  I think that everyone understands that Susan is a fierce champion for justice and human dignity, but she is also mindful that we have to exercise our power wisely and deliberately… Susan is the consummate public servant—a patriot who puts her country first. She is fearless. She is tough. She has a great tennis game and a pretty good basketball game. Vice President Joe Biden shares Obama’s assessment. He said last month that Rice has “the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president.” Rice has experience at both the National Security Council and the State Department, which will serve her well in her new role.  Michael Doyle, a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, told the Washington Post that Rice has: deep experience operating in the Washington bureaucracy — and know[s] what’s possible, what’s not, what lever can be moved and which one can’t. Rice’s name became a trending topic on Twitter after her appointment.  David Axelrod tweeted: @AmbassadorRice and Samantha Power are great choices for Nat Sec & UN posts. Both strong, brilliant & dynamic, with passion for service. Senator Harry Reid added: In Susan Rice and Samantha Power, President Obama has selected two outstanding individuals to maintain a strong national security team. Rice signed up with Obama’s presidential campaign when it was first launched in 2007. Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told the New York Times in December: Throughout the campaign, Susan was making an argument about challenging conventions, whether it was about Iraq or diplomacy with Iran…Susan has the expertise that comes from being within the foreign policy establishment, but she had the willingness to challenge it. And for the president, that was a pretty attractive quality. Obama administration officials aren’t the only ones who think highly of Rice. Former secretary of state Madeline Albright said of her: She is incredibly bright, but lots of people in Washington are bright…What separates people out here is that some are loyal. President Obama is big on loyalty. What Critics Say Susan Rice has plenty of critics in Washington. A lot of that criticism stems from what she said on the five major Sunday morning talk shows about the Benghazi attacks on September 11, 2012. Whereas Rice’s supporters see a government official speaking on the basis of misguided talking points and confusing intelligence, Rice’s critics see a premeditated effort to mislead the public and protect the president in the midst of a heated presidential campaign. One of Rice’s chief critics is Senator John McCain (R-AZ). He said flatly that she was “not qualified” to be secretary of state: Anyone who goes on national television and in defiance of the facts, five days later — We’re all responsible for what we say and what we do. I’m responsible to my voters. She’s responsible to the Senate of the United States. We have our responsibility for advice and consent. Plenty of other congressional Republicans feel the same way. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said on Fox News today: How are they going to have the authority for people to believe what they’re saying, when he’s promoting someone who directly and deliberately misled the public over Benghazi? Some of Rice’s critics blast her record at the UN. Richard Grenell wrote for Fox News: Rice’s diplomatic failures and silence in the face of outrageous UN antics have given the United States pathetic representation among the 193 members of the world body…. the Rice record at the UN speaks for itself.  Anyone looking objectively at what she has or hasn’t accomplished during her tenure will deduce she has failed to convince UN members to support US priority issues. Critics have already taken to Twitter to protest Rice’s appointment.  Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) tweeted: Judgement is key to national security matters. That alone should disqualify Susan Rice from her appointment. #benghazi #BadChoice. Herman Cain tweeted: Susan Rice survives getting pinched, keeps her mouth shut and gets promoted. Just like in Goodfellas! bit.ly/11ZRnsv But Rice may have a chance to cooperate with some of her critics. Senator McCain  tweeted: Obviously I disagree w/ POTUS appointment of Susan Rice as Nat’l Security Adviser, but I’ll make every effort to work w/ her on imp’t issues. Stay tuned. Stories You’ll Hear More About: Rice is the first national security adviser to have been a Rhodes Scholar. She is also the first national security adviser to have previously been a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Studies Program. (No, you probably won’t hear more about this unless you work at Brookings. I am noting it here so that I can provide the obligatory full disclosure: Susan and I were colleagues at Brookings. I also worked with her on the Clinton National Security staff.) Rice is the second person (and woman) named “Rice” to be national security adviser. Condoleezza Rice was the first in 2001. The two women are not related. Rice joined the staff of the National Security Council when Bill Clinton took office in 1993. She worked first as director for international organizations and peacekeeping under Senior Director Richard A. Clarke and then as senior director for African Affairs. During Clinton’s second term, Rice was assistant secretary of state for African Affairs. Rice’s one great regret from her first stint in government is that the Clinton administration did not do more to stop the Rwanda genocide. She later told Samantha Power when the latter was writing the award-winning book, A Problem from Hell (and whom President Obama has nominated to succeed Rice as ambassador to the UN): I swore to myself that if I ever faced such a crisis again, I would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required. Inaction may not have been Rice’s only mistake on Rwanda. Rice reportedly said at a meeting as the Clinton administration struggled over what to do about Rwanda: If we use the word ’genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election? Other participants at the meeting report being stunned that Rice openly speculated about the domestic political impact of a foreign policy decision. Rice says she does not recall asking that question, but says “If I said it, it was completely inappropriate, as well as irrelevant." Although Rice worked for Bill Clinton, she chose not to join Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2007. She instead signed on to the long shot candidacy of Barack Obama. The Guardian writes: That move was seen by some on the Clinton side as a kind of betrayal, and though relations between the two women have been professional and successful since Obama’s victory, few see their relationship as overly warm. Indeed, were Clinton’s oft-touted run for the White House in 2016 to emerge as a victorious reality, few would predict a guaranteed slot for Rice in such a future administration. Rice has a reputation for being tough and direct rather than diplomatic and indirect. The New Republic wrote in December: Rice’s get-it-done approach can sometimes resemble yukking it up with the guys in the locker room. “She doesn’t like diplomatic niceties, which is a nice way to put it,” says one human rights activist at the United Nations. Reuters agrees: During her years at the United Nations, she acquired a reputation as a tough, often uncompromising diplomat who has no qualms about cursing behind closed doors. Rice told the Daily Beast: I am a direct person… With me, what you see is what you get. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m not going to scam you, if I say we’ll do something, we’ll do it. Rice’s “blunt” style is supposedly one of the reasons Obama likes her so much and why she has become such a “close confidante” of the president. In a profile of Rice in Foreign Policy last September, James Traub wrote: In the Obama administration, foreign policy is made by the White House and carried out by the State Department, and Rice has hitched herself almost wholly to the former. That would strike most people as an imminently sensible thing to do. Rice has tweeted 2,339 times under the handle @AmbassadorRice. Nicholas Kristof raised a question that her 292,000 followers will be asking: @AmbassadorRice @USUN We do hope you’ll continue to tweet from the White House!Rice’s followers will have to wait to see if being national security adviser leaves any time for tweeting, and if it does, whether Rice will adopt a new Twitter handle. Rice’s move to the White House and Power’s move to the UN will have pundits debating what the shake up in Obama’s national security team means for American foreign policy. The Washington Post has summarized the issue nicely: President Obama’s shuffle of his national security team Wednesday ushers out a consummate, cautious Washington insider and elevates two long-time proponents of a larger American role in preventing humanitarian crises and protecting human rights around the world. The ideological shift signaled in the personnel choices highlights the central dilemma for Obama as he seeks to make a mark on the world at a time of austerity—and war weariness—at home. How ambitious Obama intends to be abroad at a time of stiff challenges on the domestic front has remained an open question months into his second term. Put your money on continuity rather than change, with Rice (and Power) vigorously defending Obama’s choices rather than remaking them. Foreign Policy Views (In Her Own Words): Rice’s regrets about not pushing for more forceful action in Rwanda likely shaped how she viewed Libya in 2011. She and Samantha Power, who was then senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the staff of the National Security Council, both pushed for U.S. intervention and their position eventually carried the day. Rice carried out with relish her task to convince the UN Security Council to authorize the use of military force against Qaddafi. She recalls: I made something of a dramatic presentation saying to the UN Security Council that they were dealing with: as imminent and urgent a situation as this council has ever faced… I don’t want to hear six months from now that we did a bait-and-switch on you people… It’s airstrikes; it’s aggressive use of air power. The Security Council passed the resolution the next day. The Rwandan and Libyan episodes have pundits speculating  about whether she will push for U.S. military intervention, either directly or through proxies. All the signs coming from the White House so far point to President Obama’s strong preference to stay on the sidelines in Syria. This time last year, Rice made clear that she too is reluctant to act, at least when it comes to putting U.S. combat boots on the ground: The consideration of putting U.S. or other foreign troops on the ground is premature, to say the least…There are real challenges with a humanitarian corridor, not least of which is that it entails having troops on the ground. Rice did, however, indicate that she hopes to find a solution: Nobody is saying, ’To hell with the people of Syria.” Nothing Rice has said publicly suggests how she proposes to thread the needle between doing too much and too little. Rice favors doing more to address climate change. She sees it as a real threat to international security.  She told the Security Council in 2011: Climate change has very real implications for peace and security. They are as powerful as they are complex, and many of them are already upon us. In many regions, climate change is already reducing the availability of food and water, threatening biodiversity, and disrupting sea levels and weather patterns. As more powerful and frequent storms and floods lash coastlines and uproot populations, climatic changes can put even more pressure on scarce resources and expose vulnerable communities to greater instability. In the absence of congressional willingness to do something about climate change, Rice will not have much running room on the subject. Rice does not have deep experience in Asia broadly or China specifically, though her four years in Turtle Bay have given her a lot of experience dealing with Chinese diplomats. Foreign ministry types throughout Asia will no doubt will be burning the midnight oil for the next several weeks churning out memos for their bosses explaining what Rice’s time as national security adviser means for them.

The World Next Week podcast is up. Bob McMahon and I discussed the sequester, Pope Benedict XVI’s farewell, and the foreign policy-themed films nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. [audio: http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/media/editorial/2013/20130221_TWNW.mp3] The highlights: Unless Democrats and Republicans find common ground soon—and it looks increasingly unlikely that they will—$85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts (the “sequester”) will hit the federal government’s FY13 budget next Friday. The cuts are split evenly between defense and domestic programs—entitlement programs like Social Security won’t be touched. Spending on salaries and benefits for the uniformed military, which accounts for roughly a third of the defense budget, also will escape the budget axe. The defense cuts instead will hit the other two-thirds of the Pentagon’s budget, which means things like procurement, research and development, and operations and maintenance. If the sequester goes into effect, it will add an additional drag on the economy and hold down economic growth, at least in the short run. States and localities that depend heavily on federal spending will feel the greatest impact. And the sequester may not be the last bad news that federal employees and contractors hear in March. The stop-gap spending measure that permits the federal government to operate expires on March 27. If the White House and Congress can’t reach agreement on a new one, the federal government will have to shut down. Benedict XVI is set to step down as pope next Thursday. When he does so, he will become the first pope in nearly six hundred years to abdicate. Benedict is scheduled to make his last public appearance, a general audience at the Vatican, next Wednesday. Cardinals from around the world will gather shortly thereafter for the conclave that will select Benedict’s successor. The new pope could be the first non-European to occupy the papacy in a very long time. The 85th annual Academy Awards show is scheduled to air on Sunday night. Viewers around the world will get the chance to see Hollywood’s brightest stars celebrate the best in the motion picture business. They will also get a small dose of foreign policy. Two of the films nominated in the Best Picture category this year—Argo and Zero Dark Thirty—tell the stories of critical events in American foreign policy. Both films are captivating to watch, but both also stray from the truth for dramatic effect. Bob’s Figure of the Week is $3 trillion. My Figure of the Week is Hamadi Jebali. As always, you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why. For more on the topics we discussed in the podcast check out: The sequester threatens to inflict massive funding cuts: The Washington Post has a comprehensive guide to the sequester, specifics on what programs would be hardest hit, and details on how the Pentagon is responding to potential cuts to the defense budget. Time reports on how the sequestration debate is separating fiscal conservatives from the other wings of the Republican Party. The pope steps down: BBC News profiles the frontrunners in the search for the next pope. The Washington Post discusses Benedict XVI’s changes to papal election rules and the danger of gridlock. CNN describes conclave voting procedures and measures against fraud. NBC News writes on the influence American cardinals will have in choosing the next pope. Foreign-policy-themed films get Oscar nominations: The New York Times writes on the conflicted relationship between politics and filmmaking. The Los Angeles Times reports on the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty’s depiction of torture. The Huffington Post highlights truths and inaccuracies in Zero Dark Thirty and Argo.