HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS? REPUBLICANS ARE SIDING WITH A FOREIGN COUNTRY OVER THEIR OWN PRESIDENT | On the surface, Netanyahus speech will be about opposing Obamas nuclear talks with Iran and supporting Republican-led sanctions meant to blow up those talks. But theres more than meets the eye here. Netanyahu is playing a game with US domestic politics to try to undermine and pressure Obama — and thus steer US foreign policy. Boehner wants to help him out. By reaching out to Netanyahu directly and setting up a visit without the knowledge of the White House, he is undermining not just Obamas policies but his very leadership of US foreign policy. The fact that Netanyahu is once again meddling in American politics, and that a US political party is siding with a foreign country over their own president, is extremely unusual, and a major break with the way that foreign relations usually work. To be very clear, this is not just a breach of protocol: its a very real problem for American foreign policy. The Supreme Court has codified into law the idea that only the president is allowed to make foreign policy, and not Congress, because if there are two branches of government setting foreign policy then America effectively has two foreign policies. The idea is that the US government needs to be a single unified entity on the world stage in order to conduct effective foreign policy. Letting the president and Congress independently set their own foreign policies would lead to chaos. It would be extremely confusing for foreign leaders, and foreign publics, who dont always understand how domestic American politics work, and could very easily misread which of the two branches is actually setting the agenda. (This confusion, by the way, is exactly what some Republicans are hoping to create in Iran with new sanctions.) This could also allow a foreign country to play those two branches off of each other. Thats in part what Netanyahu is attempting to do here, and its working. The Obama administration did not even find out about Netanyahus planned visit to Washington until Boehner announced it. The Republicans are attempting to run a foreign policy thats separate from the actual, official US foreign policy. vox/2015/1/21/7866089/netanyahu-boehner-congress
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 02:09:17 +0000
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