Speaking with a Single Voice: Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy

SPEAKING WITH A SINGLE VOICE: BIPARTISANSHIP IN FOREIGN POLICY David L. Boren Ooon after Under Secretary ofState Robert Lovett had gone home late one evening, Senator Arthur Vandenberg typed in the last few revisions he and Lovett had made in what was soon to become the Vandenberg Resolution. This resolution represented the culmination of a series of meetings among Lovett, Vandenberg (a leading Republican and ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee), and Democratic Secretary of State George Marshall, who met over the course ofseveral months at Vandenberg's home in Washington's Wardman Park Hotel. During the so called 500-G meetings, named after Vandenberg's suite, the three men consulted, argued, and compromised throughout the spring of 1948 in order to bridge the traditional institutional divides of party line and executive-legislative rivalry. Ultimately, they successfully crafted a resolution that enabled the United States to take its first nervous steps into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). With overwhelming congressional approval, the resolution set the stage for America's entry into an alliance with European allies that today represents one of the most stable, enduring, and important elements of Western strength. Now in its fortieth anniversary year, the Vandenberg Resolution symbolizes the spirit of consensus and bipartisanship that characterized the early postwar period. The era, with its many foreign policy successes, demonstrated the potency and effectiveness that can be achieved through a bipartisan approach. Although bipartisanship did not apply to debate on domestic issues or necessarily exist in every area of U.S. foreign policy, Vandenberg's efforts marked a starting point for a period in U.S. history when consensus on the most critical foreign policy issues was sought just David L. Boren (D-OK) is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 51 52 SAIS REVIEW as vigorously as the interests outlined in a particular policy. Vandenberg defined the spirit this way: To me "bipartisan foreign policy" means a mutual effort under our indispensable two party system, to unite under our official voice at the water's edge so that America speaks with maximum authority. ... It does not involve the remotest surrender of free debate in determining our position. On the contrary, frank cooperation and free debate are indispensable to ultimate unity. In a word, it simply seeks national unity ahead of partisan advantage.1 In Vandenberg's era such an approach was a natural response for a country that had emerged from the unifying experience of World War II with unprecedented strength. U.S. efforts to contain Soviet aggression, which the nation came to view as the greatest threat to the victories earned during the war, provided an immediate reference for that unity as well as a perceived need to maintain it. Although America's needs today are different, and its historical reference changed, the need for bipartisanship in foreign policy isjust as strong, if not more imperative, than it was forty years ago. If it was the preeminence of U.S. power and singleness of purpose in the postwar era that permitted a bipartisan consensus to emerge, it is the loss of dominance and simplicity that now requires the United States to focus its interests and clarify its priorities. Today an opportunity exists to revive that era of bipartisanship by creating a framework for increased cooperation between the executive and legislative branches in order to reach agreement on the most basic foreign policy objectives. In a country once responsible for more than 50 percent of the world's gross national product but now struggling to produce half that share, it is only natural for Americans to examine ways of sustaining influence around the world. Although much of today's commentary on this topic focuses on the theme of the United States in decline, it is neither proper nor accurate to frame the debate in that light. Today's need to resurrect the bipartisan spirit is not so much a product of the United States' declining importance as a direct result of the policy successes of the postwar era. In the wake of World War II the United States decided to rebuild the shattered economies of Western Europe andJapan, even offering to assist the...