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The Blue Wave: Foreign Policy Edition

Alexis Ortiz

• 4 min read
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The Blue Wave: Foreign Policy Edition

Hi friends,

Like many of you, I watched U.S. midterm results come in with excitement and with growing hope that the new Congress, once seated in January, may have an historic opportunity to both enact widespread change and seek accountability for the Trump administration’s actions, including human rights violations and abuses related to immigration detention, boat strikes, and potential war crimes in Iran. There has been lots of great writing on what a Democratic majority may and may not do come January, but I wanted to focus today on some of the opportunities the new Congress may have in the foreign policy space. Here are a few of the possibilities:

Democrats can wield the power of the purse to advance foreign policy priorities

Two of the big bills that must be passed every year are the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (SFOAA). With control of both houses of Congress, Democrats have the opportunity to both fund foreign policy priorities, and strip or prohibit funding from being used for projects it does not support. This could include prohibitions on funding for the war with Iran, or for military strikes on boats suspected of carrying drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific. This could also include new aid packages for Ukraine and renewed support for Taiwan and NATO. Congress can also seek to ratchet up funding for foreign assistance and humanitarian aid, though as this comprehensive overview in Just Security points out, this administration has not hesitated to withhold appropriated funds through what is known as a “pocket rescission,” something the Government Accountability Office has said is unlawful. Which brings me to another important opportunity for the incoming Congress:

They can exercise oversight and work for accountability

Friends, I am so excited for Congress to actually exercise oversight of this administration in a way that matters, and it seems like Committee chairs agree. 

The likely Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Chris Coons, recently posted that he intends to subpoena Elon Musk related to his talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Incoming Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Robert Garcia issued a two-word statement that simply read, “Lawyer up.” 

Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Adam Smith has released a statement on Democratic priorities for this committee in the new Congress, and those priorities include oversight “of the illegal war against Iran” as well as “the unauthorized military strikes in the Caribbean and Latin America, the deployment of the military to U.S. cities, and the blatant and corrosive politicization of our Armed Forces and purging of the ranks based on loyalty and ideology[.]”

And while I do not live in the time of the gladiators, I have the incredible good fortune to live in Congressman Jamie Raskin’s district, which as far as I am concerned is pretty much the same thing. He is likely to be the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and together with the House Oversight Committee and Committee on Homeland Security, can investigate ICE misconduct and human rights violations, including the killing of protestors and deaths in ICE custody. Representative Raskin confirmed to the press that one Committee priority will be regulating “lawlessness and violence that have emanated from ICE and the Homeland Security Department.”

We’ve covered this before, but in general, legally binding international agreements need the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate before they can be ratified, with some narrow exceptions for executive agreements and congressional-executive agreements. Even with the Democratic majority in the Senate, there won’t be 67 Democratic senators, such that advice and consent could fall along party lines alone. However, if you did have a treaty with widespread Democratic backing behind it, the Dems would need fewer votes from Republicans in order to reach that two-thirds threshold.

This is also largely hypothetical, because it’s hard for me to imagine a treaty that is 1) put forward for advice and consent by the Trump administration that simultaneously 2) has significant Democratic support and 3) very little Republican support. But I wanted you to have an idea of what majority is needed, including if this becomes relevant in a future administration.

The sticky wicket

The challenge with many of the legislative options, of course, is that President Trump still has veto power, and as with the treaty issue flagged above, Democrats do not have the two-thirds supermajority to override that veto, and would need Republican support. Getting that support may be more likely on some issues, such as support for Ukraine, than others, but the odds are still much better than they were before the midterms. I’ll take it as a starting point.

ICYMI

It’s been a busy few months, but here is a small sampling of what we’ve covered in The Brief:

  • A breakdown of why the U.S. has a reliability problem, and why that matters for diplomacy;
  • An overview of the findings by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the U.S. has committed war crimes;
  • Updates on tariffs and the trade war with Canada;
  • Coverage of student protests around the globe, including India, France, and Albania;
  • An explainer on how U.S. deportations to third countries are violating international law.

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Thank you for reading, and wishing those in the U.S. a peaceful and happy Thanksgiving later this month.

Alexis

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