European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - March 17, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 a the stars and stripes Colum Santhony Lewis Contra affair reincarnated monarchist concept cause they raised a constitutional diff  Hie trial of John Poindexter should make us reflect on the Iran Contra affair not the particular charges to be decided by a jury but the larger meaning. Why did it matter the essence of what happened was this when Congress refused to continue supplying the nicaraguan contras the Reagan White House arranged to get unappropriated funds to them a Money from the Sale of arms to Iran. And those involved claimed that a presidents Power in foreign affairs allowed them to ignore the Law passed by Congress. In other words the affair was an attempt to escape from the checks and balances of the Constitution. It was an attempt to establish that the president and his aides could operate abroad without being accountable to anyone. That is Why it mattered. The Story is told with convincing care by Theodore Draper in the March l Issue of the new York review of books. He makes dear that Poindexter and Oliver North did not just carry out secret operations. They asserted a constitutional theory that would give them a License to act As Draper says a in the name of the president without regard for any other Branch of the  the constitutional theory goes Back to a statement made by John Marshall when he was a congressman in 1799. He said a the president is the sole Organ of the nation in its external relations and its sole representative with foreign  Marshall was talking about the president As the official responsible for communicating with other nations. There is no doubt about that the Constitution says he shall a receive  but the phrase a the sole Organ was used loosely by the supreme court in a 1936 Case . V. Curtiss Wright. And in recent years the Curtiss Wright Case has become a totem for those who argue that presidents should be Able to do whatever they want in foreign policy. It is really a monarchist View. Its extreme advocates want the president to have the equivalent of the Royal prerogative a Power free of restraints. The Iran Contra operators had an ingenious Way of achieving the monarchist goal. Poindexter put it in congressional hearings on the affair that Congress constitutional Power Over appropriations should not be deemed a to restrict what the president can do in foreign  that notion would drastically weaken Congress. Control of spending is the Basic Power of any legislature. It was Over that Issue that English Kings and parliaments fought so Many Battles a and parliament finally won becoming the effective Sovereign. The Constitution does not limit Congress Power to Domestic matters. It gives Congress various roles in foreign affairs including the Power to declare War. Even Alexander Hamilton that believer in centralized Power wrote in the federalist that it would be unwise to commit to one Man a interests of so delicate and momentous a kind As those which concern. Intercourse with the rest of the  what happened in the Iran Contra affair a the attempt to give the president unaccountable Power a is not just a matter of history. Nowadays the conflict Between Congress and the president Over foreign policy is More or less continuous. Just last month president Bush objected to numerous provisions in a state department authorization Bill. He signed it but said he would treat those provisions As advisory not binding be interest Gly Bush did not claim and exclusive Power to make foreign policy he said rather that the Constitution gives the president control Over Quot the conduct of  hence he objected for example to provisions trying to do rect who might participate in negotiations. Bush is on Strong constitutional ground when he objects to congressional interference in the conduct of diplomacy but his Justice department is not so limited in its constitutional claims it often argues that anything to do with foreign policy is an exclusive executive matter. The monarchist notion of presidential Power lives on. But How strange it is historically. When the Truman administration made extravagant claims of that kind in the supreme court in 1952, Justice Robert h. Jackson wrote a the example of such unlimited executive Power that must have most impressed the forefathers was the prerogative exercised by George Iii and the description of its evils in the declaration of Independence leads me to doubt that they were creating the new executive in his  c new York times William f. Buckle privation not diplomacy decided cold War a distinguished British historian an old personal Friend we were roommates at school suggested seriously that i undertake to write a history of the cold War. I told him my Book writing time was mortgaged through 1994, and i done to intend to embark on such a venture at that Point one can reasonably expect a Forest of cold War . Books in the interval. But the proposition stayed with me overnight and bore fruit As follows 1 any Book on the cold War should take seriously the thought and analysis of those who participated in the a old War and agonizingly predicted the defeat of the West. Most widely recognized among these was Whittaker Chambers. His lament widely quoted in the literature of despair was phrased in a personal letter to me written in 1954. He said a the enemy a lie is ourselves. That is Why we can Hope to do Little More now than snatch a Fingernail of a Saint from the rack or a handful of ashes from the faggots and Bury them secretly in a Flowerpot against the Day Ages hence when a few men begin again to dare to believe that there was once something else that something else is thinkable and need some evidence of what it was and the fortifying knowledge that there were those who at the great Nightfall took Loving thought to preserve the tokens of Hope and  and there was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who wrote that Over a very few years he had witnessed the collapse of the will of the West. That fora period during the �?T50s and �?T60s, the uncoordinated resistance within the soviet Union a a spiritual fraternity really a had reason to think of the West As an immovable Wall against which the soviet Union would not could not prevail but that after our Retreat from Vietnam and our insensitivity to so much that the communists were engaged in culminating with the declaration of martial Law in Roland there was Little reason to Hope that we would prevail. The historian must examine the thoughts of such As Chambers and Solzhenitsyn without donning pathologists Robes. Their concern was deeply rooted in objective analysis a but objective analysis of Western weakness not of communist weakness. This is a Point to stress. 2 whereas we can proudly say that the Western will presented formidable obstacles to soviet expansionism we need to say this carefully. The last successful soviet diplomatic offensive brought them the inf treaty. We think Little of it at this Point because the Prospect of a soviet military drive across Eastern Europe has All but faded with the dissolution of the soviet Empire in the Region. But the soviet offensive was dramatically and fright j a foam Lyv to to year rur of 4 /90f How a Uke Flat Moscow Sausto about minis my w6b6 just Koldt it ims a singly successful. Any future general at a War exercise studying the political culture of the late 1980s, would be justified in concluding that the disappearance from Europe of theater nuclear weapons of a Range extensive enough to reach the soviet Union left our potential enemy with a measure of Security it had not dreamed of getting in Early negotiations. The West was left with strategic weapons at closest Range from submarines in the Baltic sea. But the firing of such weapons aimed at slowing Down or aborting a soviet Blitzkrieg would have been seen by the Kremlin As the equivalent of weapons fired from Omaha. And our knowledge that such would be the soviet reaction would have resulted in preventing the submarines from firing. The Europe of 1989 might Well have been converted As Little As one year later into a neutralise Europe headed by an anti nuclear political party in East Germany to be joined by an anti nuclear political party winning in great Britain. Meanwhile the United states had acquiesced in what seems like a permanent satellite government in Afghanistan had refused to take decisive action in Nicaragua. And then. 3 and then As some of us believers might punt. God cleared his Throat. And to on March 11. 1990. Inc Little state of Lithuania declared that it was incl pm Dent of the soviet Union. It is reasonably expected Tea Latvia and Estonia will follow a in the footsteps Poland and East Germany and Czechoslovakia k a mania and Bulgaria. A Triumph of Western policy. Only if one chooses to believe that the Mere survival of the West was itself triumphant. It is of Oiver to credit of the West that it elected to remain a Power exercising the deterrent club the shield win Many westerners argued we should do without. But it was the agony of life under cd my Unis 0 dictated the outcome. The West might have Rea bask in its diplomatic prowess if it had a a vast 45 years to liberate the swollen kingdom of the a they were liberated primarily by the shortage o in the motherland of the proletariat rather than it abundance of it in the West. No history of to War will successfully assert that the demise of Viet Empire was a Triumph of Western dip what we did essentially was to stand still. An a Case of some to Pray for divine intercession. C Quot Universal press Syndicate