The Executive, Congress, and Interest Groups in U.S. Export Control Policy: The National Organization of Power

William J. Long

Introduction

This chapter explores the making and implementation of U.S. export control law and policy in the postwar period. The central proposition underlying this study is that the Executive and the relevant bureaucratic agencies (particularly the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and State) influence and shape export control law and policy and are relatively more autonomous and important political actors vis-à-vis Congress and domestic interest groups than is appreciated by theories on the role of the American Executive and executive agencies in U.S. trade policy.

Moreover, Executive dominance persisted beyond the immediate cold war period when, arguably, the perception of a national security crisis and the relative unimportance of international trade to the American economy would suggest the possibility of congressional and interest group deference to the Executive. Since 1969, although the perceived threat to national security has receded, Congress has become more assertive in foreign policy, the presidency has been weakened by Vietnam and Watergate, and the business community's interest in export markets has vastly increased, the Executive still dominates export control policy. Furthermore, during the post-1969 period the Executive has extended the original East-West national security thrust of export control policy to serve a variety of other foreign policy objectives, including human rights, anti-terrorism, and nuclear nonproliferation.

This chapter will examine U.S. export controls historically to discern a pattern of executive department dominance, to assess the capacity and instrumentalities of the Executive in defining and implementing policy, and to provide some insight into the content, impacts of, and motivations for the Executive's activities.

Theories of the Role of the Executive in U.S. Trade Policy

Liberalism and its leading modern variant, pluralism, have heavily influenced theoretical approaches to U.S. trade policy. Pluralism, which views the political process as dominated by interest group activities and suggests that the representative and leadership functions of democracy are the result of bargaining and competition among numerous voluntary, randomly arranged interest groups, tends to slight the role of the central state actors.

For example, in a recent work Gary Bertsch argues that, despite the high degree of centralization of authority within the Executive, the politics of East-West trade and technology transfer (roughly synonymous with the politics of export controls) are best understood through an appreciation of the "structural pluralism" of the American political system. Bertsch aptly summarizes the reasons he believes pluralism should account for U.S. export control policy, especially in the past two decades:

There are a number of reasons for this development ... includ[ing] the weakening of presidential power in the post-Vietnam and Watergate eras; the increasing assertiveness of a Congress disposed to recapture its constitutional role in American foreign policy; ... the increasing importance and power of U.S. commercial, and particularly agricultural, interests in a period of declining export performance, and U.S. reactions to Soviet foreign policy intrigues.

As a consequence of these forces, Bertsch concludes, the cold war consensus on East-West trade and technology transfer has declined as the political process has become increasingly pluralistic, "marked by more political actors and centers of power with access to the making and implementation of U.S. foreign economic policy."

Theoretical approaches to overall U.S. trade policy are consistent with the pluralist emphasis on particular interests focused on Congress. Although often not explicitly defining trade policy as including export control policy, many studies of U.S. import policy imply that pluralism explains not only U.S. import policies, but U.S. export policies as well. Consequently, many analyses of the role of the Executive in U.S. trade policy ignore or underestimate the Executive's importance and its strength and insularity from domestic interests.

Theories on general U.S. foreign policy, while accounting for Executive dominance during the early cold war period, do not adequately explain the continuation of Executive dominance of export control policy in the post-1969 period. Scholars have described the President as the primary force in foreign affairs in the second half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, the president's ascent to prominence in foreign affairs was thought to relegate Congress to a secondary role. Congress's influence in foreign policy was viewed primarily as legitimating and amending policies initiated by the Executive.

More recent discussions of U.S. foreign policy indicate that the depiction of extensive executive dominance is more accurate with respect to the 1945–65 period than it is to subsequent decades. By the mid-1970s Congress had reasserted itself in U.S. foreign policy making by repealing the Gulf of Tonkin "Resolution," overriding President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, terminating the president's authority to provide emergency military aid to South Vietnam, prohibiting continued CIA expenditures in support of anti-communist forces in Angola, and establishing a permanent intelligence oversight committee. In short, the anti-communist values that forged a bipartisan consensus on U.S. foreign policy in the 1950s and 1960s had eroded by the 1970s.

Thus, within the general foreign...