An obscure congressional group is tasked with observing high-stakes nuclear negotiations. Some in Congress now want to revive it.
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| Photo Illustration by Lyne Lucien/The Daily Beast |
An effort is underway on Capitol Hill to give top lawmakers a larger role in President Donald Trump’s endeavor to negotiate a nuclear deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, The Daily Beast has learned.
The
push, which is designed to grant Congress the role of an “observer” in
the high-stakes talks, involves resurrecting the responsibilities of an
obscure and little-known congressional body known as the Senate Arms
Control Observer Group.
Today, that body operates as the National Security Working Group (NSWG), a bloc of 20 senators co-chaired by Sens. Jim Risch
(R-ID) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Lawmakers want to use the NSWG as a
vehicle for direct congressional involvement in the nuclear talks
between President Donald Trump and the North Korean dictator.
When
asked about the NSWG’s efforts, many senators, including members of the
foreign relations committee, did not even know that the body
existed—neither in its past nor current form.
“I haven’t been
keeping up with it,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who recounted a
trip to Geneva in the late 1980s with the group shortly after it was
formed.
The NSWG’s internal machinations remain largely secretive.
Feinstein told The Daily Beast that the group had recently welcomed
guest speakers including Defense Secretary James Mattis to discuss a
range of issues.
But
the group’s official charter notes that senators are authorized to “act
as official observers on the United States delegation to any
negotiations to which the United States is a party regarding the
reduction, limitation, or control” of weapons of mass destruction. And
because of that authority, at least one top senator is now making the
case that the NSWG would be an ideal conduit for congressional
involvement in the North Korea talks.
“The desire is for it to be an observer in any negotiations,” Sen.
Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, told The Daily Beast. “I agreed with Sen. Feinstein and Sen.
Risch that I’d be happy because that’s an expanded group that has senior
[foreign relations committee] members, senior armed services people,
senior intelligence people—so it would be a good group. And we’ll see
whether we can get the administration to agree.”
Established
in a bipartisan fashion during the height of the Cold War in 1985, the
Senate Arms Control Observer Group was envisioned as a way to
essentially give Congress a seat at the table on the front end of
negotiations with the Soviet Union. The group was created so that
lawmakers could exercise more than simply the routine oversight
conducted by the foreign relations committee by giving senators a seat
at the table during the executive branch’s arms-control negotiations.
Its relevance began to fade during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
administrations as nuclear-related issues were overtaken by other, more
pressing foreign-policy matters.
With Trump’s highly anticipated summit with Kim coming on June 12 in Singapore,
some lawmakers want to bring back the working group’s initial model to
ensure that the White House stays true to certain commitments—chief
among them, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s promise to not lift U.S. economic sanctions until North Korea’s nuclear program is dismantled beyond reversal.
Other
lawmakers, however, worry that Congress might throw the White House off
if it engages too directly. In particular, some believe that with the
negotiations in their nascent stages, the legislative branch should
allow traditional committees to have their oversight roles. Already, the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee has requested staff-level briefings
from the State Department and the National Security Council, aides from
both sides of the panel said. And Micah Johnson, a spokeswoman for Sen.
Bob Corker (R-TN), the chairman of that committee, said members will
“conduct appropriate oversight,” and added that committee hearings and
member-level briefings could come eventually. Corker is also in regular
contact with Pompeo.
Risch, who is next in line to become chairman
of the foreign relations committee and has largely supported Trump in
the foreign-policy realm, did not appear to be enthusiastic about the
prospect of the NSWG stepping in at such an early stage.
“Obviously, that is an opportunity we have for oversight,” the
senator told The Daily Beast when asked about the NSWG’s efforts. “This
whole thing is fluid at this point. The president has been doing really
well on this, and we want to see him continue to do that.”
The
degree to which Congress does end up demanding a role in any North Korea
deal has potentially massive consequences on the success of the deal
itself. Just last week, many Republican lawmakers and foreign-policy
officials criticized former President Barack Obama for not having
involved lawmakers enough in his own nuclear deal with Iran.
Specifically, a common complaint was that the Iran deal would have
withstood Trump’s successful attempt to nullify it had it been ratified
by the Senate.
Ratification, of course, comes only after a deal is
reached by the parties involved. Trump and Kim are not yet at that
point. In public and in private, senators fret that the negotiations are
delicate. They’re also urging caution even as the Kim regime offers to
dismantle a nuclear test site and, more recently, released three American prisoners.
“These
are developments that are critical to understanding what happens after a
successful June 12 meeting. But there’s a lot that can happen between
now and then,” Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), a member of Republican
leadership and a member of the foreign relations panel, said in an
interview. “If the president believes that there is no path forward on
denuclearization—and by that, I mean complete, verifiable, irreversible
decluearization—the meeting shouldn’t even occur.”
Anything beyond
routine oversight as negotiations are ongoing is also likely to be met
with stiff resistance from the Trump administration. Marc Short, the
White House legislative affairs director, told The Daily Beast that
Pompeo would remain “in regular contact” with lawmakers about North
Korea, but declined to discuss the possibility of an expanded role for
the legislative branch.
Presidents have historically balked at
congressional involvement in foreign-policy matters. Obama vigorously
opposed legislation, crafted in part by Corker, aimed at giving Congress
more oversight and input into the Iran nuclear deal after it was
negotiated. The resulting bill passed in the Senate with 98 votes.
The
Trump administration might have reasons to be concerned about
congressional involvement, said a former top aide to John Kerry, who as
secretary of state negotiated the terms of the Iran nuclear deal which
Trump effectively scrapped last week.
“There
would certainly be fear that that the Hill would leak or spoil the
environment for sensitive talks,” said Ilan Goldenberg, the director of
the Middle East security program at the Center for New American
Security. “On the other hand, we’ve seen from the Iran deal that these
types of deals require congressional and bipartisan buy-in. And without
it they can die. So this could be a good idea to address that problem.”
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