Rebellion in the House

For years the House Foreign Affairs Committee, unlike its more visible counterpart in the Senate, has seemed more like a branch of the State Department than an independent representative of Congress. Said one influential member: "The first question that used to be asked in this committee was: Why are we doing this? The Administration didn't ask for it."

After such a long career of institutional obsequiousness, it came as a particular surprise when the committee last week voted to cut off aid to two dictatorships, those of Greece and Pakistan. In both cases two Administrations have weaved and waffled along an uncertain policy line, finally deciding that although the actions of the two regimes were repugnant, U.S. strategic interests argued continued aid.

After Greece was placed under military dictatorship in 1967, the U.S. stopped delivery of all heavy military equipment, such as tanks and field guns. Believing that it had received verbal assurances that the colonels in charge would restore some of the nation's freedoms, however, the Nixon Administration last September formally lifted the embargo on heavy arms and asked Congress this year for nearly $118 million in new aid. Though it was still not happy with the junta's internal policies, Greece remained vital to NATO's southern flank and to the Sixth Fleet, newly challenged by the Soviet navy.

Friendly Persuasion. The Greek government has since made clear that it has no intention of restoring democracy any time soon. Earlier this year investigators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee concluded that "the policy of friendly persuasion has clearly failed. Indeed, the regime seems to have been able to exert more leverage on us than we have been willing to exert on the regime." Worse still was the fact that American assistance, particularly after the resumption of full aid in September, was looked upon by the Greek people as American support of one of the world's nastier regimes.

In Pakistan, the actions of the regime make the Greek colonels look like benevolent despots. To keep its Eastern half from seceding, the government has murdered countless thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of its own citizens and has assiduously sought to destroy the East's ancient Bengali culture. The White House still asked Congress to appropriate nearly $132 million in aid to Pakistan in the new fiscal year, in effect, says Democratic Representative Cornelius Gallagher, "subsidizing slaughter and spreading pestilence." (Not affected by the committee's vote is $100 million in direct emergency aid for the civil war's victims.)

In neither case is the committee's action absolute, even if approved by the House and the Senate. The President can restore aid to Greece--at the lower level of last year--if he tells Congress in writing that aid is an "overriding requirement" of U.S. national security. To receive its allotment, Pakistan will have to assure reasonable stability in the East and provide security for the millions of refugees who have fled to neighboring India.

Tie the Giver. Though the outcome in the House is by no means certain, President Nixon has now been bluntly told that he can no longer count on a docile House Foreign Affairs Committee as counterpoise to the often rebellious Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Members of the House are increasingly aware that the strings of foreign aid tie the giver as well as the receiver.

Indeed, the committee's action underlines a basic dilemma of the whole aid program. Both by giving and withdrawing aid, the U.S. in a sense meddles in a country's internal affairs. By denying aid to a government it disapproves of, the U.S. opens itself to accusations that its policy is too "moralistic"; moreover, often a regime thus pressured only turns more obdurate. That in fact was the immediate reaction of the Greek government, which, in almost comical absurdity, compared itself to the Athenians standing against the might of Persia.

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