Church and State

An awkward ally for Carter

As the Carter Administration struggles with its vexing problems abroad, it has to keep a wary eye at home on a highl.y independent Senator who is determined to influence U.S. foreign policy. Fulfilling a lifelong ambition, Idaho Democrat Frank Church last month became the new chairman of the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Church insists that he wants to be a Carter ally, despite his recent criticism of U.S. moves in the Middle East and Taiwan, but the White House is worried. Says one presidential adviser about Church: "We were hopeful, but the hope is fading."

A liberal from a conservative state. Church, 54, has proved wily enough to win four successive elections to the Senate. In 1976 he ran against Carter in four primary races for the presidential nomination of his party -and finished ahead of Carter each time. His record on major foreign policy issues, moreover, shows that he can be smart, stubborn and willing to go against the wind. Church staked out a position against the Viet Nam War as early as 1965. He has long advocated the normalization of U.S. relations with mainland China. He fought hard for the Panama Canal Treaties. He opposed the unlimited sale of arms to the Shah of Iran on the prophetic ground that the Shah's throne was too shaky.

Now, Church is trying to forge the Foreign Relations Committee, which actually holds little legislative power, into a unit with the kind of authority it once held under such past chairmen as Idaho's William E. Borah (Church's boyhood hero), Michigan's Arthur Vandenberg and Arkansas' William Fulbright. Under its most recent chairman, Alabama's easygoing John Sparkman, the committee "had begun to fractionate," says Church, in typically grand language. "The centrifugal power was pulling the committee into subcommittees that were taking over."

To check that trend, Church has abolished the Subcommittee on Foreign Assistance, through which some 80% of the committee's legislation flowed. He has combined two other subcommittees. The result is to give more power to the full committee and, he assumes, himself. Just as significantly, he has cut back the committee's unimpressive 72-member staff to a leaner but more professional 42.

But Church's actions are being at tacked as a "power play" by jealous members of his committee. More important the committee makeup has shifted sharply against him: five of its 15 members are new. Even though Church was able to eliminate one Republican seat, he faces far more conservative membership than Sparkman did. Gone are liberal Republican Clifford Case and moderate Republicans Robert Griffin and James Pearson. Instead, Archconservatives S.I. Hayakawa of California, Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Richard Lugar of Indiana are likely to oppose Church strongly, and flamboyantly, on many issues. The committee is split almost evenly along ideological lines.

Church's influence is also challenged by a new unity among the committee's Republicans. For the first time, they have decided to form a minority staff of their own. The Republicans think that Carters foreign policy is weak and confused and that bipartisanship -not much in evidence for a long time -is useless. At a meeting of some 100 top G.O.P. officeholders earlier this month in Easton, Md., bipartisanship in foreign policy was dismissed as both a myth and out of date. Republican opposition to Carter places Church in the awkward political position of seeming to be on the G.O.P. side whenever he opposes Carter's policy.

So far, such considerations have not deterred Church from speaking out, sometimes erratically and perhaps sometimes under pressures from his home state. He startled the White House by insisting -despite his strong stand favoring normalization with China -that the Senate express concern over the security of Taiwan. Similarly, in the midst of the Iran turmoil, he needled Saudi Arabia by contending in an ill-timed and ill-conceived statement that it "cannot count on our unequivocal support" unless it helps conclude an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

Church will back a SALT treaty if he is satisfied that Soviet observance of its terms can be verified. He strongly rejects Republican arguments that such a treaty should be made conditional on more peaceful Soviet behavior elsewhere in the world. Insists Church: "Linking SALT to Soviet activities in Angola or Ethiopia makes no sense at all and is bound to fail. The treaty either serves our national interest or it doesn't. It ought to be judged on its own merits."

More philosophically, Church is somewhat of a fatalist. He contends that the U.S. must face up to the fact that it has limited power to prevent changes in Iran or elsewhere. "This is a volatile world," he says. "The thing we must learn is that the U.S. can live with a great deal of change and upheaval. But the one thing we can't do is to stabilize it. There's no way to put a lid on it."

There is thus solace and threat for the Administration in Church's varied views. He vows that his committee will not "quibble with the President or second-guess his every decision." Yet Church is too much a maverick to be predictable. He might well become another of Jimmy Carter's foreign policy problems. qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.