Michael H. Shuman, “ Dateline Main Street: Local Foreign Policies”
winter 1986-1987
Shuman explains the importance and the succeed of the Local Foreign Policies (LFP) that U.S. cities have been adopting since the last 20 years in spite of the controversial ideas from those (conservatives politicians, National Institutions, etc.) who believe that LFP could be against the National Foreign Policies and get USA –and its citizens- into an international crisis.
At
the beginning the article shows facts of LFP and their relationship to
the 1799 Logan Act. Later it gets through the issue that LFP cannot be
dismissed and shows the relationship between LFP and trade as well
as culture. Municipal Activism explains the three categories that LFP
fall into (consciousness-raising measures, unilateral and bilateral measures).
It also shows why many U.S. Cities would not join LFP and it gives
Rationales of Tolerance to discuss whether municipalities should continue
launch their own LFP. Finally it ends with four guidelines that support
the existence of LFP.
San
Francisco has been actively involved in international affairs; to challenge the
federal policy of sending Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees back to the war
zones from which they fled, the city has instructed its police not to cooperate
with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). More than 1,000 U.S
state and local governments are participating in foreign affairs, and their
numbers are expanding daily.
Collectively,
their influence on U.S. foreign policy; more than 900 local governments, for
example, passed a nuclear freeze resolution and helped pressure President Ronald
Reagan to launch the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva. This trend of
“thinking globally and acting locally” may both weaken national governments´
traditional autonomy over foreign affairs and open new conduits for citizen to
shape global politics directly, through the governments to which they are
closest.
If
the history of 1799 Logan Act is any indication, official U.S. sympathy for
popular participation in foreign affairs has existed since the earliest days of
the republic.
“America´s municipal foreign policies can no longer be dismissed as aberrant, trivial, or unconstitutional”
Non
are these voices likely to fall silent with a more popular, moderate, and
nuanced foreign policy. If Americans continue to embrace participatory over
representative democracy, bipartisanship in foreign policy may became an
anachronism.
During
the December 1985 convention of the National League of Cities (NLC), Mayor Tom
Bradley of L.A. made Municipal Foreign Policies (MFP) the centerpiece of his key
note address:
“The right of cities to be heard on these crucial issues derives from two fundamental principles. First, local governments is closest to the people…. [Second,] many of our national policies are felt first- and in the end most profoundly- in America´s cities…. [C]ities can enfranchise many who might otherwise never be heard. There can be no better reason for cities to participate with all the vigor and imagination we can muster.”
The
clearest examples are cities that manage borders wit other countries. Without
local management, the movement of people and goods across borders would be
slower and more expensive and problems such as illegal immigration and drug
traffic would be even worse than they are today. Municipalities have also
launched LFP to protect their citizens from costly global problems, especially
warfare.
In
addition, LFP can bring money and jobs into the community. U.S. states began
heavily promoting foreign trade in the late 1970s. Some of the benefits local
government are seeking in LFP are cultural, not economic. No less than 759 U.S.
communities have 1,120 “sisters” relationships with cities abroad. Finally, many
local officials and citizens have embraced the logic of the Nuremberg trails and
believe that they have duty to fulfill international norms and
laws.
Municipal
Foreign Policies fall into three rough categories.
Most local governments, are involver in raising public consciousness on foreign affairs through education, research, and lobbying. New York and Milwaukee high school teach “peace studies” courses. Alabama requires its teachers to contrast the U.S. and Soviet. Furthermore, nonbonding statements of foreign-policy issues are also forms of lobbying.
LFP are also conducted through unilateral use of policing, zoning, contracting, and investing powers. Not only have 120 cities refused to cooperate with federal civil defense plans, but also 118 communities and counties have passed zoning ordinances banning nuclear weapons production within their city limits.
Further,
U.S. cities have negotiated thousands of bilateral foreign agreements. Many of
these are tantamount to political treaties.
In
Foreign Affairs and the Constitution, the Columbia University law professor
Louis Henkin expressed this element of conventional
wisdom:
“The
language, the spirit and the history of Constitution deny the States [and local
governments] authority to participate in foreign affairs, and its construction
by the courts has steadily reduce the ways in which the states can affect
American foreign relations”.
Why,
then, have so few municipal foreign policies been judicially invalidated? The
discrepancy between constitutional theory and practice reflects different
definitions of state and local government participation in foreign
affairs.
“Washington often denounces municipal activism yet effectively sanctions it through incoherence”
The most impressive feature of U.S. law on MFP is the paucity of cases. The few relevant court pronouncements have been so ambiguous and contradictory that few city attorneys have been convinced that their MFP were clearly illegal and not worth trying. Examining the three categories of LFP helps explain this surprising conclusion.
Although this tolerance for MFP might merely reflect federal inefficiency, timidity, or ineptitude, it also probably reveals important underlying rationales. 1) Washington may be recognizing that international affairs, like many domestic issues, have become to run effectively as a monopoly; 2) the federal government may also believe that ultimately these policies are unstoppable; 3) the unwillingness of most presidents, members of Congress and judges to subordinate America´s core political value to the exigencies of foreign policy.
Yet,
it is not difficult to envision future municipal foreign initiatives that could
threaten national security and welfare. Four guidelines might be particularly
useful.