October 11, 2000

Time to Rethink Korea Policy?
Campaign Donations Face First Amendment Test
U.S. Denies Sudan Security Council Seat

Time to Rethink Korea Policy?

The United States and North Korea held their highest-level meeting ever yesterday, seeking to ease tensions a half century after they fought each other in the Korean War, according to Reuters. President Clinton met Jo Myong-rok, second-ranking official to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, for about 45 minutes in the White House Oval Office for talks that a U.S. official described as "very positive, direct and warm."

Jo said developments on the Korean peninsula, including the June summit with South Korea, "clearly indicate the possibility of such dramatic changes" in relations with the United States. He said Kim Jong-il would "certainly make a very important political decision to turn the current bilateral relations of confrontation and hostility into the new relationship of friendship and cooperation and good will."

In "Leave Korea to the Koreans," Senior Fellow Doug Bandow writes that the U.S. should use the opportunity presented by Pyongyang's recent softening to reduce its involvement in Korean affairs. "The United States should leave the direction of Korean policy to Seoul -- the country most threatened by North Korea is South Korea," Bandow writes. "America should normalize its relationship with both countries. For the North, that means dropping economic sanctions and initiating diplomatic relations."

Campaign Donations Face First Amendment Test

Adding an important campaign finance case to the docket for its new term, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether current limits on the amount parties can spend in coordination with their Congressional candidates are constitutionally valid, according to The New York Times.

A federal appeals court in Denver ruled in May that the spending limits, a part of federal campaign law for the past 26 years, violated the parties' right to free speech. The ruling came in a 15-year-old dispute about a United States Senate race in Colorado that had reached the Supreme Court once before, in 1996, when a divided court cast doubt on the limits' constitutionality without resolving the issue. Since then, the court's solicitude for the First Amendment rights of political parties has, if anything, increased.

The spending limits apply to the use of "hard" money by political parties in the general election — contributions that must meet strict federal restrictions concerning the amounts that can be donated. The limits on expenditures are based on the voting-age population of each state and, applying a formula of roughly seven cents a person, range this year from a low of $67,560 for Senate races in the 12 smallest states to $1.6 million in California. For elections to the House of Representatives, the limit is $33,780.

In "Campaign Finance 'Reform' Proposals: A First Amendment Analysis" Lillian R. BeVier of the University of Virginia Law School argues that a ban on political action committees, restrictions on donations, regulation of issue advocacy, and expansion of the enforcement powers of the Federal Election Commission all substantially infringe on core First Amendment rights.

Current campaign finance regulations have not reduced the influence of money, have not opened up the political system, and have not lowered the cost of campaigns, argues Bradley A. Smith in "Campaign Finance Regulation: Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences." Last year, Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon testified before Congress on the constitutional issues related to campaign finance reform.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay recently spoke at the Cato Institute where he defended traditional First Amendment rights in elections and contested the assumptions behind campaign finance "reform." You can watch the event on the Cato Web site.

U.S. Denies Sudan Security Council Seat

A U.S. campaign to deny Sudan a seat on the U.N. Security Council ended successfully today as U.N. members chose the tiny island nation of Mauritius to represent Africa on the council for the next two years, according to Reuters. Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the vote was a victory for "reason" and a "total repudiation of Sudan." The United States considers Sudan a sponsor of terrorism and argued that its presence on the 15-member Security Council would undermine the world body's legitimacy.

Holbrooke had predicted that Sudan's decision to enter the Security Council race would set back its effort to patch up relations with Washington and gain relief from U.N. sanctions. The Security Council imposed an air embargo and diplomatic restrictions on Sudan for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into a 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. While Egypt and most members of the Security Council now favor lifting sanctions, the Clinton administration is not prepared to ease up on Sudan.

In "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?" Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland writes that there may be too much focus on deterring terrorism rather than understanding what motivates it. He concludes that a strong correlation exists between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. Senior Fellow Doug Bandow opines in "A Foreign Policy for Terrorists" that most of those who hate America "would leave us alone if we left them alone."

In "A Chance to Rethink Sanctions," Trade Policy Analyst Aaron Lukas examines the failures of trade sanctions. He writes that "it's time for Congress to realize that disrupting private business transactions is not an effective foreign policy tool. Sanctions damage domestic interests at least as much as the target country and have little chance of inducing policy changes."

		Palm Computing and Windows CE users: now you can read the Cato Institute's Daily Commentary and Daily Dispatch while you're on the go.

Sign-up and get the Cato Institute's Daily Dispatch in your email every weekday morning.