Isolating the president in the United States seems always internal. President Bill Clinton has been prosecuted for lying about sexual misconduct. President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid the charge in the wake of the Watergate scandal. In 1868, the House of Representatives prepared 11 regulations to hold President Andrew Johnson accountable for defying the Republican-led Congress and his positions on reconstruction.

Different investigation

The current investigation into President Donald Trump is different. Sometime in December, a US president is likely to be sacked for the first time to abuse his foreign policy authority in the service of personal political interests. Evidence at the House Intelligence Committee hearing suggests that Trump has demanded the release of military aid to Ukraine, in exchange for the Ukrainian government conducting investigations with Trump's political opponent and former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as an unfounded claim that Ukraine, not Russia. , Intervened in the 2016 US presidential election.

It should come as no surprise, however, that transactions abroad accelerate accountability; foreign affairs were often at the heart of accountability, a practice in England during the Middle Ages, and even adopted by the United States. The history of accountability over the centuries shows a constant awareness of the weakness of foreign policy practice and the misconduct of its makers. The fact that the Senate may not remove Trump from office is not a measure of the ineffectiveness of isolation as a tool, but a reflection of the peculiar shifts in US political culture that isolate the president for his misconduct.

English way

When the framers of the US Constitution enacted a law requiring the dismissal of presidents and other "civil servants" for "treason, bribery or other major crimes and misdemeanors," they relied on British parliamentary practices that had existed for centuries.

The English Parliament passed the Isolation Act, in 1376, as a means by which the interests of the elite represented in that body, the hereditary aristocracy, the church, the nobility, and timely professional lawyers could ascertain the authority of the crown. Given the nature of European monarchy, with its interlocking family alliances and endless cross-border wrangling over territorial claims, it regularly puts foreign relations at the center of national politics. England was embroiled in religious wars, which followed reform, and ultimately the administration of an external empire, making foreign affairs important to the ruling class. Consequently, mistakes in foreign relations were often the subject of Parliament's accountability to royal ministers, judges and others.

The trial of key royal officials followed several disasters abroad.In 1450, the Duke of Suffolk, the chief minister of King Henry VI, was sacked for betraying English interests for the French, including his role in arranging Henry's marriage to the French princess, Margaret Anjou. The king attempted to save the Duke from prison and possible execution (impeachment penalties were later the harshest in the US Constitution), by sending him into exile. Unfortunately, he was kidnapped by pirates in the English Channel and beheaded.

In 1625, the Duke of Buckingham, a close associate of King Charles I, launched a disastrous and costly naval campaign against the Spanish port of Cadiz. Parliament tried to isolate the Duke, the following year. In 1667, after an expensive and unnecessary war with the Dutch, Earl Clarendon was partially sacked for seeking funds from France to evade parliamentary restrictions on royal funding. While it was indeed a rejection of pro-Catholic foreign policy, in 1715, the Lords of Oxford, Bolingbrook and Strafford were sacked by the Parliament for their support of the Treaty of Utrecht.

Perhaps the most interesting, in the light of current events, in 1678, Earl Danby dismissed his petition - on behalf of King Charles II - a bribe from Louis XIV of France in exchange for neutrality in the Franco-Dutch War.

The last major British trial, the Warren Hastings, who was governor-general of Bengal, began in London as delegates arrived at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. This seven-year trial, which attracted considerable attention on both sides of the Atlantic, focused On the fundamental differences over the relationship of Great Britain with its Indian possessions and adjacent countries. The conservative politician, Edmund Burke, led the claim and said that although Hastings' actions did not necessarily constitute clear violations of existing laws, they were crimes “against the laws of eternal justice, which are our rule and inherited rights: "In fact, crimes and misdemeanors are significant in terms of content and impact."

The American Experience

By the time of its founding in the United States in 1787, the “big crimes and misdemeanors”, first used by the British Parliament in 1386, had become a common artistic term in Britain and its American colonies. Virginia's representative, George Mason, proposed that "major crimes and misdemeanors" be included directly in the constitution. As the phrase was written in the US Constitution, the early legislators also consciously adopted a set of British laws, including accusations of betraying the nation's international interests. Other founders were explicit in linking misconduct in foreign affairs to isolation. James Madison also defended the incorporation of the law into the constitution because the president "may betray confidence in collusion with foreign powers."

These observations on treaties may seem strange today, but the founding generation understood foreign relations primarily in terms of formal treaty relations between states; they were also given the power to ratify the treaty to the Senate because they believed that doing so would put the legislature at the center of foreign policy decisions. . The legislature is the ultimate guardian of the nation's interests, and isolation must serve as a watchdog for presidential misconduct abroad.

Trump's authoritarian

Despite the constitutional authority in place to isolate the president for his misconduct in foreign relations, effectively isolating Trump on this basis would be uniquely difficult; the public must be persuaded that his behavior was terrible enough to justify the expulsion of a legally elected president. As the power of the presidency in foreign affairs has expanded beyond the role envisioned by lawmakers, public opinion has been ambiguous. Lawmakers believed that by giving Congress budget powers, ratifying treaties, accepting cabinet-level and high-level military officers, organizing "trade with foreign countries", monitoring the military and navy, and so on; On adventurous presidents under Congressional control. But in recent decades, major changes in the executive, the US military, and its global role, as well as the failure of Congress to exercise its constitutional authority, have turned the president into a largely unrestricted official in foreign relations.

The autocratic presidency developed during the so-called New Deal (1933-1936) and during World War II. Even bullying on the weaker states is becoming quite normal. This makes it difficult to distinguish legitimate presidential behavior, such as adapting aid to real anti-corruption efforts, from illegal violations of power, such as withholding aid as leverage to gain a personal political advantage. American public opinion has become more isolated in recent years, skeptical of defense commitments to other countries, and increasingly unaware of the justification. Generations that fought in World War II and supported the long Cold War against the Soviet Union believed that a peaceful and democratic Europe deserved protection, and that the Kremlin's expansion was a serious problem that required a US response. So the problem of Trump's behavior towards Ukraine is likely to be obvious to the majority of the partisans if it happened a few decades ago. Today, it remains self-evident for the US foreign policy establishment of both sides. But for many ordinary Americans, these experts speak almost extinct language, warning of the atrocities that have elapsed from living memory.

Self - interest

Trump's rise exacerbated this trend, coming to power in part by adopting a simplified view of the US role in the world and his own role as president: “America first”; foreign policy should embrace only narrow self-interest; and foreign actors respond to the leader's demands. The strongest of the strongest nation. Neither the Republican Party nor its media outlets have the will or the ability to reject this authoritarian simulation.

As a result, the long slide toward presidential unilateralism in foreign policy has been mixed with isolationist disappointment and the current bitter partisan spirit; it has also resulted in voters' apparent acceptance of historically unprecedented presidential abuse of American power. Unless something unexpected happens, the Senate will vote on Trump's innocence. By refusing to use the tool inherited by 14th-century English parliamentarians and US founders in the 18th century, Congress will normalize Trump's crimes and abandon the United States' moral claim to global leadership in the 21st century.

Frank Bowman is a writer and political analyst

- Given the nature of European property, with its family alliances

Interlocking and endless bickering across the border

On territorial claims, they establish relationships

Foreign policy at the heart of national policy, regularly.

- The fact that the board

The elders probably won't displace

Trump for office

Not a measure of not being

The effectiveness of insulation as a tool,

It is a reflection

For special transformations

And exotic in

Political culture

To the United States

That isolate the president

Because of his misconduct.

- 1678

Is the year that was isolated

In which Earl Danby asked

A bribe of Louis IV

French th, versus

Neutrality in war

French Dutch.