Foreign Relations

Pressler also spent 14 years as a prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he held various chairmanships and ranking memberships on several subcommittees. He has been an outspoken advocate on several pressing international issues In 1985, he wrote a law now known worldwide as the "Pressler Amendment," which terminated U.S. aid to Pakistan in 1990, after President Bush could no longer certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear explosive device. The Pressler Amendment served as the cornerstone of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy and prevented billions of dollars in American taxpayer money from subsidizing a nuclear arms race in South Asia.

Pressler twice has served as a Senate Representative to the United Nations (1986, 1992) and was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the United Nations. He has become recognized internationally as one of the nation's leading critics of U.N. management practices. His legislation to prompt the U.N. to reform its management practices resulted in the creation of an independent U.N. inspector general and the Office of International Oversight Services (OIOS) to investigate mismanagement and to punish offenders within the U.N. bureaucracy. Since its creation, the OIOS has identified $120 million in waste and mistakes and recovered $70 million through settlement and court-ordered reimbursements.