American foreign policy making process :
executive, congress , intelligence
Week 7
Challenge of foreign policy (FP) to
state formation
• FP-making process has evolved through time
as the republic’s rise from isolated small
power to that of a global hegemon.
• FP formulation has been a disjuncture
between 1) rural/rule-based polity concerned
with internal expansion 2) modern/utilitarian
approach to engage with complex world
politics.
Interstate relations and the US Constitution
• In 1787, various elites’ attempt to wholesale
revision of the Articles of Confederation (the
1st constitution) providing a loose central
governance.
• The Founding Fathers’ challenge to reverse
the centrifugal forces of states’ rights and
assembly-driven government.
The Articles of Confederation (1777-1789)
3 main concerns of the Constitution’s
architects
1) The states’ civic immaturity to maintain
internal order or ensure the rights and freedoms
of their citizens.
2) Their sovereighty and behaviour (i.e.pratices
to protect their own economic activities)
impending the development of commerce.
3) Danger to themselves in the realm of internal
power politics.
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States
The original copy of the Constitution
Constitutional Debates and FP
• Centered upon the relationship between
states and their geopolitical positioning in
relation to other powers.
• Difficult task of designing a constitution to
reduce various tensions among states and
achieve consent.
• Requirement for a complex system of powers,
reciprocal
restraints,
and
negotiated
settlement.
FP as a primary agency of governmental
adaptation
• Initial concern to establish a federal level of
governance without a sense of FP responsibilities.
• Over the course of the republic, however, the FP
became increasingly recognized as an exceptional
issue area in the governing responsibilities.
• The requirements of FP as powerful motive in the
adaptive capacity of the federal government.
• The presidency ( or the executive branch)has acted
as the chief agency and main beneficiary of
governmental evolution in response to fp needs.
Presidental Leadership
The president’s varying ability to direct the
policy agenda, shape policy choices, and
manage and direct activities of the many
players, agencies, departments, and institutions
of the government.
Presidential Leadership
American President is widely regarded at home and abroad as
the most powerful individual in the world. Why ?
1) Commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military
forces and the leader of the world’s most advanced economy.
2) Political ideas associated with the US provides the
President additional influence.
3) The advantages of the presidential form of government
allowing the president to respond quickly and pragmatically to
emergent ( external) challenges.
In the areas of defense and foreign affairs, the nation
must speak with one voice, and only the president is
capable of providing that voice.
President Ronald Regan,1984
I would welcome the support of the Congress [for
military action in Haiti] and I would hope that I will have
that. Like my predecessors, I have not agreed that I was
constitutionally mandated to get it.
President Bill Clinton,1994
Conceptualization of the foreign policy-making process
(R.Hilsman,1967)
Conceptualization of the foreign policy-making
process (R.Hilsman,1967)
The Innermost circle: The president, his/her
immediate personal national security advisers,
important political appointees (i.e.the
secretary of state and defense, the director of
the CIA, and various under/assistant
secretaries)
The Second Circle: The various departments
and agencies of the executive branch to
provide the information.
The outermost (public ) circle: Congress , the
interest groups, public opinion, and the mass
media.
Implication of Hilman’s model
Important decisions involving the fate of the
nation are made within the innermost circle;
the role and influence of various players
involved in policy-making declines with their
distance from the center.
The US Constitution and Presidential
Leadership
• Shaping the president’s role in fp by
empowering the president to lead, but it also
creates constraints and challenges to that
leadership.
• Does not assign the foreign policy power to
any branch, but forces them to share
responsibility.
• Providing the political branches an invitational
struggle.
Constitutional FP power of the President (Art.II
: Section 2)
The President shall be Commander in Chief of
the Army and Navy of the US, and of the Militia
of the several States, when called into the actual
Service of the United States…He shall have
Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of
the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two
thirds of the Senators present concur; and he
shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and
Consent of the Senate, shall appoint
Ambassadors, other public Ministers and
Consuls.
The President’s constitutional foreign policy
power
• The General Executive Powers
• Commander in chief
• Chief negotiator
• Chief diplomat
The President or the executive branch can make foreign
policy through:
1) -- responses to foreign events
2) -- proposals for legislation
3) -- negotiation of international agreements
4) -- policy statements
5) -- policy implementation
6) -- independent action.
•
•
•
•
Constitutional Limits on the President’s FP
Power ( evident in Art.I)
Congress is entrusted with the general legislative
power, empowering it to make laws and
appropriate funds.
Force the president to share its war power with
the congressional injunctions ( i.e.declare war,
raise/support army)
The President’s diplomatic powers are constrained
by the Senate’s role to advise and consent.
Congress is to regulate commerce and
immigration.
Congressional Limits on the President’s
• “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be
vested in a Congress of the United States.”
• “Power of Purse” grant to Congress.
• Congress is to “make all laws necessary and
proper for carrying into execution the
foregoing powers.”
Congress can make foreign policy through:
1) -- resolutions and policy statements
2) -- legislative directives
3) -- legislative pressure
4) -- legislative restrictions/funding denials
5) -- informal advice
6) -- congressional oversight.
Factors Developing the leadership role of
the President
1) The Constitution’s provisions that
have
combined with practice overtime.
2) American role in a changing international
enviroment.
3) The Role of the Courts
1) The Constitution’s provisions-1
• Overtime, combined with practice to expand
the central role of the president in the
formulation as well as execution of FP.
• Presidents have taken advantage of their
ability to act decisively and set the FP
bureacracy
in
motion
(i.e.concluding
treaties/agreements, public declarations,
deploying military power)
• Presidents have established the precedent of
presidental leadership.
1) The Constitution’s provisions-2
• Congress has accepted in such exercises of
power and has even delegated further
responsibilities to the president (i.e.1921
budget reforms, 1934 Reciprocal Trade
Agreements)
• Growth of executive FP institutions – such as
the DoD , the CIA , and the NSC established in
1947 National Security Act- gave the
president even greater tools to take FP
actions.
2) American role in a changing international
enviroment – 1
• Further expanded the role and the ability of
the president to act assertively and decisively
in the post-WWII period.
• The widely shared consensus ( including the
Congress) that an active American word role
required strong presidential leadership was
needed.
• Due to the requirements of CW FP, the
president’s policy decisions went largely
unchallenged.
2) American role in a changing international enviroment –
2
-
Congress’ several resolutions providing
president broad power ( labeled as imperial
presidency) to deal with external conflict
situations:
The Vandenberg Resolution (1949)
The Formosa Strait (1955)
Middle East (1957)
Cuban (1962)
Berlin (1962)
Gulf of Tonkin (1964)
3) The Role of the Courts – 1
• Generally refrained from involvement in
foreign policy issues.
• In the case involvement, tendency to support
presidential claims of authority that has
solidified the president’s FP making role
(i.e.the Court’s ruling in United States
v.Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation)
• Furthered presidential leadership with
nondecision as well through doctrine of
political question (i.e.El Salvador in 1981,
Kuwait in 1987, the Persian Gulf in 1990)
3) The Role of the Courts – 2
Several limitations of judicial support, arguably
weakened the presidency :
- Youngtown Sheet and Tube.Co.et.al. v.Sawyer
in 1952.
- New York Times v. United States in 1971.
- US vs. Nixon in 1974.
- The Whitewater affair
- The Paula Jones sexual harassment
- The Monica Lewinsky episode
3) The Role of the Courts – 3
• Since Vietnam, more assertive Congress over
American commitments and the president’s
war powers. Several legislative efforts to
circumscribe her/his authority:
- The National Commitments Resolution (1969)
- The Repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
(1970)
- The Case Act (1972)
- The War Powers Resolution (1973)
- The Clinton’s “assertive multilateralism”
Democratic Dilemmas
• Given the degree to which American
politics is permeated by its cultural
associations with democratic principles,
FP has highlighted several points of
tensions, democratic dilemmas.
• Generally sharpened when translated
into the normative constituents of
legislative-executive
relations
over
foreign policy issues.
4 Democratic Dilemmas
1) Democratic diversity/governmental
unity
2) Open government/operational secrecy
3) Rule of law/realpolitik
4) Rationality/responsibility
1) Democratic diversity/governmental
unity
• The strain between democratic diversity/civil
equality and a small enclosed group of experts
making FP.
• Because international affairs are thought to be
complex in nature, the subject requires highlevel of in-debt understanding.
• The higher the stakes, or the closer the
connection as issue to national security, then
it more likely that small set of elites making FP.
2) Open government/operational secrecy
• The drive to confine the domestic parameters
to engage effectively with diverse centers of
powers in the outside world.
• Concealment as a regular modus operandi in
foreign affairs.
• A range of intelligence agencies utilize
concealment as an instrumental device.
• Contradiction with democracy’s association
with open government, transparency, and
accountability.
3) Rule of Law/realpolitik
• The unequal relationship between the
traditionally law-centered ethos of democracy,
and the international realm in which the rule
of law has at best a secondary significance.
• FP have been externally driven and adaptive
to changing conditions; free from any strict
validation process.
• The linkages of democratic authority, consent
and accountability are more difficult to trace
in functionally oriented realm of FP.
4) Rationality/Responsibility
• The disruptive effect that FP can have upon
democratic governance.
• At times of international crisis, key FP
decisions were made not only without
congressional approval, but were designed to
avoid Congress.
• Profound conflict between “rationality”
understood
by
the
President
and
“responsibility” as seen by Congress.
“Those who regard political responsibility as the
highest obligation of democratic leadership will
argue that the President should have based his
foreign policies on Congressional and popular
consent, even if this has meant the selfdestruction of the nation…Those who place the
highest value on rationality may argue that the
President has a “higher” responsibility…to pursue
foreign policies even if these could not be based
on popular consent.” (Dahl, 1964: 180-1)
New Tensions in the post-9/11 period-1
• Resemblance to previous crises between the
Congress and the President.
• The president’s usage of the “ rally around the
flag” effect, the CW apparatus of the national
security state combined with a homeland
security society that reached areas previously
protected civil liberties and constitutional
limitations.
• The president was able to secure the
accelerated passage through compliant
Congress of the Patriot Act.
New Tensions in the post-9/11 period-2
• Usage of the issue of international terrorism
to reaffirm international institutions and
multilateral process.
• A new form of international coalition building
that would bypass established processes in
favor of ad hoc task force.
• The intelligence-led linkage between Iraq,
9/11, WMD, and terrorism was clearly evident
in the congressional resolution authorizing the
threat posed by the regime of Saddam
Hussein.
Critiques
• Politically manipulating/misrepresenting the
intelligence for the purposes of mobilizing public
support and misappropriating the legal process
relating to decisions over entering into a state of
war.
• Unilateral power to initiate wars without any
congressional approval.
• Interpret, terminate,or suspend at its discretion
(i.e. detention of prisoners without trial at
Guantanamo placed “illegeal combatants”
beyond the scope of the Geneva Convention.
Detention of prisoners without trial at Guantanamo placed “illegeal
combatants” beyond the scope of the Geneva Convention.
Thanks