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 high-level 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 self-destruction 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.

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