The Making of

U.S. Foreign Policy

U.S. F O R E I G N P O L I CY U.S. F O R E I G N P O L I CY

AGENDA

VOLUME 5 AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE NUMBER 1

The Making of 

U.S. Foreign Policy

March 2000
The writings presented here reflect the transformation of U.S. foreign

policy in recent years — a process accelerated by the same technological

advances which allow this “electronic journal” to be understood as an

innovation rather than an oxymoron.

The fundamental purpose of America’s foreign policy has not

changed in more than two centuries. It is to protect our citizens, our

territory, our livelihood, and our friends. 

But the making of American foreign policy has changed because the world has

changed. With the Cold War behind us and the global economy encompassing us, there is

no clear dividing line between domestic and international affairs. And on many issues, 

the question of where one agency’s responsibility ends and another’s begins is increasingly

blurred.

For example, countering terrorism is both a domestic and international law

enforcement imperative, requiring vigorous diplomacy, good intelligence, preparations 

for emergency response, and the possibility of military action. Fighting HIV/AIDS is a

medical challenge, an educational and developmental priority, and a foreign policy

necessity. Protecting the global environment demands sound science, sophisticated

economic expertise, and hard international bargaining.

On most issues, our diplomats must understand and work well not only with foreign

counterparts, but also legislators, nongovernmental organizations, outside experts, and

representatives from the private sector, both business and labor. The old geopolitical

chessboard is no longer two-dimensional. 

Today’s players are not only nations, but a host of non-state actors. The issues 

are often not separable, but inter-connected. The rules shift with every scientific

breakthrough. And although America has enemies, the outcome is not zero-sum: 

In the long run, we will all do better, or none of us will.

The pieces gathered here make up a thought-provoking collection by a truly

distinguished group of government officials, present and former Members of Congress, 

and other authorities. I commend them to you. For they describe how the world’s 

leading nation is grappling with the world’s hardest problems. And the more widely 

that process is understood, the better it will work and the more support it will receive.

— Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

2

U.S. FO R E I G N P O L I CY

AGENDA

The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
U.S. FO R E I G N P O L I CY

AGENDA

An Electronic Journal of the 

U.S. Department of State

THE MAKING OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

CONTENTS

_ FOCUS

THE CHANGING DYNAMICS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING 5

An interview with Thomas R. Pickering

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs 

UNITING THE TOOLS OF FORCE AND DIPLOMACY TO ENHANCE SECURITY 9

By Eric D. Newsom

Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs

THE UNITED NATIONS: AN ARENA FOR INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP 13

By David Welch

Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs

_ COMMENTARY

A DEMOCRATIC VIEWPOINT: CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY 16

By Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

A REPUBLICAN VIEWPOINT: CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY 19

By Senator Gordon H. Smith

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ISSUES AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY 22

By the Honorable Lee H. Hamilton

Director, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

THE MULTIPLE INFLUENCES ON U.S. FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING 25

By Stephen J. Wayne

Professor of Government, Georgetown University

_ POINTS OF INFLUENCE

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS: THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 28

An interview with Julia Taft

Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration 

THINK TANKS: HELPING TO SHAPE U.S. FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY 33

By Robert E. Hunter

Senior Adviser, RAND Corporation

THE MEDIA: INFLUENCING FOREIGN POLICY IN THE INFORMATION AGE 37

By Warren P. Strobel

Senior Editor, U.S. News & World Report

3
4

THE INTERNET AND THE DIFFUSION OF DIPLOMACY 40

An assessment by Dr. Richard H. Solomon

President, U.S. Institute of Peace

LOBBYING CONGRESS: A KEY WAY U.S. CITIZENS IMPACT FOREIGN POLICY 45

By Audrae Erickson

Director of Governmental Relations for International Trade Policy

American Farm Bureau Federation

PUBLIC-PRIVATE DIALOGUE: AN OPEN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SYSTEM 48

By Robert D. Schulzinger

Professor of History, University of Colorado at Boulder

_ A GUIDE TO ADDITIONAL READING

THE MAKING OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY — ARTICLE ALERT 51

Abstracts of recent articles

THE MAKING OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY — BIBLIOGRAPHY 52

Spotlighting other views

THE MAKING OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY — KEY INTERNET SITES 53

Internet links to resources on related issues

The Office of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of

State provides products and services that explain U.S. policies, society, and values to

foreign audiences. The Office publishes five electronic journals that examine major

issues and trends facing the United States and the international community. The

journals — Economic Perspectives, Global Issues, Issues of Democracy, U.S. Foreign

Policy Agenda, and U.S. Society and Values — provide analysis, commentary, and

background information in their thematic areas. All journal editions appear in

English, French, and Portuguese language versions, and selected issues also appear in

Arabic, Russian, and Spanish. 

A new English-language issue is published every three to six weeks. Translated

versions normally follow the English original by two to four weeks.

The opinions expressed in the journals do not necessarily reflect the views or

policies of the U.S. government. The U.S. Department of State assumes no

responsibility for the content and continued accessibility of Internet sites linked to

herein; such responsibility resides solely with the publishers of those sites. Articles may

be reproduced and translated outside the United States unless the articles carry

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Comments are welcome at your local U.S. Embassy (attention Public Diplomacy

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Editor, U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda

Political Security — IIP/T/PS

U.S. Department of State

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E-mail: ejforpol@usia.gov

Please note that this issue of U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA can be located

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World Wide Web at “http://www.usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0300/ijpe/ijpe0300.htm”.

Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith S. Siegel

Managing Editor . . . . . . . . . . Margaret A. McKay

Associate Editor . . . . . . . . . Wayne Hall

Contributing Editors . . . . . Ralph Dannheisser

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kristina Goodwin

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dian McDonald

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Editorial Board . . . . . . . . . . Howard Cincotta

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U.S. FO R E I G N P O L I CY

AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
5

QUESTION: Who are the most influential players in

the development of U.S. foreign policy?

PICKERING: They are the President and the Secretary

of State, the National Security Advisor to the President,

the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, and, of course, the Director of Central Intelligence,

who provides the other key members of the foreign

policy team with the latest information on world events.

These officials constitute the core of the National

Security Council, which is the nation’s highest-level

foreign policy-making body. And the Secretary of State

takes very seriously her primary role of being the principal

advisor to the President on foreign policy issues.

Q: How do their roles overlap and complement each

other in achieving U.S. foreign policy goals?

PICKERING: The President and the Secretary of State

have to give the most comprehensive consideration to

foreign policy issues because of their unparalleled

responsibilities at the apex of the U.S. foreign policymaking apparatus. The Secretary of Defense often

brings an added dimension to the review of national

security questions, and the National Security Advisor to

the President coordinates and integrates the activities

and functions of all of the members of the foreign

policy team. He of course intimately understands the

President’s foreign policy priorities and often initiates

insightful debates about that agenda during those

meetings of the foreign policy principals which the

President does not attend.

This National Security Council team, from my own

experience, is congenial and cooperative. But that in no

way tends to diminish the sharpness of the questions or

the seriousness of the debate. They have not allowed

personal feelings to intrude on the national interest in the

way that sometimes has happened in the past. And they

have also worked very hard to maintain the element of

confidentiality as they deal with issues over a long period

of time.

Q: How do you work with Congress in the foreign

policy area?

PICKERING: The entire foreign policy establishment

takes very seriously the Congressional role on any

foreign policy issue that comes up for consideration.

There is always consideration of how and in what way

we need to brief the Congress, get Congressional

opinions, and analyze the Congressional approach.

On almost every major foreign policy issue, there are

two sets of Congressional considerations. The first has

to do with policy — namely how the Congress, which

is a very vocal and essential part of the American

government, will react to an issue from a policy

perspective. We listen to the views of individual

members as well as to the Congressional leadership and

the committee chairs.

Secondly, Congress has the very important duty of

providing funding for government programs, both as

part of the annual budget process and often on an

emergency basis through supplemental appropriations.

THE CHANGING DYNAMICS 

OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

An interview with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas R. Pickering

International relations today have become increasingly more complex and “involve a 

wide range of issues that, in the 19th century, were never seen as major questions 

of foreign policy,” says Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas R. Pickering. 

The nations of the world are growing closer together, he says, and the communications 

revolution and the information revolution “clearly are having an impact on international

diplomacy.” He was interviewed by Contributing Editor Dian McDonald.

_ FOCUS
So consideration of the concerns of Congress from the

point of view of funding is very important.

In addition, Congress has frequently in recent years

legislated on foreign policy issues. Therefore one of the

questions we always have to ask ourselves regarding a

particular foreign policy initiative is: Will we expect

Congressional cooperation or Congressional opposition?

And, in either case, will that take the form of legislation?

And if so, how would we deal with their efforts at

legislation, or should we propose our own legislation?

In the latter case, of course, consultations with the

Congress are very important.

The President plays the leading role in consulting with

Congress, but the Secretary also spends a very large

portion of her time conferring with senior Members of

the Congress about particular issues. And others of us

who work closely with the Secretary also take on some

of that responsibility from time to time, with respect to

budgetary issues or foreign policy crises. 

For example, I recently spent an afternoon on Capitol

Hill briefing one of the committees on a particular

crisis situation. I spent the evening talking to Members

of Congress about Colombia. Senior Administration

officials also frequently are involved in telephone

discussions with Congressional leaders about foreign

policy issues. These activities are a very important part

of our responsibilities in the Executive Branch, because

it is the necessary coordination between the two

branches that makes foreign policy effective.

Q: How would you describe the most critical newly

emerging influences on U.S. foreign policy-making?

PICKERING: There are several. Increasingly

international relations have become more complex and

involve a wide range of issues that, in the 19th century,

were never seen as major questions of foreign policy.

These include crime, terrorism, the environment, and

international health. Dealing with the AIDS problem

is a particular concern of the Administration at the

present time because of the devastation this disease is

wreaking on many economies and in many countries

around the world.

These are all now front-and-center issues of foreign

policy. They complement the traditional economic

issues — trade, macroeconomic reform, and development

— as well as many of the traditional political issues —

settling crises, dealing with international disputes,

dealing with conflicts that have erupted, and exercising

diplomacy to prevent future conflicts.

They are also complemented by a growth in

multilateral diplomacy, in that many of these issues

now find their way into multilateral bodies, some

regional and some broadly international.

So issues are increasing in scope and technical

complexity because of the fact that the nations of the

world are growing closer together. We have all been

profoundly affected by the communications revolution

and the information revolution, which clearly are

having an impact on international diplomacy.

Q: Could you elaborate on how you work with

international organizations to achieve U.S. foreign

policy goals?

PICKERING: All of us in the foreign affairs community

are increasingly conscious of the fact that multilateral

bodies — both regional and broadly international —

play an extremely important role. In some cases, their

role is legislative or quasi-legislative; they actually make

the rules. In other cases, they set the international

consensus for what must be done at the highest levels.

In terms of traditional problems of war and peace, the

UN Security Council, of which we are a permanent

member, plays a very important role. During the past 50

years or more, regional and international organizations

have developed guidelines to help define and regulate

activities in many spheres — from how to conduct

business to how to keep airplanes from colliding with each

other to regulation of the telecommunications industry.

For all these reasons, working with our counterparts in

international organizations is a primary focal point for

the Department of State and the other domestic agencies

that join with us in carrying out foreign affairs. Some

of the domestic agencies have their own direct links

with the international organizations in their field. It is

the responsibility of the Department of State to make

sure that they follow general American foreign policy

objectives and continue to be effective in pursuing the

national interest.

6
7

Q: How do the views of foreign leaders and foreign

governments factor into the development of U.S.

foreign policy?

PICKERING: They are always extremely important,

and are, of course, especially critical when we have to

deal with bilateral questions. Recently, I was involved

in three long trips that afforded an opportunity to get

the views of leaders in the Balkans, in Latin America,

and in the Far East on principal foreign policy questions.

These kinds of consultations with foreign leaders are

essential because, even though the United States is a

world leader in foreign policy, it cannot operate alone.

We have to bring friends, allies — and even enemies —

along in a cooperative way in order to get things done.

The world does not operate on the basis of one country

being able to do everything all alone.

The consideration of foreign leaders’ views also is

important in a multilateral context because many other

countries play leading roles in multilateral forums such

as the United Nations, and the way individual countries

vote on particular questions is very important to the

United States. We undertake a lot of lobbying — we call

it in diplomatic language “demarches” — which means,

in effect, trying to persuade others, through logic and

discussion, of the value and correctness of U.S. views. We

also attempt to understand the views of other countries

and often try to factor their views into our own, so that we

can begin to build the kind of consensus that is necessary

to take international action on a particular subject.

Q: Do you believe that the media get in the way of

foreign policy-making?

PICKERING: On some occasions, when diplomacy is

being conducted confidentially, and confidentiality is

important to its success, transparency too early in the

process obviously is not helpful from the point of view

of those who are conducting the diplomacy. I think

that everyone who deals with diplomacy recognizes that

we are in an increasingly freer age, with an increasingly

freer flow of information. And most of us believe that

this will lead intrinsically and essentially to the

betterment of the process and of mankind.

So we are getting used to operating in a goldfish bowl.

When the confidentiality of information exchanged

with foreign governments is breached, this is sometimes

seen as a breach of faith and tends then to color a

relationship, maybe unnecessarily, in a bad way. But

that is not the press’s fault so much as it is the fault of

the source of the information to the press.

Sometimes we believe that press commentary on foreign

policy is unfair. I think that governments feel this most

strongly about press stories in which they have had no

opportunity to make their views known to the writer

before the story is published. And from the press’s

point of view, it is also important for them to consider

whether they have had a full opportunity to know and

evaluate all points of view before writing their stories.

It is a responsibility of the press to take into account all

points of view and analyze them. One-sided stories,

not checked or thoroughly researched, provide a

disadvantageous optic for foreign affairs, because in the

long run, foreign policy succeeds if it has the support of

national publics, which are very much influenced by

the media. Nobody expects the media to be the

mouthpiece for the government, but we expect that the

media at least will know and understand what

government views are and be fair in conveying them.

Q: How can the media facilitate foreign policy-making?

PICKERING: I think the media does so in many ways.

But in order for them to convey fair and balanced

stories, it is important that they hear what we have to

say. We don’t expect the media to be totally uncritical;

that probably would mean they weren’t doing their job.

On the other hand, we expect there to be a reasonable,

factual basis for criticism that doesn’t pretend to ignore

the considerations that governments bring to bear in

developing policy.

In our government, we are fortunate that the President

and the Secretary of State, the chief articulators of U.S.

foreign policy, have frequent opportunities to convey

their views to the media. There is also a regular briefing

process involving spokesmen at the State Department,

the White House, and the Defense Department that

enables us to convey our views on particular subjects to

the media, so we in no way feel that our hands are tied.

In many ways, the media is a remarkably important

instrument. Not that the government manipulates the
media, but they perform an essential function by treating

as news what the government is saying about a particular

foreign policy issue.

Q: Why do you believe bipartisanship is essential in

U.S. foreign policy-making?

PICKERING: It is my belief that when we have a 

vital national interest at stake — one that might affect

American lives and war and peace, for example — that

the controversy ought to stop at the water’s edge. That

means that any President must be open, in his

formulation of foreign policy, to considering, on a

bipartisan basis, the views of others inside the country.

But once that is done, and the President has made his

best judgment about what is in the national interest on

an issue of vital importance to the nation, the debate

may be continued at home, but it should not be carried

abroad. We think the line is crossed when people travel

abroad and use their travel status as a platform for

trying to change decisions on policy made at home.

Overseas, foreigners should see an America united on

central propositions of our foreign policy and the critical

ways they are carried out. There must be a national

perspective, even if there remain some internal differences.

Q: What is the role of U.S. diplomatic missions abroad

in developing U.S. foreign policy?

PICKERING: U.S. diplomatic missions abroad have 

a serious and important role in the development of

foreign policy. This plays out in several ways. One is

in their ability to ask all of the questions that are critical

to American foreign policy-making and to provide not

only the best factual information, but also — and perhaps

more importantly — competent analyses of the factors

they believe are significant in motivating foreign countries

and impelling their host governments’ decisions.

American missions and ambassadors abroad also have a

primary responsibility for advising the Secretary and

the President about foreign policy, both as to when

initiatives should be undertaken and when changes

need to be made, as well as what should be, from their

vantage point, any new U.S. foreign policy in a

particular country or region within their purview. The

Assistant Secretaries of State in Washington are always

prepared to take their views into account, and need to

be the integrating point at which what comes in from

overseas, as well as what is developed in Washington,

are put together.

Q: What experiences have best prepared you for the

pivotal role that you play in U.S. foreign policy-making?

PICKERING: The Foreign Service is essentially a

learning career, and I have found this to be most

significant for me. If a Foreign Service officer doesn’t

learn a lot new every day, I don’t think he or she is

making the best use of his or her career.

The jobs that have been most beneficial to me have

been the numerous positions that I have held overseas

and the appointments to policy-making functions in

Washington. I have had a career in which each job, in

my view, has contributed to my being more effective in

the next job. So I think it is this combination of

constantly educating oneself and constantly knowing

that you have the responsibility as a decision-maker to

be on top of the issues to the greatest extent that you

can be, and to give the best advice that you can, that

has best prepared me for my current role.

For all policy-makers, the ability — as the Secretary

often says — to think “out of the box” is critical. To

try to get to new dimensions of a solution to a problem

is often one of the most interesting and important

challenges. We all learn, in our experience in foreign

affairs, how to weigh the various factors and decide

which ones to take into account.

When working in Washington, one of the things one

learns is to be alert to and aware of the domestic factors

that play a role in foreign policy-making. The

Secretary has primary responsibility for that, but she

expects her advisors to understand domestic factors,

which are less easily seen from a position abroad, and

know how to take them into account.

Those are the factors and influences that have been

most important to me in trying to provide the best

advice I can to the Secretary. _

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U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
9

The ability of the United States to shape international

events in ways that advance U.S. interests will in large

measure depend on whether the Department of State,

together with the Department of Defense and other

agencies, can respond creatively and cooperatively to

the joint challenges we face in a changing world

environment. The world we live in now is undergoing

a revolution in technology, communications, and

information flow; in business practices and

organizational structures; in ways nations relate to one

another and respond to their publics; in the ability of

multinational corporations and other non-governmental

organizations to influence international events; and in

how regional and international organizations respond

to conflict and humanitarian and natural disasters.

Our military has recognized that these factors

contribute to a “Revolution in Military Affairs” that

may well be changing the very nature and conduct of

war. They are seeking to adapt to the new realities both

within the individual service structure (Army, Navy, Air

Force, Marines) and in the “joint” world in which the

capabilities of each of the services must be brought to

bear to achieve U.S. security objectives. The new world

environment has demanded a new way of being a

soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine. It now often requires

an understanding of international politics, ethnic

rivalries, local politics in a foreign country, and how fair

elections can work — as much as how to command a

unit and take the next hill or piece of land.

In much the same way, the State Department is

experiencing a kind of “Revolution in Diplomatic

Affairs” in which the role of the diplomat in the 21st

century and the way we communicate, make decisions,

negotiate, and conduct public relations (which we call

public diplomacy) — even the very nature of the work

that we do — have radically changed. Diplomats today

are out in the field working with the Drug

Enforcement Agency (DEA) on anti-drug campaigns in

Latin America, flying in military helicopters over

Northern Iraq, assisting refugees and planning noncombatant evacuations in Africa, implementing

regional security cooperation efforts in Central Europe,

and planning the next phase of civilian operations in

Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor.

The Revolution in Military Affairs and the Revolution

in Diplomatic Affairs bring the work of the soldier and

the work of the diplomat to an intersection on an

almost daily basis worldwide. The international

environment and the challenges we face are such that

our policy-makers often must use the military and the

diplomatic instruments in concert rather than as

distinct, separate tools to achieve our goals.

In the Gulf War, our military planned and conducted

Desert Storm in concert with a coalition of partners

that required the work of diplomats to assemble and to

maintain. In Bosnia and Kosovo, and similar

peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations,

diplomacy must be employed to coordinate with allies

and partners on a host of issues ranging from managing

the electoral process to treatment of international war

criminals. Following Hurricane Mitch, when the U.S.

military responded to urgent calls for help from

UNITING THE TOOLS OF FORCE AND DIPLOMACY 

TO ENHANCE SECURITY

By Eric D. Newsom

The ability of the Departments of State and Defense “to operate ‘jointly’ will have a profound

impact on America’s leadership in the world and effectiveness in protecting our interests and those of

our allies and friends,” says Eric D. Newsom, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.

“We need to understand the nature of this mixed or joint instrument, and what it requires 

from the two or more sets of bureaucracies called upon to implement our national security strategy,”

he says. This article was adapted from a recent speech given by the assistant secretary.
beleaguered governments, diplomats negotiated terms

of entry and departure and helped facilitate the

military’s disaster relief work. In other world regions,

diplomats and soldiers sit together in the meeting halls

of NATO and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast

Asian Nations) Regional Forum.

Without naming it as such, we are evolving — in practical

ways every day — into a new kind of “interagency

jointness” in which State and Defense cooperate to achieve

the goals set out for us by the President and our policy

leaders. Secretary of State Albright and Secretary of

Defense Cohen exemplify this new trend. In a recent

op-ed piece in the Washington Post, they wrote: “As

Secretaries of Defense and State, we work daily to

combine the tools of force and diplomacy in order to

protect the security and advance the interests of the

American people.” They went on to say, “Our armed

forces must remain the best-led, best-trained and bestequipped in the world....But we also need first class

diplomacy. Because on many occasions we will rely on

diplomacy as our first line of defense — to cement

alliances, build coalitions, and find ways to protect our

interests without putting our fighting men and women

at risk.”

The U.S. military has been tasked in the President’s

National Security Strategy report to prepare itself to

respond across the full spectrum of military operations,

including: major theater warfare, peace enforcement,

hostile and non-hostile non-combatant evacuations,

humanitarian and disaster relief in hostile and nonhostile environments, and simply creating favorable and

interoperable relations with foreign militaries who can

support us in the military tasks we undertake. It is

clear that at every notch on this spectrum, diplomacy

will be an integral element of success — either to

reduce or eliminate the need for use of force, maintain

coalitions, or negotiate peace.

Thus, in any scenario for the future, our ability to

operate jointly will have a profound impact on

America’s leadership in the world and effectiveness in

protecting our interests and those of our allies and

friends. This will require us to cooperate not only at

the highest levels and on an ad hoc basis, but regularly

in the corridors of our bureaucracies where we plan and

conduct our nation’s business.

Success will require habits of cooperation that will

undergird success when our leaders employ an

instrument of policy that is at once military and

diplomatic. We need to understand the nature of this

mixed or joint instrument, and what it requires from

the two or more sets of bureaucracies called upon to

implement our national security strategy.

Since returning to the State Department in 1994, I

have seen change, in both State and Defense, in how

we think about and approach the marrying of force and

diplomacy in pursuit of our national objectives.

Together we have achieved fundamental strategic

objectives for the United States in the post-Cold War

world. Yet, we have a long way to go. Historical

differences, institutional cultures, and stereotypes have

fostered attitudes of territoriality and some distrust in

our dealings with each other’s organizations — or at

least very different conceptions of our respective roles

and missions.

In order for our leaders to integrate force and diplomacy

as a new sort of policy tool, the Defense and State

Departments will have to break out of old cultural and

institutional barriers to an unprecedented extent and find

new, creative ways of planning and doing business together.

This is a major goal of the Bureau of Political-Military

Affairs, and we are pursuing it vigorously. Some are

skeptical about this new approach and strongly urge us

to go slowly.

Frankly, I don’t think the United States can afford to

have us inch along in this process. Though we can

analyze trends and make predictions, we do not know

for certain when and where the next conflict will arise

that will require the combined use of force and

diplomacy. Though we managed in Bosnia and

Kosovo, ad hoc cooperation should evolve into better

institutional ties and arrangements that allow us to

know one another and respond rapidly when the mix of

force and diplomacy is required in an unpredictable

international environment.

For this reason, we are developing methods to promote

cooperation, coordination, cohesion, and consensus on

how best to use our diplomatic and military tools to

shape the international environment.

10
11

At its essence, this means planning together from the

top down, and then cooperating in implementation.

This will involve serious interaction between State and

Defense in developing State’s foreign policy goals as

well as its bureau and embassy program plans. It also

should involve serious interaction in the formulation of

goals and objectives in defense policy, and in such key

planning exercises as the Quadrennial Defense Review

and regional military “theater engagement plans.”

This is not to say that each agency should take over the

other’s work or dictate or meddle in each other’s business.

At a certain point, soldiers must be soldiers, and

diplomats must be diplomats. Rather, the goal is to

develop and implement plans and policies that are

informed by and in sync with one another in fulfillment

of the President’s National Security Strategy. We’re

trying to do that now in the Bureau of Political-Military

Affairs, working closely with the Office of the Secretary

of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other sectors

of the military establishment to achieve this goal.

Second, as we seek to shape the international environment

and respond to current events, we need to better

coordinate the work of all of the interagency players,

not only Defense and State. We are making progress in

this area. One of the highlights of my tenure as assistant

secretary for political-military affairs has been the work

that we have done to advance political and military

coordination on complex contingency operations (such

as Kosovo and our role in East Timor). An important

tool is Presidential Decision Directive-56 (PDD-56),

which provides mechanisms for interagency

cooperation in these circumstances. As the bombing

campaign in Kosovo wore on, 30 military and civilian

officers from 18 agencies, bureaus, and offices

collaborated over several intense weeks of work to

produce a 46-page “mission analysis.” This ultimately

shaped the UN Mission in Kosovo and KFOR (Kosovo

Peacekeeping Force) operations and helped synchronize

international efforts after the bombing stopped.

Despite initial skepticism on the part of some, this

process was shown to work better than even the

optimists had predicted.

Now we are seeking clearer, more effective mechanisms

to make the PDD-56 process work better. A new

contingency planning Interagency Working Group will

greatly advance this effort.

This new way of cooperating is a challenge for both

military and civilians. Every U.S. military officer has

studied the great Prussian military thinker Karl von

Clausewitz and understands that military operations

and objectives are always subordinate to strategic

political and diplomatic goals. But that understanding

has not necessarily led to the conclusion that civilians

should sit at the military planning table. Today’s

international environment continues to call for limited,

precise, often untraditional uses of military power in

the pursuit of specific — but sometimes rapidly

changing — political objectives. This will require a

more open approach to planning interlinked military

and political objectives.

The State Department also will have to alter its traditional

conceptions. We are only beginning to understand

what it means when we say that our work does not end

when we negotiate an agreement. The abstractions of a

settlement must be made operational. We need to

sweat the kind of details we may normally ignore. We

must be willing to deal with matters that were not

previously part of the diplomatic realm: how to create

police forces, how to rebuild defunct judicial systems,

how to reestablish a functioning currency, how to make

an uncooperative host nation military accept civilian

authority and stop massacring opponents, and how to

perform a host of other, unusually uncongenial, tasks.

Joint planning will never be easy, even in the best of all

possible worlds. During the planning for the period

after the bombing campaign in Kosovo, strong

differences surfaced between Defense and State. At

times, parts of the Defense Department buttoned up

and went silent whenever State officials showed up. It

took some battering on the gates to get insights into

military planning and thinking. Both departments

fought hard about issues like policing, military support

to civil administration, and so on. To the credit of

both, we did not paper over our disagreements. There

were vigorous debates.

But, before anyone was deployed in support of the

post-bombing effort, we came to closure on an agreed

strategy and plan. Great and contentious issues were

argued and settled before, not after, mission start-up,

providing those who implemented the plan with clarity

of purpose and division of labor. I contend that the

whole process was of great value, and a precedent for
the future, even if subsequent events in Kosovo did not

go according to plan. As the late president General

Dwight Eisenhower once said, “A plan is worthless, but

planning is everything.”

In addition to State-Defense planning, our

international environment also requires coordination

with the U.S. Agency for International Development,

which is often called upon to organize the response to

humanitarian crises throughout the world, drawing on

U.S. military resources. These humanitarian efforts

sometimes take place in the midst of a peacekeeping or

peace enforcement operation, making coordination

among the various components absolutely imperative.

Not every issue or challenge requiring close

coordination is a complex contingency operation or a

major humanitarian effort. The U.S. effort to shape

the international environment requires objectives that

are in sync and actions that are well coordinated. To

facilitate this daily coordination at the working levels,

we might do well to develop a “Country Team”

approach in Washington comparable to the one that

works so well at our embassies abroad. To some extent,

we do this in the Interagency Working Group process.

But this process is often issue specific rather than

ongoing; we need further opportunities for a freeflowing exchange of ideas and information.

As a means to overcome institutional barriers and

stereotypes, I recommend various measures: We need to

expand the existing program of exchanging officers

between the Defense and State Departments both in

Washington and in the field. We should look for more

opportunities for Foreign Service Officers to serve on

senior military staffs, and at the same time, we should

offer opportunities for senior military officers to hold

policy-level positions in the State Department. I would

like to see military officers serving at the Deputy

Assistant Secretary level in State, and State officers

serving in the Defense Department in the same

capacity, as in the past.

In addition, we need to look at opportunities for joint

training. We should increase the number of State

Department officers who attend service schools. And I

would like to see our own National Foreign Affairs

Training Center open its doors wider to military

colleagues as we study regional policies, negotiating,

and other foreign service professional skills and

political-military issues.

Finally, there is a compelling reason for those of us in

the State-Defense security community to cooperate

from the top down and the bottom up: our

responsibility to the men and women in the military

and in the Foreign Service who serve on the front lines

of defense for the United States in some of the most

difficult places in the world. When we conduct our

business in Washington at the rarefied levels of

planning and interagency discussion, it is easy to forget

that our success or failure to act effectively together can

have serious consequences for the actual people called

upon to implement our decisions and directives. It

pains me every time I hear our military in the field say

they do not understand what our policies are and how

they are supposed to be advancing them. We need to

make sure that they go out with the clearest goals and

objectives, the best-crafted plans, and the highest

quality equipment we can get for them. In today’s

world, that requires “joint” cooperation by military and

civilian. We are committed to this effort.

That is why my goal for the Political-Military Bureau at

State is to increase the level and depth of understanding

between State and Defense of each other’s missions and

to strengthen our planning and cooperative efforts.

Recently, I wrote a memo to Secretary Albright offering

this as the bureau’s primary mission for the year 2000.

I know she shares this goal and is committed to making

it happen. _

12

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
The United States was a leader in the effort to create

the United Nations and has played a major role in the

institution since its founding. The UN Charter was

drawn up in San Francisco in 1945, and the UN has

had its headquarters in New York City for more than

50 years on land donated to the UN by the Rockefeller

family. U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is

credited with coining the term “United Nations.”

As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently

remarked, “The dream that brought the UN together is

as alive today as it has ever been.” The central purposes

for which the UN was established — to maintain

international peace and security; to foster cooperation

in solving international economic, social, cultural, and

humanitarian problems; to promote respect for human

rights and fundamental freedoms; to develop friendly

relations among nations; and to be a center for

harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining common

goals — are as important today as they were in the

closing days of World War II.

Global interdependence is now a well-established fact

of life. Barriers between nations and people are being

torn down; trade, technology, people, and ideas cross

borders in all regions of the world. Yet as these contacts

increase, we are all more vulnerable to each other’s

problems. Every day brings potential threats to peace

and security, including armed conflict, terrorism, drug

trafficking, economic turmoil, disease, weapons of mass

destruction, hunger, humanitarian catastrophes, abuses

of human rights, and contamination of the natural

environment. No nation, powerful or otherwise, can

solve these problems alone — or afford to ignore them.

The UN serves as an effective, though at times imperfect,

means of developing consensus and fostering collaboration.

If there were no UN, we would find it considerably more

difficult to resolve conflicts peacefully and to build

international support for a wide range of important U.S.

foreign policy objectives. The UN provides an institutional

structure for countries to exchange their views, cooperate

on complex tasks, and set standards that reflect common

values.

Here are just a few examples of why the work of the

UN and other international organizations is important

to U.S. foreign policy:

— Peace and Stability: The U.S. — which provides the

most peacekeeping funds and the most civilian police,

which supports NATO back-up of UN operations, and

which is a permanent member of the UN Security

Council — plays a leading role in UN efforts to maintain

peace, promote democracy, and promote human rights

around the world.

— International Security: The U.S. works with other

countries through the UN to address threats such as

terrorism, nuclear proliferation, narcotics trafficking,

and crime.

— Health and Environmental Concerns: The work of

the World Health Organization, Joint UN Program on

HIV/AIDS, UN Environment Program, and other

organizations helps protect people from disease,

pollution, global climate change, and other threats.

— Humanitarian Assistance: The Office of the UN

High Commissioner for Refugees, Food and Agriculture

Organization, World Food Program, and UN Children’s

13

THE UNITED NATIONS: 

AN ARENA FOR INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP

By David Welch

The United Nations is “an indispensable institution” in which the United States 

“will continue to play a vital and active role,” says Assistant Secretary of State for International

Organization Affairs David Welch. “As a founder, host, and major supporter of the UN, 

we will continue to work to strengthen the organization and to build international support 

for needed reforms,” he says.
Fund (UNICEF) are among the UN agencies at the

core of the international system for helping people

endangered by conflict, natural disasters, hunger, and

other threats throughout the world. Of all member

states, U.S. contributions to these humanitarian efforts

are by far the largest.

— Transportation Safety: Safety and security standards

for air and sea transportation are enforced by the

International Civil Aviation Organization and the

International Maritime Organization.

The General Assembly (currently with 189 member

states) and the Security Council of the United Nations

are the most important international bodies in the

world. In no other forum do nations assemble in such

quantity and diversity to express their positions and

coordinate their efforts.

The U.S. has its most senior diplomat in the field at the

UN, with both cabinet rank and substantial

responsibility for U.S. foreign policy. Many permanent

representatives of member states have served as foreign

ministers or other top-level officials of their countries.

So in the UN, we are able to transact important

international business at the decision-making level.

The U.S. has long attached great value to its

participation in the UN. It would be difficult to find a

more distinguished group of Americans than those who

have served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the

UN. Among them are Edward Stettinius, Henry Cabot

Lodge, Adlai Stevenson, Arthur Goldberg, George

Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Andrew Young, Jeane

Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Bill Richardson, and

current Permanent Representative Richard C.

Holbrooke.

In Washington, D.C., my bureau, the Bureau of

International Organization Affairs in the Department

of State, is the focal point for the development and

implementation of U.S. policy in the United Nations,

the specialized UN agencies, and various other

international organizations. The U.S. Mission to the

United Nations, located across the street from UN

Headquarters in New York, keeps the Department of

State informed of events at the UN and makes

recommendations as to what course of action the U.S.

should pursue. Information about topics under

consideration at the UN is frequently relayed to U.S.

embassies throughout the world.

Under the U.S. Constitution, responsibility for the

conduct of our foreign affairs is divided among the

branches of the federal government. This “separation of

powers” concept is fundamental to our democratic

system. The Department of State is part of the Executive

Branch, and we constantly work with the Legislative

Branch — the U.S. Congress — on the best ways to carry

out U.S. foreign policy in international organizations.

The benefits of active U.S. participation and leadership

in the UN were clearly in evidence during the Persian

Gulf crisis. In 1991, the Security Council proved

crucial in developing a broad coalition of large and small

nations that acted together in opposition to Saddam

Hussein’s unprovoked aggression against Kuwait.

More recently, when the U.S. held the rotating

presidency of the Security Council in January 2000,

Ambassador Holbrooke declared it “The Month of

Africa.” He introduced far-reaching initiatives calling

on the international community to address longstanding problems of the continent, including the

spread of HIV/AIDS, violent ethnic and political

conflicts, refugees, hunger, poverty, human rights

violations, lack of educational opportunity, and

economic marginalization. Top U.S. political leaders,

such as the Vice President, the Secretary of State, and

the chair and members of the U.S. Senate Foreign

Relations Committee participated in Security Council

deliberations during the month. The high-level

government interest was mirrored in the U.S. private

sector and media.

Americans also hold many leadership positions in the

UN itself and in its specialized agencies. These

currently include the Under Secretary General for

Management and the Executive Directors of two

important humanitarian agencies, the World Food

Program and UNICEF. We believe it is in our best

interests to have well-qualified American citizens serve

the UN at all levels, and to be represented on

committees that deal with issues of international

importance.

Clearly, then, the U.S. government views the UN as an

indispensable institution. And American citizens,

14
representing a wide range of political views, generally

support our leadership role in the UN. They recognize

that the UN can be central in resolving major international

crises and building a more stable world. Some Americans

have occasionally expressed fears that the UN may become

a “world government” and threaten U.S. sovereignty.

These apprehensions are misguided. The UN is a

cooperative assembly of sovereign states; it does not and

cannot exercise sovereignty over any member state.

Leadership of an institution is demonstrated, in part,

by the commitment of financial resources. The U.S. is

by far the largest contributor to the UN system, with

current annual contributions of well over $2 billion.

This includes assessed contributions to the regular UN

budget and peacekeeping operations and to the many

important UN specialized and affiliated agencies, such

as the Food and Agriculture Organization, World

Health Organization, International Labor Organization,

and International Atomic Energy Agency. The U.S.

also provides more than $1 billion annually in

voluntary contributions to UN programs in such areas

as emergency relief, democracy and human rights, and

environmental protection.

Another responsibility of leadership is to ensure that an

institution is operated in an efficient, open, and

accountable manner. Under the Clinton Administration,

the U.S. has led an effort to improve the management

and stabilize the finances of the United Nations and its

agencies. The U.S. supports the initiatives of the

Secretary General to bring about a more transparent,

responsive, and consultative approach to management.

Recent accomplishments in UN reform include:

— A more disciplined budgeting process, in place of

continual growth of the UN budget.

— Establishment of an independent internal inspector

general’s office, to discover and remedy shortcomings in

the administration of UN programs.

— Improvements in the planning and management of

peacekeeping operations.

— Significant reductions in unneeded staff positions

and in the number of conferences and meetings.

A well-staffed and well-managed UN enables the

organization to meet its global challenges more efficiently.

These improvements in management, and others that

are ongoing, merit the support of all member states.

In late 1999, the U.S. Congress passed, and President

Clinton signed into law, legislation designed to enable

the U.S. to make overdue payments to the UN and

other international organizations. The full amount of

this funding is $926 million, which is in addition to

our annual assessed and voluntary contributions. In

order for the $926 million to be fully paid out,

Congress stipulated that certain reform conditions

must be met. This has raised some questions and

concerns, but the fact is that the U.S. Congress, the

elected representatives of the American people, controls

the federal budget. The Congress can and does attach

conditions to the manner in which U.S. taxpayers’

money is spent for domestic programs and for a variety

of international activities, including those of the UN.

One of the most important steps that must be taken,

we believe, is a revision in the UN scale of assessments;

that is, the contributions from member states to the

UN budget. These are based on each country’s Gross

National Product (GNP) as a share of the world’s GNP.

Reform of the scale of assessments ceiling has not taken

place since 1972 and is now long overdue. Since the

last adjustment, 55 new member states have joined the

UN. There have been significant shifts in members’

ability to pay; many countries with fast-growing

economies are now capable of increasing their

contributions. We need a new scale that reflects today’s

economic and political realities, a scale in which the

cost of supporting the UN is shared somewhat more

broadly in the international community.

The United States will continue to play a vital and

active role in the United Nations. As a founder, host,

and major supporter of the UN, we will continue to

work to strengthen the organization and to build

international support for needed reforms. Our active

participation in the UN reflects our strong

commitment to an institution that, in the words of

Secretary Albright, “brings nations closer together

around basic principles of democracy, liberty, and law

that will lift the lives of people everywhere.” _

15

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
16

Congress plays a crucial role in the formulation of U.S.

foreign policy. While the President by necessity takes

the lead, the President and the Congress under our

Constitution are co-equal branches of government, and

the support of Congress on foreign policy is often

essential to ensuring that a policy will succeed. If, by

contrast, the Congress does not support a President’s

policy, or even is lukewarm in its support, it undercuts

the policy and limits its success.

The allocation of foreign policy powers is only vaguely

sketched in our Constitution. The Senate has the

power to approve all treaties negotiated by the President,

and must confirm ambassadors and other senior foreign

policy officials. Congress retains control over foreign

policy funding, and, of course, the power to raise and

equip the military, and the power to declare war.

But these formal powers serve primarily as a starting

point for Congress’s participation. Because of the

significance of foreign policy decisions, which often

involve the potential for sending U.S. troops into

combat, Congress over the years has carved out a more

informal “oversight” role, part of the “checks and

balances” that are central to the “shared power” among

the three branches in our constitutional system.

Besides being largely informal, congressional power in

foreign policy is not always exercised with the same

degree of intensity. At times of relative peace on the

world scene, such as the present, Congress’s involvement

can often be modest. At other times, such as during

the Persian Gulf war, or during the conflicts in Central

America during the 1980s, Congress is likely to get

more actively involved, especially if there is significant

disagreement with the President over policy. 

Congress’s role in approving or disapproving U.S.

involvement in overseas military conflicts is the most

significant issue at stake when considering the Congress’s

foreign policy powers. That is as it should be. The

decision to send U.S. troops into harm’s way should

never be made by the President alone; the views of the

American people should be expressed through their

elected representatives in Congress.

Indeed, I believe the Constitution demands it. In my

view, the framers of our Constitution intended that

Congress authorize any use of force by the United States,

with certain limited exceptions.

Congress does not always want to have the responsibility

for such momentous decisions, however, and Presidents

in the modern era have contended that their power as

“Commander in Chief” vested them with unfettered

power to take the country to war. Thus did President

Truman take the country to war in Korea in 1950.

(Although Congress did not formally declare war in the

case of Vietnam, arguably it authorized it in the Gulf of

Tonkin resolution).

The recent debate about the scope of the war power has

yielded perpetual disagreement between the two branches.

In 1973, Congress tried to clarify its role by approving,

over President Richard Nixon’s veto, the War Powers

Resolution, which established a framework for

authorizing uses of force, but in any event demanded

that a use of force end after 60 days unless Congress

A DEMOCRATIC VIEWPOINT: 

CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY

By Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Presidents realize the importance of having Congress as a partner in the conduct of foreign policy, 

says Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., a Democrat from Delaware. “With congressional support, 

they know that they will be more confident and effective and that the American people will be 

behind them,” he says.

_ COMMENTARY
had affirmatively authorized it. But no President since

has recognized the authority of this resolution, arguing

that it is an unconstitutional limitation on the President’s

power as commander in chief. Efforts to modify the

resolution to meet these and other concerns have not

borne fruit.

As a result of Congressional timidity, and Presidential

assertiveness, in recent years Presidents have intervened

overseas without an express authorization from Congress.

The Persian Gulf war in 1991 was a rare example of

Congress authorizing a military operation before it

occurred, and only because I and other members of

Congress strongly urged a reluctant President Bush to

put the matter to a vote. (Bush’s reluctance was borne

out when the authorization carried by only a 52-47

vote margin in the Senate.)

More typical were Congress’s deliberations on sending

U.S. troops to Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In all those

cases, one or both houses adopted resolutions giving

rhetorical support to the U.S. troops and their mission,

but Congress did not, in a formal legal sense, authorize

the deployment.

Congress’s “power of the purse” is a more reliable means

of wielding foreign policy power. Every dollar spent by

the Executive Branch must be appropriated by Congress,

and it is common practice to use these spending bills to

shape policy. Sometimes the process is formal and direct:

Congress will stipulate that “no funds shall be used” to

carry out a policy or activity that it opposes. On the

positive side, it will “earmark” money for a certain

program, to make sure the Executive Branch agency

carries out its wishes. More often, Congress expresses

its views less formally or directly. For example, members

of Congress may introduce a bill to cut off funds for a

foreign policy activity — Bosnia was an example — even

though they know it will never be passed into law. Their

point is: show the President that there is disagreement

with the policy and perhaps persuade him to abandon

the course of action.

Sanctions are a similar tool to express displeasure with a

foreign policy; Congress will enact legislation restricting

trade or other economic relations with a country whose

policies it disagrees with. For example, Congress

imposed sanctions on India and Pakistan because of

their nuclear tests, and on numerous countries because

of their involvement in drug trafficking. However, the

same legislation will often give the President authority

to lift the sanctions if he believes it to be in the national

interest — which he usually does.

As any visitor to Congress has experienced, another

visible means Congress uses to exercise its foreign policy

power is through oversight hearings at which officials from

the Executive Branch are called before a Congressional

committee to explain a policy in a particular area. This

is a particularly useful device when Congress has no

other appropriate means of influencing policy. By

exposing a policy to public scrutiny and debate, hearings

can reveal weaknesses in policy, as well as a lack of

public support.

The most famous foreign policy hearings in recent

memory were the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

hearings on Vietnam three decades ago. They were

chaired by Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas

and televised nationally. By exposing to millions of

viewers the contradictions and difficulties of the U.S.

effort in Vietnam, the Fulbright hearings were credited

with helping to build public opinion against the war.

In similar fashion, the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987

showed the American people the contradictions in the

Reagan Administration’s policy of secretly selling arms

to Iran — hardly a government friendly to the United

States — in order to raise money for the rebels fighting

the Communist government in Nicaragua. In the light

of day, the policy was insupportable.

In my own experience as a Senator involved with U.S.

foreign policy for most of my 28 years in the Senate, the

most useful means of influencing U.S. foreign policy is

the most informal method — by direct and private

discussions with the Secretary of State, the National

Security Adviser, and even the President. The President

knows he needs to seek support from Congress on any

major foreign policy objective, especially if it is

controversial. Presidents and their top aides in these

instances reach out to senior members of the House

and Senate to explain the policy and ask for support. It

is in these informal discussions that Congress, through

its individual members, probably has the most impact.

During last year’s NATO intervention in Kosovo, for

example, I had almost daily private consultations with

key members of the administration. This allowed me

17
18

not only to follow the progress of the war closely, but

also to critique the policy and suggest alternative courses

of action.

Unlike in parliamentary systems, where the executive

has almost unchallenged authority on overseas matters,

the American constitutional system allows for a

significant Congressional role in foreign policy. That

role is not exercised through any one means, and the

degree of Congressional involvement varies from time 

to time, depending on how contentious a policy has

become. Despite the ambiguities and the uncertainties

about Congress’s role, even Presidents realize the

importance of having Congress as a partner in the

conduct of foreign policy. With Congressional

support, they know they that will be more confident

and effective and that the American people will be

behind them. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
19

It has been said that the United States Constitution is

“an invitation to struggle” among the three branches of

government — the executive, the legislative, and the

judiciary. This has certainly been the case in national

security policy where the President and Congress have

overlapping roles.

The Constitution declares the President to be the

commander in chief and the nation’s chief diplomat. In

these capacities, he is responsible for the military defense

of our national interests, including the deployment of

U.S. military forces, and diplomacy, including the

negotiation of treaties. 

But the Constitution also grants Congress very significant

national security powers. The Senate is responsible for

the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of

individuals nominated by the President to fill key posts

in his administration. Congress also is granted significant

“powers of the purse.” By using its authorities over the

federal budget, Congress can, and often does, check

and balance presidential initiatives.

These overlapping powers make it important for the

President to respect the views of Congress and to

robustly engage often varied views on foreign policy

that exist in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

This is, of course, a more challenging undertaking

when the President and the majority in one or both

congressional chambers are of different parties — but

such situations make engagement all the more

imperative. The success or failure of our international

policies depends upon the leadership of the President,

namely whether or not he is concerned more with

politics than with policy.

The recent extension of membership in the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization to Poland, the Czech

Republic, and Hungary is perhaps the best example of

how a President should lead and engage the Congress

on matters concerning major international treaties. 

NATO enlargement was first promoted by the Republicanled Congress, which facilitated what some experts have

called unprecedented dialogue and information-sharing

between the two branches. That engagement occurred

not only through formal hearings of the Foreign

Relations, Armed Services, Appropriations, and Budget

Committees, but also through countless informal

meetings and conversations between Members of

Congress and senior administration officials in the course

of the two years leading up to the April 1999 vote.

Moreover, both the Senate and the President took

institutional steps to deepen their engagement on NATO

enlargement. In April 1997 the Senate leadership

established the Senate NATO Observer Group to help

ensure that the chamber was fully abreast of and involved

in key decisions before the NATO alliance. Foremost

on its agenda was NATO enlargement. On this issue,

the NATO Observer Group met some 17 times, not

only with administration officials, but also with NATO’s

Secretary General and numerous other European officials.

The administration established its own special office,

the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office, led by a

special adviser to the President. His mandate was to

promote the cause of enlargement both in Congress

and among the American people. At the recommendation

of the Enlargement Ratification Office, the President

included representatives of the Senate NATO Observer

A REPUBLICAN VIEWPOINT: 

CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY

By Senator Gordon H. Smith

“Effective foreign policy requires a genuine and continuous bipartisan engagement between 

the President and Congress,” says Senator Gordon H. Smith, a Republican from Oregon. 

“Without such engagement,” he says, “the content of U.S. policy will be characterized 

increasingly by ambiguity and inconsistency.”
20

Group in his delegations to the 1997 and 1999 NATO

summits.

The Senate’s historic April 30, 1999 vote (80-19) ratifying

the first round of NATO enlargement was a model of

how a President and Congress should work together on

matters of foreign policy. Policy took precedence over

politics, and the final outcome was a success because of it.

In contrast, the Senate’s rejection of the CTBT

(Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) highlighted the risks

a President takes when he loses sight of Congress’s

responsibility and authority under the Constitution

and addresses key matters through the lens of politics

rather than policy.

The Clinton Administration did not lead the effort on

CTBT in the same way it did during the NATO

enlargement debate. It did not take opportunities to

prepare for the debate or engage Congress on CTBT

with the same energy and commitment it had dedicated

to NATO enlargement, leaving Congress to fill the

vacuum created by a breakdown of executive leadership

on the issue. Some Congressional leaders had been

critical of the CTBT’s enforcement and verification

provisions and its potential impact upon our nuclear

arsenal. Knowing of these concerns, the President should

have been more engaged and resolved the concerns of

Republican senators or, at a minimum, restrained

Democratic senators from baiting and inciting the

Republican leadership.

Unfortunately, the issue of an important treaty fell victim

to runaway politics, personal animus, and immovable

ideologues in the Senate and the White House. The

worldwide fallout from the failure of CTBT cast

unnecessary doubt on the United States, its government,

and especially its Congress, showing that foreign policymaking is one of the most important duties of the

Congress, having some of the most far-reaching

implications. 

The Clinton Administration’s handling of, and the

Congressional response to, the CTBT ratification effort

was a disappointment in two regards. First, the Treaty

would have helped curb the risks posed by nuclear

weapons and preserved for the United States the moral

standing to resist the proliferation of such weaponry.

Second, the administration’s approach to the Senate’s

CTBT reservations regarding verification and enforcement

defied the tradition of bipartisanship with which most

Congressmen and Presidents have approached key

issues of foreign policy.

This Treaty’s defeat not only reminds us of Congress’s

powerful constitutional authorities in foreign policy, it

also underscores an important development in the

making of U.S. foreign policy: the increasingly important

role of Congress. Today, Congress is more vigorously

exercising its prerogatives and promoting its perspectives

on issues of national security, often in direct challenge

to the President. Indeed, it was Congress that pressed

successfully against the President’s initial hesitancy on

NATO enlargement and national missile defense. It

successfully forced the President to adjust his approach

to the Chemical Weapons Convention. It has

vociferously challenged presidential initiatives, such as

the NATO missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

The partisanship demonstrated during the CTBT debate

must not be allowed to emerge as a trend in the making

of U.S. foreign policy. Such a development would make

it more difficult to work with allies and to deter our

enemies abroad. We would be less capable of marshaling

our national strengths to promote and protect our values

and interests. America’s ability to lead with initiative in

world affairs would be hampered by domestic political

gridlock. It would be more difficult for the President and

Congress to live up to their shared responsibilities of

promoting and protecting our national interests and values.

For these reasons, the partisan tremors that permeated

the President’s handling of the CTBT should leave us

remembering the responsibilities and the powers that

the Constitution provides to the President and the

Congress. These powers were intended to foster a

relationship out of which would emerge debated and

dissected policies and processes that reflect the good of

our government, not the bad. 

Effective foreign policy requires a genuine and

continuous bipartisan engagement between the

President and Congress. Without such engagement,

the content of U.S. policy will be characterized

increasingly by ambiguity and inconsistency. 

Fostering a foreign policy consensus between Congress

and the President is, for constitutional reasons
21

primarily, the responsibility of the White House. It is

the President’s role as commander in chief and chief

diplomat that makes him the leader of our foreign policy. 

Fostering engagement, however, between the White

House and Congress on matters of foreign policy is also

the responsibility of Members of the Senate and the

House of Representatives. Congress can and should

undertake initiatives to foster dialogue, informationsharing, and engagement with the President and his

cabinet on key matters of national concern, such as

seen with NATO enlargement. The failure of CTBT

has shown that such bipartisanship must not be taken

for granted. As these episodes demonstrate, the success

of American foreign policy depends upon the successful

engagement of the President and the Congress in their

constitutional duties. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
22

The key challenge for the United States in foreign

economic policy is to use America’s great influence to

maintain an open and prosperous global economy and

deepen and extend the benefits of globalization.

Inherent in this challenge is also the opportunity to

have a great impact on America’s capacity to meet its

political, strategic, and humanitarian foreign policy

goals. The evolution of the global economy will affect

our national security, the spread of democracy and

human rights, the environment, terrorism, illegal drug

trade, organized crime, health and disease, population

pressures, and most other major international challenges. 

American strategic interests are now tightly intertwined

with U.S. economic interests. Economic issues greatly

affect our relationships with the other great powers:

Europe, Japan, China, and Russia. They proliferate on

the U.S. foreign policy agenda, from NAFTA (North

American Free Trade Agreement) and fast track

legislation to the Asian financial crisis and Chinese

entrance into the WTO (World Trade Organization).

U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Libya

have been a source of major contention with some of

our closest allies. There are few foreign policy threats

on the horizon as great as a world financial meltdown.

Globalization is the preeminent international economic

phenomenon of our time. American prosperity is

inextricably linked to global prosperity. The volume

and pace of international trade and investment are

increasing tremendously. Communications and

information technologies are transforming the way the

world does business, and connecting people and firms

as never before. The integration of the production and

marketing of goods and services across international

borders is changing the structure of the private sector.

New international mergers, networks, and alliances are

emerging daily.

Globalization brings with it both benefits and costs,

opportunities and challenges. The overall economic

impact of globalization has been positive, producing

gains in productivity, efficiency, and growth.

Globalization has played a major role in the remarkable

economic expansion our country has enjoyed over the

past nine years, and has contributed to rapid economic

growth in parts of Asia, Europe, and Latin America. It

holds the promise of bringing great benefits to people

all around the globe. 

Yet globalization also spawns many problems. The

increased competition of globalization means that some

people, and some countries, lag behind. Globalization

can lead to reduced protection for workers and the

environment when companies move their operations to

jurisdictions with weaker labor and environmental

standards. Global capital markets can be dangerously

volatile. Political authority and international

institutions sometimes struggle to keep up with the

fast-paced economic trends. Developing nations are

frustrated that they do not participate more fully in

international economic decision-making and the

prosperity enjoyed by other parts of the world.

Despite these problems created by globalization, we

cannot, and should not, try to turn it back. The trend

toward increasing integration among the economies of

the world will likely continue. 

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ISSUES 

AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

By the Honorable Lee H. Hamilton

“The United States needs a coherent and unified policy-making apparatus to promote the kind of

multifaceted foreign economic policy that today’s complex international environment demands,” says 

Lee Hamilton, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former 

member of the U.S. House of Representatives. “We must ensure that our overall national interests are

considered first and foremost in the development of our policy,” he says.
The United States has a historic opportunity to lead the

charge to meet the challenges of globalization and thereby

help create a more prosperous, peaceful, and democratic

world. How should we use our political and economic

power to spread the benefits of the global economy and

advance many of our other foreign policy goals?

First, we should continue to set an example of prosperity

by maintaining a strong domestic economy. The success

of our economy encourages other countries to pursue

liberalization, free trade, and other policies conducive to

growth. The American public and private sectors can

spur technological innovation, promote exports, and

help maintain our position as a leader in science and

information technology by investing heavily in research

and development. Our lead in these industries of the

future represents one of our greatest foreign policy assets.

Second, we should vigorously promote free markets and

open trade, while developing more effective international

economic institutions. Reductions in barriers to trade

promote growth, advance the integration of national

economies, and foster international political cooperation.

Yet free trade also creates problems, which effective

international institutions can help resolve. We should

strengthen the World Trade Organization by making it

more accountable, transparent, and inclusive of a wide

range of economic concerns. We should also build a

stronger international financial architecture able to

prevent crises and respond to them.

Third, we should invest in sustainable development,

education, and promoting the rule of law in poorer

countries and in countries making a transition to free

markets and democracy. It is important that

globalization not be seen by many as a phenomenon

imposed by economic elites on the rest of the world’s

population without offering any protection or

assistance to them. To help spread globalization’s

benefits, we should provide economic assistance and

debt relief to those countries committed to responsible

economic policies, support exchange programs that

bring foreign students and future leaders to the United

States and send Americans to other countries, and help

train foreign judges, lawyers, and leaders of civil society

so that the rule of law and accountable government are

strengthened. All of these activities promote our

foreign policy goals of advancing prosperity, democracy,

and international economic and political cooperation.

One region of the world where U.S. economic policy

can have a potentially broader foreign policy impact is

Africa. Poverty and underdevelopment are certainly

not the only problems facing that continent. But

economic growth is essential to boosting African living

standards and successfully confronting Africa’s political,

security, and health challenges over the long term.

Currently, much of Africa lacks the modern

infrastructure and resources necessary to take advantage

of globalization. The United States can help remedy

these deficiencies by providing well-targeted foreign

aid, debt relief, technical assistance, loans, and a more

open market for African goods. American companies

could reap substantial profits from investments in the

development of modern communications and

transportation systems in Africa if the right political

climate and backing were in place. Public and private

sector partnerships offer the best hope for improving

the living standards of Africans and advancing U.S.

political, security, and economic interests in Africa.

The international political and economic environment

has changed during the past several decades, and the

evolution of the U.S. foreign policy-making process has

been influenced by that transition.

When I first entered Congress 35 years ago, U.S.

foreign policy was dominated by the single goal of

defeating the communist threat. Policy was made by a

small circle of people, including the President, the

Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security

Advisor, and a few others. International economic

issues were considered only peripherally, or as a

subordinate element of broader geopolitical concerns.

Today, U.S. foreign policy deals with a wide array of

issues, from terrorism and illegal drugs to the environment

and sustainable development. Congress is much more

involved in the policy process. And economics have

become more central to our foreign policy than ever before. 

The process of making foreign economic policy is more

diffuse today. The number of actors in the policy process

has grown tremendously and now includes many

executive branch agencies and congressional committees,

as well as trade groups, non-profit organizations,

international organizations, and universities. In the

executive branch, the locus of government activity on

23
24

foreign economic policy can shift among the Departments

of State, Treasury, Commerce, Energy, and Agriculture,

and the U.S. Trade Representative, to name just a few

of the agencies involved. On IMF (International

Monetary Fund) funding and the Asian financial crisis,

for instance, Treasury has played the leading role.

In Congress, dozens of committees and ad hoc caucuses

now influence the development of foreign economic

policy. The president can no longer consult with only the

leadership in Congress and be assured of congressional

support for a presidential initiative. On the issue of

economic sanctions against India and Pakistan, for

instance, the India Caucus and members of Congress

with strong agriculture interests in their districts have

exerted great influence. 

Many special interest groups, particularly business and

labor organizations, have a substantial impact on U.S.

policy. On fast track, permanent normal trade relations

with China, and many other issues, advocacy groups

have taken center stage. They have a greater impact

today because more Americans recognize that they are

affected by foreign economic policy. Exports — from

aviation to information technology to entertainment —

are a growing sector of the economy. The livelihood of

American businesses and workers is heavily shaped by

trade agreements and economic developments around

the world.

The United States needs a coherent and unified policymaking apparatus to promote the kind of multifaceted

foreign economic policy that today’s complex

international environment demands. It is appropriate

for many agencies and congressional committees to be

involved in foreign economic policy on issues that

clearly affect their interests. But we must ensure that

our overall national interests are considered first and

foremost in the development of our policy. The State

Department and the main foreign policy congressional

committees should maintain a central role in these areas

of policy-making.

The growing importance of economic issues in foreign

policy offers new opportunities to the State

Department. While the United States will continue to

rely on State’s traditional skills of overseas political and

economic reporting and diplomatic negotiation, the

United States also will benefit from proficiency in

linking America’s broad political and security interests

to the trends and challenges of globalization. As many

people inside and outside the U.S. government have

already come to recognize, the American national

interests in international politics, economics, and

security simply cannot be properly understood or dealt

with in isolation.

I am confident that the American people and U.S.

policy-makers will continue to support a foreign policy

that promotes free trade and growth, advances

international economic integration, and encourages the

spread of democracy and the rule of law. Such a

foreign policy bolsters our own economic health and

contributes to the making of a more peaceful and

prosperous world. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
25

When people think of foreign policy-making in the

United States, they usually think of the president.

After all, presidents have been the chief architects and

implementers of American foreign policy since the

beginning of the republic. The framers of the U.S.

Constitution were mindful of the advantages that the

presidency brought to this endeavor: a hierarchical

institution with a single head, the one institution that

would be in continuous tenure, and the one that could

act with the greatest “energy, dispatch, and responsibility,”

to quote James Wilson, one of the delegates at the

Constitutional Convention.

But the framers also were fearful of arbitrary and

irresponsible actions by a chief executive, such as the

ones they attributed to King George III and cited as a

cause of the American Revolution. To reduce the

likelihood that a president might engage in activities

that would be harmful to the national interest, the

Constitution imposed checks on a range of executive

powers, particularly those of war and peace. Treaties

were subject to Senate ratification by a two-thirds vote,

while executive appointments, including those of

ambassadors, required concurrence by a majority of the

Senate. Also vested in Congress was the authority to

regulate foreign commerce; declare war; raise, maintain,

and make rules for a standing army and navy; call up

the militia, and appropriate money for the operations

of government and conduct of foreign policy.

Divided powers require institutional cooperation to

formulate public policy. That is why the framers sought

to establish the Senate, the smaller of the two legislative

houses, as an advisory body to assist the president in

making foreign policy. Both the treaty-making and

appointment provisions require the Senate’s “advice and

consent.” However, when the country’s first president,

George Washington, tried to seek the Senate’s advice on

a treaty that his administration wished to negotiate

with native peoples who lived in the western part of the

state of Georgia, he found the Senate slow to respond

and members’ advice insipid at best. Instead of returning

to the Senate for foreign policy recommendations,

Washington turned instead to the principal heads of his

executive departments, a group James Madison termed

the president’s cabinet. The term stuck, and so did the

practice of using the cabinet as an advisory body for

foreign and domestic affairs.

Beginning with Washington, presidents became the chief

foreign policy-makers and their secretaries of state their

principal advisers and administrators for that policy.

The Senate continued to ratify treaties, but presidents

rarely sought its institutional advice. Nonetheless,

about 70 percent of the treaties they submitted to the

Senate gained ratification with little or no modification. 

Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th,

presidents dominated the foreign policy-making

process. They received ambassadors, recognized

countries, and entered into agreements, short of formal

treaties, with their executive counterparts in other

countries. As commanders in chief, presidents also

positioned armed forces to defend American lives and

interests. President Thomas Jefferson ordered the Navy

and Marines to retaliate against the Barbary pirates,

who threatened American shipping. President James

Polk directed the Army into disputed territory with

THE MULTIPLE INFLUENCES 

ON U.S. FOREIGN POLICY-MAKING

By Stephen J. Wayne

The decentralization of foreign policy-making in the United States “reflects the growth of the 

U.S. government and its increasing accessibility to outside interests,” says Stephen Wayne, 

professor of government at Georgetown University and an expert on the American presidency. 

Foreign policy is being “debated and conducted for the most part by more people with substantive

training and experience in foreign affairs from both the public and private sectors,” he says.
26

Mexico to reinforce what Texans considered to be their

rightful border. President Abraham Lincoln called up

the militia and instituted a blockade of the South.

Congress could have opposed these presidential actions

but chose not to do so. When a policy was unsuccessful,

however, members of Congress felt free to condemn it,

as they often did. Only in the areas of trade and tariffs

did Congress play an active policy-setting role.

The country’s involvement in the international arena

began to expand at the beginning of the 20th century

during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and

Woodrow Wilson. Both presidents designed new

international initiatives for the United States, and both

used their “bully pulpits” to try to rally public support

for them. Roosevelt succeeded in obtaining approval to

build the Panama Canal, but Wilson failed to obtain

ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended

World War I, and for U.S. participation in the League

of Nations.

Nonetheless, a broad presidential prerogative in foreign

affairs had been firmly established. In 1936 the Supreme

Court acknowledged this prerogative in the case of The

United States vs.Curtiss-Wright Corporation, ruling that

the president possessed implied and inherent constitutional

authority to conduct foreign affairs, whereas in the

domestic sphere the policy-making responsibilities were

clearly vested in the Congress.

The distinction between foreign and domestic policymaking continued for another three decades. The

United States’ entry into World War II, followed by the

Cold War, led to and continued a crisis atmosphere

which encouraged Congress to follow the president’s

lead. During this period, politics was said to stop at the

water’s edge. Bipartisan cooperation characterized

foreign policy-making until the end of the 1960s.

The Vietnam War put an end to this institutional and

partisan cooperation. Angered by false and misleading

statements and promises made by Presidents Lyndon

Johnson and Richard Nixon, disillusioned by the loss of

American lives and the deepening military involvement,

and moved by increasing criticism at home, Congress

resisted presidential policy that prolonged and expanded

the war. In 1971, legislation was enacted to restrict the

use of government money to extend the war into

neighboring Southeast Asian countries; two years later

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over

President Nixon’s veto to give the House and the Senate

a larger voice in the decision to go to war. During the

1980s, Congress also limited the president’s expenditure

of funds, this time in Central America. It was the

violation of this policy by officials of the Reagan

administration that led to the Iran-Contra scandal

involving the sale of arms to Iran and diversion of

profits from the sale to the Contras in Nicaragua, and

resulted in criminal charges being brought against two

national security aides who broke the law.

The increased involvement of Congress in foreign

policy-making was more than simply a reaction to the

unpopular Vietnam War, however. Changes within the

institutional, political, and informational environments

also were responsible for expanding interest in foreign

policy matters, the pool of foreign policy participants,

and sources of information and expertise needed to

make foreign policy judgments.

The institutional changes decentralized power. In

Congress, the committee system, dominated by the

senior members of the party that controlled the

legislative body, was deemed too autocratic and

exclusionary by younger and newly elected members of

Congress who were anxious to get into the action. In

1974 they staged a mini-revolution to reduce the power

of committee chairs and disperse it to rank-and-file

members. A standing subcommittee system was

established in which each subcommittee was headed by

a different representative of the majority party. Not

only were more members of Congress involved in

foreign policy-making, but a much larger congressional

staff system, needed to support this committee expansion,

also was created. The staff provided Congress with the

information and expertise it needed to legislate, and for

which it had been previously dependent on the

executive branch, thereby increasing the legislature’s

ability to act on its own.

Executive branch activities expanded as well. U.S.

entry into World War II and subsequent developments

during the Cold War led to greater responsibilities for

the State and Defense Departments. In addition,

separate aid and information agencies were created

(although the U.S. Information Agency has recently

been incorporated into the State Department), new

intelligence agencies were established, and an Energy
27

Department came into being, in part to oversee the

growing number of atomic and nuclear programs and

facilities. Today, all of the executive departments have

divisions that deal with the international aspects of

their missions. To coordinate and monitor these

efforts, presidents have expanded their own Executive

Office. They have created a trade office to negotiate

agreements, established economic and national security

policy councils to proffer and coordinate advice, and

used the Office of Management and Budget to oversee

policy-making and implementation.

In addition to the institutional reforms, divided partisan

control of government contributed to the closer scrutiny

that Congress gave to presidential foreign policy

initiatives and matters of implementation. The party

that controlled one or both houses of Congress, but not

the White House, gained political advantage from

investigating irregularities, mismanagement, and failures

in the conduct of foreign policy by the executive branch.

These investigations included the failed rescue attempt of

American diplomats held hostage in Iran during the Carter

administration, the sale of arms to Iran and diversion of

profits from the sale to the Contras in Nicaragua (the

Reagan administration), U.S. inaction in the failed coup

attempt in Panama (the Bush administration), and the

loss of American lives during the humanitarian mission

in Somalia and the sale of satellite missile technology to

China (the Clinton administration). Naturally the news

media highlighted these investigations, giving members

of Congress, particularly those of the opposition party,

the publicity they desired. 

A more investigatory and negative press also reported

more and in greater depth on executive implementation

problems, policy disagreements within the administration

and between it and Congress, and issues that generated

international conflict and domestic discord. Moreover,

technological changes within the communications media

have forced more and more decision-making into the

public arena and media spotlight, thereby shortening

time frames for decisions and making quiet compromise

more difficult. 

Other political developments have had an equally

profound impact on the greater openness and accessibility

of foreign policy-making. Single issue interest groups

have proliferated, professionalized, and now regularly

promote their policy goals within the legislative and

executive arenas. The explosion of group activity has

been particularly evident in the foreign policy realm,

which had been relatively free of strong, broad-based

group pressures. Add to these multiple and increasingly

powerful organizations a much larger pool of academic

and policy experts in foreign and military affairs who go

in and out of government and who also represent many

international interests, and one sees how much more open,

accessible, and prominent the foreign policy arena has

become in the United States. Today most multinational

companies, some large foreign-owned companies, and

even foreign governments hire Americans with legislative

and executive experience and “contacts” to represent

them on pending issues in which they have an interest. 

The involvement of so many people and groups has

helped obliterate the distinction between domestic and

foreign policy. In fact, a new word, “intermestic” is

now used to describe policy that impacts on both

international and domestic issues. 

Although the president remains the principal initiator

of American foreign policy, there are now more relevant

players, more issues, and more pressures. Foreign

policy has become more people’s business, debated and

conducted for the most part by more people with

substantive training and experience in foreign affairs

from both the public and private sectors. Nor does

politics stop at the water’s edge as it used to. Today

partisan and institutional politics pervade practically all

aspects of foreign policy-making.

This decentralization of foreign policy-making in the

United States reflects the growth of the U.S. government

and its increasing accessibility to outside interests. It also

testifies to America’s expanding international concerns,

to the interdependency of world economies, the growth

of political and cultural internationalism, and the

overlapping of social interests from human rights to the

environment, from nutrition and health to child labor,

from the Internet to genetic engineering and hormonal

research. The world has gotten smaller and more complex.

The distinction between foreign and domestic as well as

the one between national and international has become

blurred. As a consequence, the pressures and players

have multiplied as has the politics. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
28

QUESTION: How would you assess the impact of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the making of

U.S. foreign policy?

TAFT: There are over a million NGOs in the United

States representing various religious faiths, cultural

groups, environmental organizations, social service

groups, and business associations. A non-governmental

organization is any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group

which is organized on a local, national or international

level, task-oriented, and driven by people with a

common interest. We are able to reach out to these

groups for advice and my sense is that they have a very

significant impact on our foreign policy. Because we

are a democracy, foreign policy-makers solicit the views

and ideas of NGO representatives to help ensure that

U.S. foreign policy reflects a broad spectrum of the

interests of the American people.

Q: What are the key factors that have led to the

growing size and influence of NGOs around the world?

TAFT: In some countries, we are seeing an absolute

explosion of non-governmental organizations. I

remember reading recently that in one African country

alone there were 20,000 non-governmental organizations.

Many of these were local self-help groups, just like

many NGOs that started in the United States. 

So, the number of NGOs is growing because people

need to have control over some part of their lives. We

see in the developing world non-governmental

organizations trying to make decisions about common

issues that affect their members in order to help them

to improve their lives.

And in places where there is no well-organized

government infrastructure, the NGOs themselves often

play a role in self-government. So there’s a real growth

of NGOs, even in societies that are not accustomed to

them, like the states of the former Soviet Union.

Q: In what ways do NGOs work with the State

Department and other U.S. government entities in the

area of foreign policy?

TAFT: The U.S. Agency for International Development

(USAID) has a formal advisory council on voluntary

foreign aid. It has been in existence since the early

1950s, and it provides a way for private organizations

and individuals to learn more about U.S. government

assistance programs and to advise on their direction.

There is also an advisory council made up of NGOs

that has regular dialogues with the State Department

on economic policy.

In the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration,

which I head, we spend about a third of our time

meeting with non-governmental organizations. They

are very much partners with us in the provision of

international relief assistance to refugees, as well as in

assisting in resettling refugees in the United States.

In addition, there is a very active group of population

and family planning organizations that have been

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS: 

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

An interview with Assistant Secretary of State Julia Taft

Foreign policy-makers rely on the advice provided by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 

to help ensure that U.S. foreign policy reflects the views and ideas of the American people, 

says Julia Taft, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration. Taft says that 

“if an issue resonates with a non-governmental organization community — which is really 

a community of conscience — and the NGOs use their international affiliates and contacts, 

the impact is felt not only in U.S. policy, but in Europe and throughout other parts of the world.”

She was interviewed by Contributing Editor Susan Ellis.

_ POINTS OF INFLUENCE
29

extremely helpful to both the U.S. government and the

United Nations in crafting plans of action and documents

on what the world ought to be doing about making

family planning more accessible. 

There also are environmental groups, and now we have

women’s groups that are working on Beijing Plus-Five,

the follow-up to the Beijing Women’s Conference in

1995, which will be part of the UN General Assembly’s

agenda in June.

Q: Do you think the State Department is doing a good

job building global partnership with NGOs? What are

some success stories?

TAFT: I think the best example is where we actually

work together in the field, and that is in refugee relief

programs. We have staff that are assigned to work with

refugees and with the NGOs and the UN agencies, and

we have become really inseparable partners as we all try

to work toward saving the lives of refugees.

We are also having very good success in the environmental

field where NGOs regularly work with the State

Department on international environmental policies,

global warming, and similar issues.

There is also the extraordinary success story of the 1999

Cairo-Plus-Five Review document, which outlines

progress and challenges in implementing the program

of action that emerged from the International Conference

on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994.

We worked with scores of NGOs throughout 1999

while drafting the Review, and they were extremely

helpful in the negotiation of the document.

Q: In what areas have NGOs had the most influence?

TAFT: Two examples often are used to illustrate how

really important NGOs are. One is the moratorium on

commercial whaling imposed by the International

Whaling Commission. The moratorium followed an

international effort involving like-minded governments

working with U.S. NGOs and their regional counterparts

all over the world to reduce the killing of whales in

order to preserve and protect the whale population.

That same technique was used on the issue of banning

anti-personnel landmines, where key international

organizations and NGOs worked together, mostly

through a Web site. They devised an e-mail system that

extended throughout the world in an attempt to enlist

signers of petitions, to develop a meaningful message,

and to work on strategy. That landmine ban initiative

totally revolutionized the way much of the world thinks

about landmines, including the need to deal with

victims of mines as well as to ban anti-personnel mines.

Those two examples demonstrate that if an issue

resonates with a broad non-governmental organization

community — which is really a community of

conscience — and the NGOs use their international

affiliates and contacts, the impact is felt not only in

U.S. policy, but in Europe and throughout other parts

of the world. Governments will sit up and listen

because this is the voice of the people.

In the humanitarian field, as I indicated earlier, NGOs

have a very large influence on the selection and numbers

of people who will be admitted annually to the United

States for refugee resettlement.

The United States is by far the world’s most generous

recipient of refugees for permanent resettlement. We

take about 50 percent of all refugees who are referred

by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for

permanent resettlement around the world. And we

have done this because, of course, our own country was

founded by refugees, so this is part of our national

character.

Every year about eight percent of the U.S. immigration

quota is set aside for refugees. The U.S. government

helps financially, but it is the voluntary agencies —

working with the Congress, the Bureau of Population,

Refugees and Migration, the U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services, and communities throughout the

United States — that are responsible for resettling each

refugee.

This year, for instance, our admissions level is 85,000.

All of those 85,000 refugees who come to the United

States will be processed by voluntary agencies before

proceeding to communities throughout the country.

That has led us to listen very carefully to the

recommendations of these NGOs and to see if we can

meet their requested levels for admissions. If it weren’t

for their support, their advocacy, their understanding, 
30

I don’t think we would have a solid refugee resettlement

program in this country.

That being said, we have a long way to go in other

aspects of foreign policy. Much of the work of foreign

policy has a dimension of national security, and

therefore there is less willingness to open the dialogue

to people who don’t have security clearances, people

who are not affiliated with government.

And so, there are many issues that we address in the

State Department which, unfortunately, do not have

the benefit of broad debate, broad exploration, and

ideas from NGOs.

My field involves global issues which have less secrecy

attached to them. But I think we, as a department, need

to do much more to systematically open up our minds

and our ideas. We need to vet them with people who,

although they are outside government, often have a very

good sense of what works and what the problems are.

Q: What are the key tools used by NGOs to influence

foreign policy-making?

TAFT: You’ll see picketing. You’ll see Web sites. Many

NGOs have campaigns on issues. They all have

newsletters. They all have boards of directors whose

members are influential in their communities, and

there are those that are an association of associations,

bringing together NGOs with similar interests to form

a coalition.

The largest one of that type working internationally is

called InterAction, which is the group I headed before

coming to the State Department. What we did to get

our message out was to work very closely with all of the

member organizations on the two or three messages we

wanted to tell Congress that year. And all of us needed

to tell Congress the same message.

While I was president of InterAction, one of the

messages we sought to convey was that the United

States needed to increase its foreign assistance, that the

American people supported the concept of foreign aid.

We started what was known as the One Percent

Campaign, aimed at explaining that less than one cent

of every tax dollar goes to foreign affairs. And it really

started grabbing hold. It was four years ago that we

started that campaign. Unfortunately, all of the buttons

and brochures that we developed at InterAction on that

campaign I could use today, because foreign affairs is

still less than one cent of the U.S. tax dollar.

Q: Do you routinely solicit the input of NGOs as you

develop policy related to population, refugees, and

migration? If so, what means do you use to do so?

TAFT: We often send out faxes to interested people

saying, “Here’s what we’re thinking about. If you have

any ideas, get in touch with us.” And we use the forum

of meetings in the State Department on a regular basis.

For people who can’t get here, for organizations that

can’t come, we talk by phone.

Q: Are there any reasons to discourage the influence of

NGOs on U.S. decision-making?

TAFT: They are made up of citizens, and they are entitled

to be heard. And that’s what we try to do. However,

the government must retain the right to evaluate and

decide on the advice it receives. Sometimes if NGOs

do not like what they hear from policy-makers, they

might oppose the policy and go to Congress or to the

press. But I feel that we have benefited greatly by

having a regular dialogue. We don’t always agree on

everything, but we certainly — at least in the Bureau of

Population, Refugees, and Migration — have been able

to maintain a very solid constituency for what we are

trying to do, in part because we have been informed by

the NGOs’ experiences and their ideas.

Q: How does the U.S. government balance the views 

of NGOs and other interest groups so as not to give

undue weight to any one group in its foreign policy

decision-making?

TAFT: We try to broaden the debate to groups with a

variety of views. Very seldom are people really comfortable

with bringing in opposing groups without a balance.

So almost all meetings have people who represent a

broad spectrum of opinions. In that way, we don’t just

get one viewpoint that we’re comfortable with, or one

viewpoint that’s totally opposed to what we want.

Q: How can NGOs be more effective in their efforts to

influence foreign policy?
TAFT: It seems to me that the real challenge for 

NGOs is to work much more extensively with their

counterparts in other parts of the world, making sure

that they are maintaining a dialogue, and that they are

being informed about what the particular concerns and

issues are in other countries. In that way, when we hear

from our NGOs, they understand and can put into

context their counterparts’ concerns, and they can

advise us about them.

I see the emergence of more of these kinds of networks

of U.S. NGOs and their foreign counterparts. USAID

has spent quite a number of years and dollars to help in

the creation of NGOs in the developing world and in

the former Soviet Union. But I think U.S. NGOs need

to be very closely attuned to grassroots NGOs in other

countries in order to make sure that we understand the

needs of the people in countries that receive U.S. aid.

Q: What do you think can be done to raise the level or

frequency of dialogues between key NGOs in the

foreign affairs community and the State Department?

TAFT: Every regional, functional, or policy bureau in

the State Department develops its own Strategic Plan

— a well thought-out document that outlines the main

issues of concern, prioritizes them, and details how

certain kinds of objectives will be achieved. I would

love to see us open up a process early in that strategic

planning program to test whether or not the objectives

we think are important are also important to a mixture

of non-governmental organizations.

We need to get think tanks involved. We need to get

business and labor groups involved. We need to solicit

input from any group that has a stake in international

affairs. I think we could do this through Town

Meetings. We probably could do something through

Web sites where we would create some interactive

process and say, “If you are really interested in this

issue, these are some of the things we are thinking

about. If you have ideas, just let us know.”

We might find out that there is a great deal of interest.

It has to be efficient, because we don’t have the time or

the people to devote to extensive consultations. But

with new technology and an open attitude, it seems to

me we ought to be able to do something.

Q: Where would you like to see the NGOs’ role

enhanced?

TAFT: We need not be timid in reaching out to these

organizations, and our public outreach should be a

two-way street. We want to tell them what we’re doing,

but we also need to get their reactions, discover what

their priorities are.

Public opinion polling is sometimes very important to

inform us about the priorities in the countries that

we’re dealing with. We need to constantly remind

ourselves that policy evolves; it is not set in concrete.

We think the world is pretty dynamic and that we need

to be receptive to ideas about how to improve, how to

articulate what it is we do in a better way.

Q: How do NGOs affect the U.S. role and involvement

in international organizations such as the UN and

NATO?

TAFT: The NGOs are strong partners with many of the

UN specialized agencies, and particularly the humanitarian

agencies. The UN Family Planning Association works

with and through NGOs all over the world in its

programs. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees

works with and through over 400 NGOs to be able to

provide relief and assistance to refugees. So there’s a

strong relationship operationally.

At major UN global meetings — including the Cairo

Conference on Population and Development, the

Beijing Women’s Conference, and the Rio Summit on

the environment — the role of non-governmental

organizations has been absolutely pivotal in helping to

develop the plans of action, trying to raise global

attention to the issue, and also providing advice and

support on the best way to move the issue forward in

the international arena.

The thousands of people representing NGOs from all

over the world in those conferences are the same people

who will maintain the advocacy, the awareness, the

follow-up from those conferences all over the world.

And I think that’s great.

Q: Do NGOs have a role to play in the way

governments interact with each other?

31
32

TAFT: I think their role is more in making their

respective governments receptive to the kinds of

policies that other countries will be proposing and in

gaining their support for them.

Let me give you an example:

We are going to be introducing a resolution on China

at the UN Human Rights Commission. We have been

talking with all of the member governments of the

commission about this China Resolution, and, at the

same time, Tibetan organizations around the world are

going to their governments saying, “We want you to

support this resolution.” We think it’s good for

governments to hear not only from us on such issues,

but from their own people as well.

So human rights groups are involved in laying the

groundwork for most of the resolutions in the UN

Human Rights Commission by influencing their

governments to do the right thing when they go to

Geneva. The NGOs’ basic responsibility in this area is

in setting the climate, establishing priorities, and letting

their governments know that there is a political will of

the people on whatever the issue is. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
33

The dawn of the 21st century finds the United States

deeply involved in the outside world, more so than ever

before in its history, and, in terms of the reach of its

global engagement, more so than any other country. It

has diplomatic relations with about 180 sovereign

states; its military forces are deployed, in large measure

or small, throughout the world; its role in the global

economy is unmatched and is made manifest, in some

degree, in virtually every other country; and it belongs

to a host of international institutions. Other nations

look to the United States for leadership, for help in

providing for their security and prosperity, for diplomacy

in preventing war and making peace, and for wisdom

in shaping the work of international bodies that cover a

wide range of human activity.

The United States makes and carries out its foreign

policy — more correctly, its many foreign policies —

through a number of government entities that bring to

bear their different and often contending perspectives.

They range from the staff of the president in the White

House to the Departments of State, Defense, and

Treasury, several intelligence agencies, and a few dozen

other departments and agencies that have a direct

impact both on determining what the United States

does abroad and then in carrying out the government’s

decisions.

Furthermore, the United States Congress has its own

foreign policy responsibilities, some mandated by the

U.S. Constitution, some by law, and others by custom.

Nor is the Congress simply a passive reflection of the

will of the American president although, in much of

U.S. foreign and security policy, he is usually preeminent. All activities of the administration require

congressional funding. Through a large number of

committees, it sifts through the proposals, programs,

and performance of U.S. foreign policy and brings

under close scrutiny what each department and agency

does abroad. Perhaps in no other country does the

legislative arm of government have such a major role,

often in opposition to the will of the president, in trying

to shape American policy toward the outside world.

This role for Congress demonstrates the importance 

for any president of gaining popular support for the

administration’s foreign and national security policies.

This is particularly important among opinion leaders

throughout the country, in order to ensure that there is

a solid basis of domestic support for U.S. activities

abroad. While a president is often given the benefit of

the doubt in foreign policy, this is not automatic or

assured. Nor has the U.S. role in the world been so

constant — or so determined by a limited range of

factors, as is the case in many other countries whose

attentions are focused on immediate neighbors or their

own region — that there is widespread popular

understanding, over time, of the proper U.S. course in

the world.

Also in the United States, as in other countries, political

leaders come and go, and the directions of foreign

policy can be deeply affected by the outcome of

elections — both for president and for members of the

Senate and House of Representatives. But perhaps in

no other democratic country does the election of a new

president and change of administrations mean such a

wholesale change of leading officials, in foreign policy

THINK TANKS: HELPING TO SHAPE 

U.S. FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY

By Robert E. Hunter

The growth in the role played by think tanks in U.S. foreign and national security policy 

“has been a natural response to the deepening engagement of the United States in the world during 

the last half century,” says Robert E. Hunter, Senior Adviser at the RAND Corporation in 

Washington, D.C., and a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. These institutions have helped “to 

train America’s leaders, shape future policies...engage the Congress, enlist leaders in a wide variety 

of professions with an interest in public policy, and educate the American public,” he says.
34

and national security as well as in domestic areas of

policy. Especially when the presidency is transferred

from one political party to the other, virtually all senior

officials are replaced, to a significant depth in the

bureaucracy, so that the conduct of foreign policy

suddenly comes into the hands of people who do not

have immediate experience of the problems and

challenges that the nation faces. It is often a few

months before the new team is fully in charge, even if

the incoming president appoints his new officials

rapidly, as opposed to doing so only over a period of

many weeks or longer.

Against this background, it can be fairly asked how the

United States is able to devise foreign and defense

policies, set in train the means for carrying them out,

and build political support for them. There are several

answers to this question. But one of the most

important has been the creation of a set of institutions

that, in their scope and pervasive nature, has no parallel

in other countries — institutions that are known, in

characteristic American jargon, as “think tanks.”

This term is only a few decades old, but the idea of

creating institutions that focus both on the study of

foreign policy and the building of support for it has a

long pedigree in the 20th century. For example, the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was

created in 1910 to advance the cause of peace. Then

Councils of Foreign Relations were set up in New York

and Chicago in 1921 and 1922, respectively, the former

founded by “businessmen, bankers, and lawyers

determined to keep the United States engaged in the

world;” the latter a group of “concerned Chicagoans

united by a common interest in international affairs

and a concern over ‘ignorance and half-considered

proposals on the subject.” These efforts, designed to

draw together, educate, and energize American elites,

came just as the era of isolationism was setting in.

But the great flowering of research and policy

institutions in the United States occurred only after

World War II, when it became clear that the U.S.

would henceforth have to be deeply and permanently

engaged abroad, and that it would have to exercise a

high degree of leadership, both in creating and enabling

new international institutions to be effective — such as

the United Nations, the World Bank, the International

Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs

and Trade — and in drawing the democracies together

to meet the growing challenge from the Soviet Union

and communism. For the first time in its history, the

United States needed a fully-developed, comprehensive,

and understandable grand strategy. The American

think tank came to the rescue.

Perhaps the first such institution created in the post-war

era was what is now the RAND Corporation. It sprang

from the desire of leaders in the newly-created U.S. Air

Force to devise purposes and programs for their new

military service. To ensure that the research institution to

be created would not just be a reflection of bureaucratic

thinking, it was set up as far from Washington as possible,

in Santa Monica, California. High-quality, objective

research on national security became the institution’s

first hallmark. Over the years, the Pentagon created

several other think tanks devoted exclusively to defense

issues (RAND has subsequently found other sponsors,

in and out of government, in many different fields).

These have included the Institute for Defense Analyses

and the Center for Naval Analyses. These research

institutes have their analogues in the hard sciences,

including two run by the University of California: the

Los Alamos National Laboratory (originally created in

1942 to design and build the first atomic bombs) and

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (set up a

decade later, at first to create hydrogen weapons).

Also important in devising and shaping U.S. foreign

policy was the creation of a plethora of other research

institutes established across the country, some within

private corporations or labor unions, some freestanding, and some attached to leading universities —

ranging from the University of California at Los

Angeles and Stanford University on the West Coast to

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

on the East Coast. It has even been said, whimsically,

that for every permutation and combination of the

words “foreign,” “international,” “strategic,” “global,”

“research,” “policy,” “center,” “institute,” and “council,”

there is an American think tank with that as its title.

These various institutions serve many purposes, ranging

from research into regional problems and functional

issues, such as economics and military affairs, to work

designed specifically to build popular understanding of,

and political support for, U.S. involvement in the

outside world and specific ideas and policies. There is
35

the United Nations Association, which is charged with

increasing popular understanding of that institution, as

well as the Atlantic Council, the Overseas Development

Council, the Arms Control Association, and many

world affairs councils, which are groups of local citizens

interested in foreign policy, spread all across the country.

Several other specialized think tanks have been created,

such as the publicly-funded U.S. Institute of Peace,

which focuses on research, and the National Endowment

for Democracy (NED), which works primarily in other

countries to promote democratic development. NED

has four offshoots: two allied with the Republican and

Democratic parties, one with labor, and one with

business. And there is a host of other bodies, designed

to promote one cause or another in foreign policy,

often combining a research unit with public education

and efforts to affect opinion within the Congress.

For many years, the think tanks that are most

politically influential in shaping U.S. foreign policy

have been based in Washington, D.C. Each of these

has a deep interest in research, and most also have a

public presence. Several stand out today, including the

Carnegie Endowment, RAND, and the New Yorkbased Council on Foreign Relations (the latter two

having set up Washington offices), the Brookings

Institution, the Center for Strategic and International

Studies, the American Enterprise Institute (with

significant ties to the corporate world), the Institute for

Policy Studies (known for its liberal views), and the

Heritage Foundation (known for its conservative views).

Each of these institutions and their companions has its

own particular focus, or niche; some are identified with

one or another part of the political spectrum, and some

try scrupulously to be bipartisan or simply non-partisan.

Some focus on publications and gaining exposure for

their research staff in the media, some focus on providing

advice to members of Congress, some try to influence

the administration currently in office — and some do

all of these things. All are interested in ideas and, given

the nature of foreign policy, in having an impact on power,

directly or indirectly; and all have some role in education,

whether for the general public or just elites — leaders in

different professions, in both private and public sectors. 

Two features of the American foreign affairs think tank

are particularly important. First, many of them are

concerned with bringing people together to discuss ideas

and policy options, often from different disciplines —

academia, business, government, and, within government,

people from both the administration and Congress. Nor

are these activities designed only to share information

or to develop the best ideas. They are also designed to

build support for policies and, even more broadly, to

help create consensus, to the degree possible, about which

issues are most important, what the great differences of

viewpoint are, and what approach the United States

should follow. This is the foreign affairs think tank as

“secret weapon.” It brings together people with

different perspectives and roles in the overall U.S.

political process — both in and out of government and

from Congress as much as from the administration.

Where this co-mingling of people and policy ideas

works, it helps to foster a major element in the making

of U.S. foreign policy — the forging of bipartisanship.

As every administration, and every Congress, has

learned, it is when a bipartisan approach to a policy can

be crafted that that policy has the best chance of

succeeding, both at home (in gaining support) and

abroad (in carrying the authority and the commitment

of the nation behind it). 

Second, the foreign affairs think tanks are a major

source of talented people to serve in an administration

and on congressional staffs. And they are a haven for

departing government officials who want to remain

engaged in foreign policy, to gain new ideas and

inspiration, while also enriching the think tanks’ research

projects and symposia with insights gained from

government service. Virtually unique to the United

States, this “in and out” movement of officials, often

swapping jobs with counterparts in think tanks, is a

critical element in bringing new ideas into government,

and it plays a significant role in building support

among leaders of the various public-policy professions

regarding the major directions for the nation abroad.

Indeed, few people ascend to senior foreign policy and

national security office in the U.S. government without

having first passed through one or another think tank,

whether as staff members, contributors to publications,

or simply as participants in study groups or other types

of meetings. The current secretary of state, Madeleine

Albright, led one such institute, the Center for

National Policy. At the same time, the value of these
36

think tanks to America’s wider purposes is reflected in

the fact that almost all of them are exempt from

taxation — either on income generated from their

activities, or on contributions made to them by

individual Americans or grant-giving philanthropies.

The government, in short, subsidizes the think tanks.

In sum, the growth of the role played by the American

think tank in foreign and national security policy has

been a natural response to the deepening engagement

of the United States in the world during the past half

century. It has helped to train America’s leaders, shape

future policies (beyond those being developed within

government at the moment, where outsiders can play

only a limited part), engage the Congress, enlist leaders

in a wide variety of professions with an interest in public

policy, and educate the American public. Indeed, the

think tank has become indispensable to U.S. foreign

policy and to America’s role in the outside world. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
37

Reminiscing years after the most profound foreign

policy crisis of the Cold War — the 1962 Cuban

Missile Crisis — then-Defense Secretary Robert

McNamara commented almost casually that he did not

turn on a television set the entire time President

Kennedy and his advisors were dealing with events that

could have thrust the United States and the Soviet

Union into nuclear war. Fast-forward the clock to the

1999 conflict in Kosovo, and it is clear how astonishingly

the role of the news media (and information generally)

has grown in the making of U.S. foreign policy. From

the TV images of fleeing ethnic Albanian refugees to

the propaganda war on the Internet to the councils of

President Clinton’s top aides debating how to

communicate their objectives, information played a

major — even dominant — role in U.S. foreign policy

during the Kosovo conflict.

How has the revolution in global information technology

changed the making of U.S. foreign policy? First, a few

words of caution. Today’s media-rich world has not

replaced the need for strong diplomatic leadership. If

anything, it has reinforced that need. If U.S. leadership

is uncertain — as it was at times in hotspots such as

Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia — the news media (and U.S.

adversaries, using the media), move quickly to fill the

vacuum. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Mohammed Farah

Aided in Somalia, and Slobodan Milosevic in the former

Yugoslavia used the news media, particularly television, to

complicate achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives.

Nor does the media replace confidential diplomacy. It

complements it. Leaders in Washington may get news

of a crisis first from CNN rather than embassy cables,

but diplomats are still necessary to provide the detailed

political reporting from foreign lands. U.S. foreign

policy-makers routinely use the news media to deliver

messages to foreign leaders, particularly during crises

when diplomatic contact with an adversary may be cut

off. But other messages can be delivered only through

private diplomatic exchanges. Serbia’s military

withdrawal from Kosovo was ultimately achieved

through face-to-face Russian-European-American

diplomacy, backed by the use of NATO air power.

Still, global real-time television, the Internet, and other

recent technological advances have clearly affected how

top foreign policy-makers do their job. Nowhere is this

change more starkly seen than in the time pressures

officials now face. McNamara’s long days behind

closed doors advising Kennedy on the Cuba crisis are

an unimaginable luxury to his counterparts today. The

rapid transmission of information and a ubiquitous

media with questions at the ready mean that officials

must make decisions and state policy publicly more

rapidly than they might like. Telling the media and the

public to wait for answers is always an option, but

usually one that makes officials look unprepared or

vacillating. The time crunch, combined with an

adversary’s own “information warfare,” can lead to

mistakes. NATO’s incomplete account of the accidental

bombing of a refugee convoy in Kosovo, later amended

several times, sapped the alliance’s credibility at a key

point during Operation Allied Force.

But like most changes brought on by the Information

Age, this one is a two-edged sword. In making and

executing foreign policy, the ability to communicate

THE MEDIA: INFLUENCING FOREIGN POLICY 

IN THE INFORMATION AGE

By Warren P. Strobel

“Global real-time television, the Internet, and other recent technological advances have 

clearly affected how top foreign policy-makers do their job, says Warren P. Strobel, a senior editor 

at U.S. News & World Report, and author of “Late-Breaking Foreign Policy: The News Media’s

Influence on Peace Operations.” Foreign policy “isn’t made by the media,” he says, but 

“in the Information Age, it can’t be made without it.”
rapidly and directly with both allies and enemies —

and their publics too, in some cases — is a great

advantage. President Bush, worried that Saddam

Hussein was surrounded by aides afraid to bring him

bad news and concerned that he would conclude from

U.S. anti-war protests that Washington lacked resolve,

used television on several occasions to address the Iraqi

leader directly during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis.

More recently, President Clinton, Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright, and other top U.S. officials used

the media to address numerous audiences during the

Kosovo campaign. As conflicts, diplomacy, and

peacekeeping increasingly become multilateral affairs,

this will become a more challenging task. Sometimes,

messages with different nuances or emphases need to be

sent to different audiences.

Since the end of the Cold War, there have been not one,

but two, revolutions that have affected the communicating

of U.S. foreign policy. The global telecommunications

explosion is one. The second is the geopolitical

revolution: without the Soviet threat, foreign affairs can

seem less immediately vital to many Americans.

Together, these changes have caused senior policy-makers

to adopt more complex and creative communications

strategies, using a variety of new and old media. Press

conferences by the secretary of state and background

briefings for the State Department press corps are still

important, but they are not enough. While visiting

Argentina in 1998, President Clinton participated in a

televised town hall discussion with young Hispanics in

both South America and the United States, underscoring

the United States’ desire for an integrated hemisphere.

This year, the State Department’s annual human rights

report was on the Internet the same day it was released

— and accessed, no doubt, by journalists, nongovernmental human rights groups, and the foreign

governments cited in the document. Peacekeeping and

humanitarian operations in places such as Kosovo,

which combine military deployments with diplomacy,

offer an especially challenging communications

environment. Target audiences include international,

regional, and local media; U.S. troops and the troops of

other contributing nations; local ethnic groups that

may have grievances; and neighboring countries that

may wish to see the effort succeed — or fail.

The U.S. military, in particular, has had to adjust its

dealings with the media. In times of war or other

national emergency, the news media and information

flows can be controlled to some extent via formal means

(i.e., selected groups of journalists known as press

“pools,” escorted by public affairs officers, and security

reviews of stories) or informal ones. Peacekeeping and

humanitarian operations — known to the military as

“operations other than war” — offer no such opportunity

for officials. In places such as Somalia, Haiti, and

Kosovo, journalists may be “on the ground” before

troops ever arrive and, because of political concerns

over military casualties, may be less restricted in their

movements than the soldiers. The U.S. military has

gone back to school — literally in some cases, with

heavier doses of media training. A plethora of

conferences and writings has explored this new

military-media relationship, as both sides try to

understand better one another’s needs in the new

environment. Given their starkly different professions

and cultures, however, it seems certain that some

tensions will linger.

The news media, again television in particular, can

affect the agenda of U.S. foreign policy. From 1992

until 1995, Presidents Bush and Clinton did not

believe the war in Bosnia threatened U.S. interests

sufficiently to send in U.S. ground troops. But near

non-stop coverage of the carnage and humanitarian

suffering ensured that they had to deal with the conflict

nonetheless. Similarly, when organized violence broke

out following East Timor’s referendum on independence

last year, it was not perceived initially as a major issue

on the administration’s agenda. TV images and

journalists questioning the administration’s policy

ensured that it was on the White House agenda,

nonetheless. Conversely, there may be less pressure to

attend to conflicts, such as the civil wars in West Africa,

if they do not generate media attention and no other

national security interest is involved.

One of the most interesting developments brought on

by the Information Age has been a democratization in

access to media tools, meaning more and more groups

can affect foreign policy. As mentioned at the outset,

policy-makers and diplomats have not seen their places

usurped. But they now must share the arena with nongovernmental actors, including human rights and relief

groups, loose coalitions of activists on various causes,

even guerilla armies and terrorists. While President

Bush made the ultimate decision to send U.S. troops to

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39

Somalia in 1992 to safeguard relief supplies, it is now

known that a loose coalition of relief groups such as

CARE, members of Congress, and mid-level U.S.

officials helped direct Bush’s attention to the starvation

in Somalia by encouraging and facilitating media

coverage there. Similarly, “progressive” groups used the

Internet to organize protests against the World Trade

Organization that disrupted its 1999 Seattle meeting,

and to change U.S. policy toward Burma by achieving a

series of state-level sanctions on that country.

Does the news media actually change U.S. foreign

policy? Not nearly as much as some argue. But it does

seem to have an impact in one narrowly defined area:

humanitarian relief policy. Television images of people

suffering from famine, disease, or natural disasters can,

by their effect on world public opinion (or presumed

effect, in policy-makers’ minds) get the United States

and other industrialized nations involved where they

might not be otherwise. Beginning with the famine in

Ethiopia in the mid-1980s, this has happened time and

again, from the refugee exodus from Rwanda in 1994 to

the humanitarian crisis caused by the wars in the former

Yugoslavia to the devastating floods in Mozambique in

2000. As already mentioned, often it is not the media

alone, but non-governmental organizations working

through the media to draw attention to a region, that

affect policy. One concern is whether television skews

policy-making toward humanitarian concerns, and

away from the more difficult (and risky) job of solving

underlying conflicts. In the apt words of Georgian

President Eduard Shevardnadze, “The dictatorship of

the fourth power, the dictatorship of the TV picture,

horrifying millions of people with images of mass

violence, urges us to adopt humanitarian decisions and

to avoid political ones.”

U.S. diplomats, by and large, do not spend their time

reading public opinion polls. But they, and even more

so officials at the White House, believe they have a

good sense of the U.S. public’s mood from the media,

their public affairs advisers, and their own past experience.

That is one reason why news media reports alone are

not enough to send U.S. troops into harm’s way if no

national interest seems at risk. Despite heavy media

coverage, the United States did not intervene to stop

the genocide in Rwanda. Neither President Bush nor

President Clinton supported sustained U.S. military

involvement in Bosnia until the latter sensed that the

war there was threatening a major U.S. security interest

— the cohesion of NATO and the Atlantic alliance. In

other situations, such as Haiti and Kosovo, national

interests caused U.S. policy-makers to choose

intervention even in the face of a skeptical Fourth Estate.

One final example shows how the media’s role in U.S.

diplomacy is not always what it appears, and how

policy-makers use the media as much as they are used

by it. It is widely believed that the February 1994

“marketplace massacre” in Sarajevo, captured on

videotape, changed U.S. policy in Bosnia to a much

more aggressive, interventionist role. Sixty-eight people

were killed, and almost 200 others horribly wounded,

when a mortar shell, believed fired by Bosnian Serbs,

fell on the Bosnian capital’s central market. Within

days, NATO demanded that the Bosnian Serbs

withdraw their heavy weapons from an “exclusion

zone” around Sarajevo, under threat of air strikes. For

the first time since the war began in April 1992,

Sarajevo experienced a taste of normalcy.

This is what actually happened: In the days before the

mortar shell fell, the United States, under heavy

pressure from France, had concluded that the current

U.S. policy was not working. Then-Secretary of State

Warren Christopher had written a memo to senior

colleagues at the White House and the Pentagon, laying

out the case for a more proactive U.S. policy. Meetings

on the details of that new policy were actually under

way when the mortar shell fell. The videotaped horrors

helped the Clinton administration get public backing

for the more aggressive policy that it wanted to

undertake. Numerous top officials have confirmed this

sequence of events in subsequent interviews. And

where did then-U.S. Ambassador to the United

Nations Madeleine Albright and her colleagues go to

make the case for the new policy? In front of the TV

cameras, of course.

Foreign policy isn’t made by the media. But in the

Information Age, it can’t be made without it. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
40

QUESTION: How would you assess the impact of the

Internet — as an international force — on the

development of U.S. foreign policy?

SOLOMON: When discussing the role of the Internet in

the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, it is important

to keep in mind that we are still in the early stages of

the information revolution. Not enough concrete

information yet exists to fully comprehend the impact

the Internet will have on the practice of diplomacy and,

specifically, the development of U.S. foreign policy.

That said, however, work and research resulting from

the Institute’s five-year-old Virtual Diplomacy Initiative

points toward a couple of significant ways that the

Internet is affecting the foreign policy-making process

and thereby U.S. foreign policy.

One of the most profound ways it affects U.S. foreign

policy is by accelerating the policy-making process.

Information about breaking international crises that

once took hours or days for government officials and

media to disseminate is now being relayed real-time to

the world not only via radio and television, but over the

Internet as well. Ironically, though, for policy-makers,

instant dissemination of information about events both

far and near is proving to be as much a bane as a bounty.

While the Internet has augmented and expedited the

information-gathering phase of policy-making, the

amount of time available to policy-makers to digest,

analyze, and formulate potential courses of action has

been proportionally reduced in relation to how much

and how fast information is publicly available. In

today’s wired world, policy-makers now are often called

upon to make virtually instantaneous decisions about

what are often complicated international crises that

require delicate handling. However, as Under Secretary

of State Thomas Pickering noted at an Institute conference

earlier this year, too much data can be as detrimental as

too little — policy-makers must always be on guard for

the spin, advocacy, and marketing that often accompany

much of the information found on the Internet.

At the same time, and related to the profusion of

information and the collapse of absorption, reflection,

and response time, is policy-makers’ forced adjustment

to the Internet’s decentralizing effect on the formulation

of U.S. foreign policy — we call this phenomenon the

“diffusion of diplomacy.” The Internet has thrown

open governments’ gates to new constituencies who are

not limited by traditional geographic or other physical

barriers from actively participating in the policymaking process. Increasingly we are seeing individuals

and groups who use the Internet to form virtual

communities that can mobilize easily and effectively for

advocacy and action. They not only use the Internet to

gather information but also to broadcast information

globally and to advocate specific policy actions on

everything from trade to human rights policies. It is

safe to say that the challenge of managing what can best

be described today as “information chaos” is likely to

daunt policy-makers in the United States and around

the globe for many years to come.

Q: How is the Internet affecting the way that U.S.

foreign policy-makers are conducting business?

THE INTERNET AND THE DIFFUSION OF DIPLOMACY

An assessment by Dr. Richard H. Solomon

“One of the most profound ways” the Internet “affects U.S. foreign policy is by accelerating the 

policy-making process,” says Dr. Richard H. Solomon, president of the United States Institute of

Peace. Describing the phenomenon of the “diffusion of diplomacy,” Solomon explains how the

Internet “has thrown open governments’ gates to new constituencies who are not limited by

traditional geographic or other physical barriers from actively participating” in the creation of 

policy. Following are Solomon’s responses to questions posed by “U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda.”
SOLOMON: One of the greatest advantages afforded by

modern communication technologies such as the

Internet is the heightened flexibility they offer their

users, whether individuals, organizations, or nation

states. Greater flexibility also means that different

actors in the foreign policy-making process are affected

by the Internet and the information revolution in

slightly different ways. For example, last year during

the height of the Kosovo conflict, the Institute was able

to make the proceedings of a conference featuring

several prominent Balkan policy-makers, including the

presidents of Bulgaria and Albania, available to policymakers across the globe through a live webcast. In

effect, each spoke simultaneously to a regional

constituency in the Balkans, NATO allies, and

Washington policy-makers.

Policy-makers within the Executive Branch are finding

that the Internet aids intra-organizational communication

between agencies working on different aspects of the

same crisis. E-mail, Intranets, and other such

technologies quickly and efficiently circulate critical

data and, more importantly, allow for the sharing of

information not only between offices just down the hall

from each other but also between headquarters and

field offices halfway across the globe. Presidential

Decision Directive 56, which calls for interagency

coordination during complex emergencies, can only

succeed in a real-time response environment if agencies

rely on electronic communication internally and externally.

Such efficient use and integration of these new

technologies by government and non-governmental

organizations alike have helped flatten traditionally

bureaucratic structures. Hierarchical flattening presents

a particular challenge to U.S. diplomats abroad —

especially in the conduct of diplomacy. The diminishing

cost of transnational communication prior even to the

Internet has increasingly marginalized the in-country

traditional diplomatic role. It is easier for a State

Department official in Washington to pick up the

telephone and resolve issues with his or her counterpart

in Paris or Cairo than to wait until the in-country

diplomat has taken care of the matter.

Meanwhile in-country diplomats, also operating in the

real-time environment, are increasingly pressured for

on-the-spot policy formulation or risk appearing

disengaged. Without doubt, the information revolution

has effaced the line separating those in the field from

Washington-based policy-makers. Not only has the

revolution drastically improved the quantity and

quality of information available to diplomats in the

field but it also has delivered more and more accurate

information to senior foreign policy-makers, thereby

strengthening their capacity to devise policies that will

effectively meet the rapidly changing needs of today’s

post-Cold War world. Though, as former Secretary of

State George Shultz pointed out at an Institute Virtual

Diplomacy conference in 1997, we still need both

diplomats in the field and policy-makers in Washington.

The real added value comes from the strength of the

connection between them.

Q: How is the Internet changing the way that

governments interact with each other?

SOLOMON: With the end of the Cold War and the

threat of global nuclear war more remote, the world

faces a less immediately deadly future. The road into

that future, nevertheless, may be more difficult to

navigate than before. One way that the Internet and

the information revolution can assist international

actors to travel more safely down this road is by making

transparent intra- and international activities. For

instance, the new information technologies offer

governments a tremendous opportunity to educate and

inform new publics and audiences about positions,

policies, and activities. The Institute has identified this

opportunity and has been on the forefront of

examining ways to convene foreign affairs practitioners

online — or as we like to say, “virtually” — and creating

electronic links among global communities that share

an interest in international conflict resolution.

Of course total transparency on the part of

governmental agents may not always be in the national

interest; nevertheless, the explosion of available

information is a strong testament to the Internet’s

effectiveness as a communication tool for both

governmental and other international actors. Without

doubt, this new capacity can be and is being used to

fulfill particular interests and meet various ends —

though not always in each state’s interest. Joseph Nye,

dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at

Harvard University, and Admiral William Owen, coCEO (chief executive officer) of the high tech firm

Teledesic, have termed this use of information power

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42

“soft power,” which is in counter distinction to a state’s

hard or coercive power represented by its military force.

The use of soft power can range from a government

making valuable information resources publicly

accessible on the Internet to “spinning” a particular

take on a specific policy or activity. Soft power allows

governments to easily and effectively relay information

to individuals who will never visit their embassies,

consulates, or otherwise even set foot in their territory.

Even so, despite the increasingly invaluable role the

Internet plays in facilitating interaction and enhancing

the quality and quantity of communication between

governments and their citizens, as well as among states,

it will never replace the unique quality of person-toperson communication between states and other

international actors. Astonishing as advances have been

during the past 10 years, at the end of the day, the

Internet and all of the hardware and software that keep

it running are still merely instruments of human action.

Q: Is there any way that you can foresee overcoming

Internet restrictions imposed by countries like China

and Burma?

SOLOMON: No one, neither here in the United States

nor elsewhere, should underestimate the power of the

free flow of information via the Internet. Efforts by

countries such as China or Burma to circumscribe the

Internet to its will are unlikely to succeed in the long

run. The Internet is designed as a dynamic system to

share information based on an open architecture,

which, by its nature, is nearly impossible to constrain.

There are so many ways that citizens are able to

connect to the Internet, either directly or indirectly,

that most regulatory or technological barriers are

unable to keep determined individuals off the Net.

Also, not only does the Internet’s dynamic nature resist

control, its decentralized infrastructure renders its

regulation beyond the scope of territorially-based

governance. No one person or state owns it, no one

person or state runs it. It exists by virtue of agreed

protocols that allow anyone with a modem and a PC to

join the global community as a “netizen” and, once

admitted, membership is hard to revoke.

More importantly, even if the Chinese government

could control access to the Internet in China, it is

unlikely that it is in its best interest to do so. As I

stressed earlier, information in today’s wired world has

become a valuable resource within the international

system. Much in the way that states for centuries

leveraged their natural resources (oil springs to mind)

to gain a competitive advantage in the international

arena, accurate, timely information is today recognized

as an equally valuable international commodity.

Governments must rethink how and why to categorize

information as either publicly available or classified.

For example, the U.S. government has found that

releasing previously classified remotely sensed data from

earth-orbiting satellite systems has proven to be invaluable

to non-governmental and international organizations

working in a crisis zone, as well as a potentially lucrative

commodity to a wide assortment of companies in the

United States.

Countries like China and Burma may find themselves 

at a distinct economic and political disadvantage by

limiting how their own industries and citizens use most

effectively new information technologies like the

Internet. 

Q: To what extent is the Internet having an impact

among foreign policy elites in closed societies such as

North Korea?

SOLOMON: It is difficult to answer the question of what

kind and how much access members of closed societies

such as North Korea have. As access to the Internet

allows for multiple views to be aired, unfettered access

to the Internet in closed societies can quite obviously be

problematic to their rulers. Yet it is highly unlikely that

high ranking government officials and foreign policy

elites in countries such as North Korea or China are

either unaware of the power of the Internet or entirely

cut off from it. This knowledge surely influences their

behavior on the international scene.

We know that some information from the Internet is

reaching people in such closed societies as Burma,

China, and North Korea. An Institute report recently

published and posted on our website described the

famine in North Korea. We later learned that it was

downloaded and circulated among non-governmental

organizations (NGOs) working in North Korea.

Another Institute report on the dire situation in Serbia

was downloaded and reprinted for general distribution
by Serbian independent media in Belgrade. In fact,

two journalists from two different major magazines in

Belgrade called to tell the Institute how heartened they

were to learn from the report that Americans were able

to recognize that not all of the Serbian people agreed

with the policies of the Milosevic regime.

Q: How are governments and groups around the world

using the Internet to coalesce and mobilize resources

for shared foreign policy objectives?

SOLOMON: One of the goals of the Institute’s Virtual

Diplomacy Initiative is to help governmental and nongovernmental foreign affairs practitioners understand

how best to use today’s information and communication

technologies to cope with challenges of a post-Cold

War world. In particular, one of the most exciting

Virtual Diplomacy projects that the Institute is

currently working on is an examination of how

governments and non-governmental actors can work

together to share information as they address complex

humanitarian crises. The project is looking at how

governmental and non-governmental actors who may

never have worked together relate to each other

operationally as they try to tackle the daunting

situation before them. By investigating a series of case

studies, we are attempting to identify and dismantle

obstacles that prevent these various entities from

effectively sharing and pooling information as they

mobilize their collective resources. We are working in

partnership with those who have operational experience

in crisis management to develop information-sharing

mechanisms that will allow actors to pool their resources

while meeting their own individual organization

objectives and constraints as they address a complex

international emergency.

It is a particularly daunting challenge when military

and non-governmental organizations, many even

internationally based, all attempt to work together in a

conflict zone. This was a major lesson from our 1994

conference, “Managing Chaos,” which brought

together for the first time members of the NGO

community, U.S. and international policy-makers, and

members of the military to talk about the challenges of

working together in the field on complex humanitarian

emergencies. Ironically, we found that the greatest

obstacle prohibiting these actors from easily distributing

and pooling information resources was not technical at

all; rather it was their own respective internal

organizational differences, protocols, and constraints.

Q: How long do you think it will be before international

grassroots organizations seeking to impact U.S. foreign

policy will be able to utilize the Internet to a maximum

extent?

SOLOMON: The ability for these virtual communities of

“netizens” to bring pressure to bear on governments

and other international actors through e-mail and

Internet campaigns has already proven effective in a

number of cases. By far the most famous is the

successful Internet campaign to ban landmines —

winning the international community’s endorsement as

well as the Nobel Peace Prize. Another example — the

topic of a study that the Institute funded in its early

stages — is the successful campaign by cyber activists,

comprised of college students and members of the

Burmese Diaspora, to persuade the commonwealth of

Massachusetts to sanction U.S. corporations doing

business in both Massachusetts and Burma. Their

objective was, and is, to support the pro-democracy

movement in Burma. Massachusetts’s sanctions,

however, were in direct opposition to U.S foreign

policy toward Burma at the time.

Although the question of whether the legislation

enacted by Massachusetts overstepped the U.S.

Constitution is now before the federal court, there is

little doubt that the Internet played a role in raising the

profile of this issue in the eyes of many in Washington.

As noted in a recent Foreign Affairs article, the

enactment of the law in Massachusetts and subsequent

Internet-generated attention to U.S.-Burmese relations

caused U.S. policy-makers to adjust their earlier

positions vis-a-vis mounting international public

opinion. The case demonstrates that the Internet has

forever altered the power of netizens to influence the

development of U.S. foreign policy without ever setting

foot inside the nation’s capital.

Q: How is USIP’s agenda focusing on issues related to

the Internet and the making of foreign policy?

SOLOMON: The U.S. Institute of Peace practices what it

preaches. In other words, the Institute actively uses

new information and communication technologies to

educate and make available to individuals worldwide

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the research and other information resources that the

Institute produces that address local,

regional, and international conflicts. For example, the

Institute’s Peace Agreements Digital Collection, available

on our website, www.usip.org, seeks to enhance

comparative studies about approaches to peacemaking

with special regard to such issues as refugees and

displaced populations, amnesty, military reform, and

the demobilization of military forces. This online

collection allows negotiators and other interested

individuals to compare different experiences involving

different conflicts and to reflect on and apply the

lessons to their own situations.

We are also using new multimedia technologies to

expand the audience for Institute events and guest

speakers beyond those within Washington, D.C. In

February 2000, during the Institute’s first completely

self-produced live webcast, global audiences were

invited to virtually attend the event and were

encouraged to submit questions to the panel. One of

the questions we received during the webcast was from

a viewer in Mongolia — an excellent illustration of 

how organizations can use the Internet to reach new

audiences and provide educational resources that go far

beyond the physical walls of their respective institutions.

This represents a trend that ultimately will prove of

great utility for individuals in the private, public, and

non-profit sectors, irrespective of what language they

may speak or what region they might call home. _

For more information on the Institute’s Virtual Diplomacy Initiative please

contact Virtual Diplomacy Directors Sheryl Brown or Margarita Studemeister

at {virtual_diplomacy@usip.org}. Virtual Diplomacy papers and conference

proceedings mentioned in the preceding transcript can be found online at:

“http://www.usip.org/oc/virtual_dipl.html”.

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
45

Citizen participation in the legislative process is one of the

cornerstones of the U.S. democratic system. From electing

members of Congress who support their policy positions

to writing a letter to the U.S. president, U.S. citizens

directly influence the decisions of foreign policy-makers. 

This influence is compounded when individuals band

together for a common cause and form special interest

groups. There are several thousand such groups in the

United States advocating policy positions on a wide range

of issues. Currently, more than 3,700 special interest

groups are registered to lobby members of Congress and

the administration. Some of the most influential of

them can mobilize hundreds of thousands of voters for

their cause. And the groups that demonstrate the ability

to carry out skilled and active grassroots campaigns

wield significant influence in Washington, D.C.

THE POWER OF THE CONSTITUENT VOICE

Members of Congress recognize that their primary

responsibility is to please the constituents who elected

them to public office. To do that, they must cast

legislative votes that are largely reflective of their

constituents’ concerns or be prepared to justify an

unpopular vote when it comes time for re-election. 

Although elected representatives are frequently directed

by the leadership of the House of Representatives and

the Senate to vote along party lines, they nonetheless

pay great attention to public opinion polls and the

views of the voters in their district or state. Elected

representatives place tremendous importance on the

policy positions expressed in constituent letters,

telephone calls, e-mail messages, and personal meetings.

For every individual who places a telephone call or

writes a letter to his elected official, it is widely assumed

that as many as 10 additional voting citizens support

that same position. Thus the effect of one act of

lobbying can be magnified at least ten-fold. If a member

of Congress receives a significant number of constituent

responses on an issue, and his party leadership asks him

to vote in opposition to these responses, it is often the

voice of the constituents that sways the final vote.

Constituents can increase their influence by joining a

special interest group or national association. As

members of a national association, they participate in

its internal policy-making process and rely on the

organization’s elected officials or professional staff to

lobby Congress on their behalf. Thus one lobbyist for

such an association speaks for many when representing

policy positions before Congress.

The impact of this approach is magnified when

national associations join together to form coalitions

that speak with one voice on policy matters, making it

difficult for their views to be ignored. Coalition letters

are a mainstay in Washington and provide a quick and

effective means for like-minded organizations to

demonstrate widespread support for a policy position.

EFFECTIVE FOREIGN POLICY LOBBYING

The most successful foreign affairs lobbyists are those

who establish themselves as experts on specific policy

LOBBYING CONGRESS: 

A KEY WAY U.S. CITIZENS IMPACT FOREIGN POLICY

By Audrae Erickson

Lobbying is “a necessary and integral aspect of the U.S. legislative process,” says Audrae Erickson,

Director of Governmental Relations for International Trade Policy at the American Farm Bureau

Federation and Chair of the Seattle Round Agricultural Committee. “It ensures that the rights 

and concerns of U.S. citizens are taken into account before a bill becomes law,” she says.
matters, create well-crafted messages to articulate why a

member of Congress should vote a certain way, and

maintain close working relationships with key members

— including relevant committee chairmen and the

leadership in the Senate and House of Representatives

— and with their staffs. 

“Expert” lobbyists are pivotal in the Washington

lobbying process. Members of Congress and their

staffs, administration officials, foreign officials, and

even other lobbyists seek their advice, and in the

process, the experts gather additional information that

serves to reinforce their expertise. An expert’s influence

is magnified accordingly if the organization he or she

represents demonstrates an ability to amass sizeable

grassroots responses on specific policy matters.

Expert lobbyists must have access to the most recent

information in their subject areas. Relevant

information can be gathered through media reports,

networking with members of Congress or the

administration, meeting with representatives of foreign

countries and other foreign policy lobbyists, reading

publications that specialize in foreign policy issues, and

attending professional seminars and conferences. 

The most credible of these lobbyists have specialized

career backgrounds from which they draw their expertise.

Above all else, successful foreign affairs lobbyists make

an art form of networking with influential people and

utilizing each contact to their advantage.

LOBBYING ON A SPECIFIC FOREIGN POLICY

ISSUE 

One lobbying group that wields tremendous grassroots

influence is the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Founded in 1919, the Farm Bureau is the largest

agricultural organization in the United States. With

more than 4.9 million member families in the 50 U.S.

states and Puerto Rico, Farm Bureau members produce

every commodity grown in the nation. The Farm

Bureau’s ability to mobilize grassroots support on

domestic and international issues that affect agriculture

has earned it widespread recognition as a national voice

for U.S. farmers and ranchers.

The Farm Bureau plays an important role in lobbying

for passage of foreign policy legislation that has a direct

bearing on agriculture, including extension of Normal

Trade Relations (NTR) status for China. The U.S.

Congress has granted NTR status — the same trade

preferences that it gives to other nations — to China

on an annual basis. The sixth largest market for U.S.

agricultural exports, China reciprocates by keeping its

market open to U.S. exports. Denial of NTR status

would seriously jeopardize the U.S.-China trading

relationship. Widely viewed as an economic matter,

annual passage of NTR for China has foreign policy

significance. 

U.S. engagement with China has been at the forefront

of the U.S. foreign policy agenda with Asia since

President Nixon re-established diplomatic ties with

China nearly 30 years ago. The U.S.-China relationship

subsequently became the subject of annual debate in

Washington during congressional deliberations on

whether to confer trade benefits to it. Although the

Senate consistently agrees with the president to renew

NTR, there is generally a resolution introduced in the

House of Representatives to deny U.S. trading privileges

to China.

What should be a debate on the merits of keeping twoway trade flowing between China and the United States

becomes a debate on non-trade issues of tremendous

significance on the foreign policy front. Some members

of Congress, reflecting the views of constituency groups

who are opposed to extending preferential trade

treatment to China, cite, as reasons for denying NTR

status, human rights issues, alleged espionage of U.S.

nuclear weapon technology, allegations of illegal

campaign financing, and China’s long-standing political

strife with Tibet and Taiwan.

Special interest groups greatly influence the annual

China debate in the U.S. Congress. Some groups

believe strongly that China should be penalized for its

actions on the non-trade front and therefore advocate

denying NTR to China. Others believe that

engagement through trade is a viable means to foster

democratic reform in China and therefore support NTR

renewal. Both views dominate media reports for the 60

days during which the House deliberates on this issue,

yet the debate consistently ends with an affirmative

vote in the House to maintain normalized trade with

China. In 1999, the vote sailed through the House

with a margin of 260-170 in favor of NTR extension.

46
47

Hoping to sway the final vote on NTR in their favor,

agriculture and business groups flood members of the

House with telephone calls, e-mail messages,

constituent and coalition letters, and specialized

briefings for congressional members and their staffs to

educate them further on the benefits of passage.

The Farm Bureau annually mobilizes its grassroots

membership in support of normalized trade with

China. In addition to constituent telephone calls,

coalition letters, and meetings with House members in

their Washington, D.C., and district offices, the Farm

Bureau boosts membership participation by establishing

automated services that facilitate the letter-writing and

telephone-calling campaign. For example, an automated

toll free number is established that, when called by a

Farm Bureau member, will generate a personalized

letter to that member’s representative extolling the

virtues of extending NTR to China. Moreover, the

Farm Bureau solicits its key members throughout the

country to make personal contact with targeted

representatives who have not yet confirmed their

support for NTR passage. 

This year, the stakes for trade engagement with China

are even higher. The United States and China have

concluded bilateral trade negotiations for China’s

accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in

which China has agreed to significantly open its market

to agricultural imports. This agreement paves the way

to an increasingly valuable trade relationship with

China for U.S. farmers and ranchers. 

In order to benefit from China’s accession agreement,

WTO rules require that the United States grant

unconditional NTR to China on a permanent basis.

The Farm Bureau, along with other agricultural and

business organizations, has galvanized its members to

secure congressional support for permanent NTR.

However, certain special interest groups oppose China’s

membership in the WTO and are preparing to wage a

massive campaign for its defeat. Their strategy for

amassing grassroots opposition is expected to be matched

by an intensive campaign by those groups that support

its passage.

Congressional consideration of permanent NTR for

China will test the lobbying skills and tactics of

advocates on both sides of the debate. Each side will

place great emphasis on its respective lobbying activities

to communicate the stakes at issue. 

Lobbying is a necessary and integral aspect of the U.S.

legislative process. It ensures that the rights and

concerns of U.S. citizens are taken into account before

a bill becomes law. It gives a voice to the constituent in

that process and thereby ensures that the principles of

our democracy are upheld. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
48

The United States has an unusually open foreign policy

system. While the president and his principal lieutenants

stand at the summit of foreign policy, they cannot act

alone. Literally hundreds of agencies within the

government help form decisions. Some of these

departments and bureaus are obvious — the State,

Defense, Treasury, and Commerce Departments; the

National Security Council; and the offices of the

President’s Special Trade Representative and the President’s

Coordinator for National Drug Policy. The foreign

policy role of some other agencies is less immediately

apparent, but the Energy and Justice Departments and

the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example,

have major roles in the U.S. foreign policy process.

But the foreign policy of the United States can never 

be understood by looking solely at the government.

Throughout American history, and especially in the 55

years since the end of World War II, men and women

working outside the government have played major

roles in shaping the contours of U.S. relations with the

rest of the world. They have done so through writing,

teaching, and appealing directly to Congress and the

executive branch. They have worked through the

political process to elect new administrations with

different points of view. 

Outsiders have often become insiders. Many of the

most important government officials come from the

private sector, serve for a few years, and then return to

universities, research institutes, the media, business, or

law firms. They continue to comment on and seek to

influence the course of U.S. foreign relations from their

positions outside the government. This constantly

changing cast of characters produces an ongoing

conversation over the direction and content of U.S.

foreign policy. Sometimes the volume of the discussion

makes it hard to comprehend individual voices or

themes. But the very unruliness of the discourse makes

it more democratic. Outsiders have regular opportunities

to influence the course of public affairs. Government

officials constantly are able to measure and refresh their

views with the help of the most thoughtful, experienced,

and committed members of the public. 

People outside the government who are interested in

foreign affairs have a dense web of outlets to use in

helping policy-makers to set the diplomatic agenda and

adopt specific policies for implementation. There are

scores of journals of opinion devoted either exclusively

or in large measure to foreign affairs. The journals

Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Public Interest, and

The National Interest, just to mention a few of the most

prominent, all feature articles on the outstanding issues

of the day. All of them are read seriously by the top

officials of the government. The authors of most of the

articles in these journals come from outside the

government. They are professors, bankers, business

executives, lawyers, labor leaders, members of the clergy,

and leaders of human rights and relief organizations.

These quarterly journals of opinion make up only a

small portion of the outlets available for people outside

the government to express their points of view. In

addition, there are the weekly and monthly journals of

opinion — such as The New Republic, The Nation, The

National Review, and The Weekly Standard — that run

the gamut of the political spectrum. For the most part,

PUBLIC-PRIVATE DIALOGUE: 

AN OPEN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SYSTEM

By Robert D. Schulzinger

“U.S. foreign policy emerges from a dialogue between public officials...and private citizens,” 

says Robert Schulzinger, a professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and 

author of eight books on the history of U.S. foreign relations. “Government officials constantly 

are able to measure and refresh their views with the help of the most thoughtful, experienced, 

and committed members of the public,” he says.
their contributors do not have government positions.

Starting in the 1970s, the major newspapers of the

country — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,

The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times —

opened their columns to outsiders on what were called

op-ed (“opposite the editorial”) pages. Now virtually

every newspaper in the country has an op-ed department.

These are filled with thoughtful comments, far more

extensive than is possible in a letter to the editor. In

the past 15 years, the number of electronic journalism

outlets has exploded, offering another venue for the

expression of views from the private sector. CNN,

CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and many smaller radio

and cable TV operators carry round-the-clock

discussions of public affairs. The airwaves are filled

with comments by non-governmental experts offering

their opinions. Whenever there is a war or other

international crisis or noteworthy event, these media

spring into action to offer comprehensive coverage and

a diversity of views on the situation as it unfolds.

In addition, outsiders use a variety of educational and

public forums to bring influence to bear on contemporary

foreign policy topics. Public seminars on the major

issues of the day are conducted by the major schools of

international relations including the John F. Kennedy

School of Government at Harvard University, the

Columbia University School of International and Public

Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton

University, the Johns Hopkins University School of

Advanced International Studies, and the Georgetown

University School of Foreign Service, to name just a

few. An influential role in this area also is played by

research institutes such as The Center for Strategic and

International Studies, the Brookings Institution, the

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the

Council on Foreign Relations — all with headquarters

or offices in Washington, D.C. At these institutions,

faculty members and research fellows — many of whom

have worked for the government and intend to do so

again — express their views and consult with government

officials on a range of foreign policy concerns. 

What is most significant about the vast amount of public

opinion available today is that government officials pay

attention to it. They consider the comments of

outsiders when creating, adjusting, and implementing

their policies. Many U.S. government policies in the

post-Cold War era — formulated in response to an

array of international developments — have been

profoundly influenced by the views of outsiders. Among

them: humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Rwanda,

and Haiti; the promotion of human rights in Bosnia

and Kosovo; the creation and ratification of the North

American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade

Organization; restrictions on the use of landmines; the

expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

(NATO); provision of economic assistance to former

Communist states; relations with China and Taiwan;

the normalization of relations with the Socialist

Republic of Vietnam; the continuation of economic

sanctions on Cuba and Iraq; the promotion of peace in

Northern Ireland; and the effort to resolve the dispute

among Israel, the Arab states, and the Palestinians.

In every one of these episodes the U.S. government

created policy in consultation with, and as a result of,

the ideas and opinions of non-governmental actors and

sometimes the pressure they exerted. On matters

ranging from Northern Ireland to China and Taiwan,

the entire spectrum of post-Cold War U.S. foreign

policy issues has been influenced by the opinions of

highly accomplished and thoughtful men and women

who work outside the government.

The thriving community of non-governmental

outsiders has been the source of many of the most

important officials in every presidential administration

of the past 40 years. Henry Kissinger probably set the

standard. He made his reputation in the 1950s and

1960s as a professor of government at Harvard and a

regular participant in the seminars and study groups of

the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1969 to 1977

he served in the Nixon and Ford Administrations as

national security adviser and secretary of state. Since

1977 he has been a private citizen who consults

regularly with the U.S. government, private business,

overseas governments, and political candidates. 

This pattern has been followed repeatedly in recent

years. Former Secretaries of State George Shultz, James

Baker III, and Lawrence Eagleburger, and current

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have transferred

easily back and forth between roles in government and

academia. So did President Clinton’s first national

security adviser, Anthony Lake; his second secretary of

defense, William Perry; and his second director of

49
50

central intelligence, John Deutch. Deputy Secretary of

State Strobe Talbott, a friend of President Clinton’s

since their years together at Oxford as Rhodes Scholars

in the late 1960s, worked for decades as a journalist for

Time magazine before taking an official position in

government. While Talbott wrote for Time, he delved

deeply into the complexities of arms control,

disarmament, and managing the transition to open

markets in the former Soviet Union. Former Secretary

of the Treasury Robert Rubin, who had immense

authority over the foreign economic policy of the

United States, came to government from the Wall

Street financial world in New York. After he left office,

he took another job as co-chairman of Citigroup, one

of the nation’s largest banks and brokerage houses. His

successor as secretary of the treasury, Lawrence

Summers, had a distinguished career as a professor of

economics at Harvard University before he joined the

staff of the World Bank. From there he went to the

Clinton Administration, serving on the president’s

Economic Policy Council and then as deputy secretary

of the treasury before becoming secretary in July 1999.

In all areas of U.S. foreign relations, policy emerges

from a dialogue between public officials — elected and

appointed — and private citizens. Some individuals

who go back and forth between jobs in the private

sector and government service report that they usually

develop their most innovative and influential ideas

while working outside the government. Many more

people never work for the government at all, but the

views they publish, discuss, and present in face-to-face

meetings with government officials play an essential

role in shaping American foreign policy. _

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
51

Denning, Brannon P.; McCall, Jack H. STATES’

RIGHTS AND FOREIGN POLICY (Foreign Affairs, 

vol. 79, no. 1, January/February 2000, pp. 9-14)

Discussing the impact of individual U.S. states on the

nation’s foreign policy, Denning and McCall cite cases in

which other nations have been targeted by state and local

sanctions, which the authors say are unconstitutional.

They review a Massachusetts statute that banned

companies that did business with Burma from bidding on

contracts to supply goods to that state. “Local sanctions

represent an attempt by states to co-opt the power to set

foreign policy” — a power that, under the Constitution,

“clearly allocates to Washington,” the authors contend. 

Lindsay, James M. LOOKING FOR LEADERSHIP:

DOMESTIC POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY

(Brookings Review, vol. 18, no. 1, Winter 2000, pp. 40-43)

The American public, while not isolationist, remains

disengaged from foreign policy concerns, believing that

“no major challenge to U.S. security exists—” in the postCold War era, Lindsay says. Likewise, Congress, while

largely desiring an active role in foreign policy design, is

“divided by chamber, party, ideology, region, committee,

and generation.” The result, he says, is little coherence or

agreement on how foreign policy should proceed. He says

more presidential leadership is needed to overcome

legislative gridlock.

Rabkin, Jeremy. FROM KOSOVO TO KANSAS (The

American Spectator, vol. 32, issue 11, November 1999, pp.

62-63)

Rabkin says that a decade ago, conservatives routinely

criticized what they termed congressional micromanaging

of foreign policy, while today, liberals scorn the restrictions

placed on American leadership by congressional

conservatives. Some Clinton administration foreign policy

initiatives, he says, have lacked congressional support

because of their impact on domestic affairs. Rabkin

disagrees with those who say the only way to break such

foreign affairs impasses is for Congress to allow the

president more leeway in international negotiations. On

the contrary, he advocates firmer congressional involvement

in order to prevent the president from negotiating

commitments that cannot be honored or enforced.

Rieff, David. A NEW HIERARCHY OF VALUES AND

INTERESTS (World Policy Journal, vol. 16, no. 3, Fall

1999, pp. 28-34)

Rieff believes that, under the Clinton administration,

geoeconomic questions have been dealt with effectively

but geopolitical questions have largely been avoided, or

dealt with on an ad hoc basis. The result, he contends,

has been that neither U.S. allies nor adversaries have had a

clear idea of what direction U.S. policy will take next.

“Effective policy-making needs to have as clear a sense of

what involvement and commitments cannot or should

not be made, as about what must be done even when

sacrifices are required,” he says.

Tucker, Robert. ALONE OR WITH OTHERS (Foreign

Affairs, vol.78, no.6, November/December 1999, pp.15-20)

Tucker examines the unilateralist and/or multilateralist

tendencies of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War

era. He notes that the role of the United Nations “in

determining the circumstances legitimizing force” has

expanded considerably during the Clinton administration.

“Pressured by its European allies,” he writes, “the

administration accepted this expanded role for the

Security Council and thereby may have created significant

obstacles for future administrations confronted by the

need to employ force and, in doing so, to act alone.”

Zoellick, Robert B. CONGRESS AND THE MAKING

OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY (Survival, vol. 41, no. 1,

Winter 1999-2000, pp. 20-41)

Tension between the Executive and Congress over foreign

policy is neither new, nor a unique product of the end of the

Cold War, the author says. Under the U.S. Constitution,

and based on experience, he notes, the two branches of

government must develop U.S. policy by sharing powers

and resolving their “creative tension.” Zoellick says that

trade policy and the use of force are two critical areas where

the experience and evolution in congressional processes

are most evident and where, with vision, consultation, and

an openness to debate, the present generation of political

leaders can strive to meet national aspirations. 

The annotations above are part of a more comprehensive Article

Alert offered on the International Home Page of the Office of

International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State:

“http://www.usinfo.state.gov/admin/001/wwwhapub.html”.

The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

ARTICLE ALERT

_ A GUIDE TO ADDITIONAL READING

U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
52

Alterman, Eric. WHO SPEAKS FOR AMERICA?: WHY

DEMOCRACY MATTERS IN FOREIGN POLICY.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1998. 244p.

Binnendijk, Hans, editor. STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT,

1999: PRIORITIES FOR A TURBULENT WORLD.

Washington: Institute for National Strategic Studies,

National Defense University, 1999. 334p. 

Boren, David L.; Perkins, Edward J., editors. PREPARING

AMERICA’S FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE 21ST

CENTURY. Norman: University of Oklahoma,1999. 432p.

Brands, H. W. WHAT AMERICA OWES THE WORLD:

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF FOREIGN

POLICY. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998. 335p.

Brenner, Carl N. MODELING THE PRESIDENT’S

SECURITY AGENDA (Congress and the Presidency, 

vol. 26, no. 2, Fall 1999, pp. 171-191)

Clarke, Duncan L. AMERICAN DEFENSE AND

FOREIGN POLICY INSTITUTIONS: TOWARD A

SOUND FOUNDATION. New York: University Press 

of America, 1992. 245p. 

Cooper, Mary H. DEFENSE PRIORITIES: IS THE U.S.

PREPARED FOR THE POST-COLD WAR ERA? (CQ

Researcher, vol. 9, no. 28, July 30, 1999, pp.641-659)

Fleisher, Richard; Bond, Jon R. THE DEMISE OF THE

TWO PRESIDENCIES (American Politics Quarterly, 

vol. 28, no. 1, January 2000, pp. 3-25)

Grimmett, Richard. FOREIGN POLICY ROLES OF THE

PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS. Washington:Congressional

Research Service, Library of Congress, June 1999. 24p.

Hamilton, Lee H. PRESERVING THE WAR POWERS

ACT (The American Legion Magazine, vol. 147, no. 1, 

July 1999, pp. 32-34)

Holsti, Ole R. PUBLIC OPINION AND AMERICAN

FOREIGN POLICY. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan,

1997. 257p. 

Hyland, William G. CLINTON’S WORLD: REMAKING

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. Westport, CT: Praeger,

1999. 220p.

Kull, Steven; Destler, I. M. U.S. FOREIGN POLICY:

WHAT DO AMERICANS WANT? (The Chronicle of

Higher Education, vol. 46, no. 2, September 3, 1999, 

pp. B8-B9)

Lake, David A. ENTANGLING RELATIONS:

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN ITS CENTURY.

Princeton: Princeton University, 1999. 332p.

Podhoretz, Norman. STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: A

GUIDE TO THE NEW FOREIGN-POLICY DEBATES

(Commentary, vol. 108, no. 5, December 1999, pp.19-31)

Regan, Patrick M. SUBSTITUTING POLICIES DURING

U.S. INTERVENTIONS IN INTERNAL CONFLICTS

(The Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 44, no.1, February

2000, pp. 90-106)

Rice, Condoleezza. PROMOTING THE NATIONAL

INTEREST (Foreign Affairs,vol.79, no.1, January/February

2000, pp. 45-62)

Scott, James M., editor. AFTER THE END: MAKING

U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN THE POST-COLD WAR

WORLD. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1998. 427p.

Trubowitz, Peter. DEFINING THE NATIONAL INTEREST:

CONFLICT AND CHANGE IN AMERICAN FOREIGN

POLICY. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998. 353p.

U.S. National Security Council. NATIONAL SECURITY

FOR A NEW CENTURY. Washington: The White House,

December 1999. 52p.

Whitcomb, Roger S. THE AMERICAN APPROACH TO

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: AN UNCERTAIN TRADITION.

Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. 149p. _

The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

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U. S. FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 2000
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The Making of U.S. Foreign Policy

KEY INTERNET SITES

Please note that the U.S. Department of State assumes no responsibility for the content and availability 

of the resources listed below; such responsibility resides solely with the providers.

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