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. 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.
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. 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.