Foreign Policy Analysis - Midterm Study Guide

 Gov 330 Midterm Study Guide:

Survive and Advance

Tuesday, March 7

Jan. 19: Presidential Power

Readings:

• “Introduction: The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy,” Wittkopf and   McCormick

• Obama would promote domestic values, but not impose them
• Globalization: the political, economic, and social forces that are drawing peoples together regardless of state boundaries
• Domestic values influencing foreign policy contradicts the realist theory which says that actions are based solely on maintaining authority in the international system

• Ordinary citizens have to supply the soldiers and pay the financial cost of politics, Kant argues that liberal democracies are forces for peace
• Congress and public policy are constraints on US foreign policy

• “Person and Office: Presidents, the Presidency, and Foreign Policy” Nelson

• Congress was too large, diverse, and slow to handle foreign policy so the President handled foreign policy; post Vietnam era, Congress is taking a larger role in foreign policy
• Supreme court usually lets the President do his/her thing, lets them expand their constitutional powers
• Presidential character is important because their personality and leadership style heavily influence foreign policy - Presidents getting elected now do not have a lot of experience in foreign policy because they tend to be state governors, rather than secretary of state like the olden days - Gore and Bush - people didn’t like how aggressive Gore was

• “The Obama Doctrine,” Goldberg

• Kerry gave Churchillian speech - Kerry wanted to stick with the red line that Obama drew - Obama decided not to air raid at the last minute - Kerry was pissed because he thought America lost credibility - do we bomb for the sake of bombing to assert military dominance - how do we handle international humanitarian norms - Samantha Powers and Obama had different values in foreign policy, Powers wants to protect everyone but Obama did not want to risk soldiers unless there was a security risk to the United States - Obama is not a liberal interventionist - DON’T MAKE A RED LINE OBAMA - his national security team did not agree with him - Obama used an analogy to Iraq for why he did not want to get involved in Syria. Red line = in 2012 if you use chemical weapons, the US is going to wreck you...then we didn’t - Obama said that not being credible in one region, he would lose credibility everywhere

• “Trump is Going to Regret Not Having a Grand Strategy,” Zenko and Lissner

• Tactical Transactionalism - foreign policy framework that seeks discrete wins, treats foreign relations bilaterally, rather than multilaterally and resists the alignment of means and ends. Trump doesn’t have an end goal, he is just doing things, myopic - shortsighted - short term foreign policy impacts of small incidents rather than long term impacts that play toward a single policy end - does not have guiding principles or benchmark of success -
• Ex. He cut the F-35 orders for a cheaper F-18 Super Hornet - which shows a focus on tactical wins, but not long term goals. Ex. We might need the F-35s for something in the future - There are not comparable models to F-35 - F-35 is designed with a stealth profile - F-18s are not - The discontinuation of the F-35 is problematic for all of our allies who have already purchased them

Class & Reading Notes:

Foreign policy is the study of interactions between countries; plans countries make to interact with one another. This encompasses, but is not limited to:

• different forms of diplomacy
• Perceived interest in regions
• Intelligence gathering
• Economics and trade agreements
• Humanitarian aid & NGO’s
• Cultural Diplomacy
• Media & environmental analysis

Foreign Policy and foreign interaction are not the same thing; special interests vastly affect foreign policy.

Presidential Powers via the constitution

• Receive ambassadors and appoint our own

• The reception and appointment of ambassadors constitutes formal recognition; we do not formally recognize Iran, North Korea, and Bhutan

• Commander and chief of the army & the navy
• Negotiate treaties

• Treaties must be ratified by the senate; the senate has ratified ~ 2000 treaties and opposed 22
• When congress passes a law and the president signs it, he can offer conditions or limitations in signing statements
• Treaties make up only 10% of our foreign agreements; 90% are executive agreements which do not need congressional approval

• Appointing the executive branch
• Head of state

Advantages that presidents have over congress in FP

• He is the head of state
• He is only one person (other opinions make life difficult)
• He is the only one with a national constituency
• Informational advantages
• Influence on the public

** Kibbe fun fact: Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president but his is still higher than Congress’s

National Security Act of 1947

• Created the National Security Council/National Security Advisor - NSA was not supposed to be a position with action/autonomous power, but has evolved into a very power position
• NSA 1947 also created the CIA because the US did not have a centralized intelligence office

Congressional Power: Important Court Cases

1. US v. Curtiss Wright Export Corporation (1936)

1. War between Bolivia and Paraguay--Congress proposes resolution authorizing an arms ban between the US and South America
2. May 1934: Congress authorizes FDR to place an embargo on the sale of arms to South American countries engaged in the Chaco War.

The Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation was indicted for violating the embargo by selling machine guns to Bolivia.

1. The Corporation defends itself on the grounds that Congress had delegated legislative power to grant too much authority to the President
2. The court found that there is a distinction between executive power in internal and external affairs

1. Internal-constitutional only
2. External-Constitutional limitations don’t apply because the president is the sole representative of our sovereignty thus the president is given considerable power in the international arena that surpasses his power in internal affairs

1. Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer (1952)

1. The US has entered the Korean War and Truman chooses not to impose price controls, instead attempting to avoid inflation by creating a Wage Stabilization board. The Steel industry rejects the board’s proposed wage increases unless they are allowed greater price increases. The government refuses.
2. Fearful of the damage a strike could pose to the domestic wartime economy, Truman seizes the production facilities by Executive order, paying the steelworkers and putting the factories under federal control
3. Youngstown Sheet and Tube takes the US to court

1. Court declares the seizure of the facilities to be unconstitutional
2. Established that during an active war (as well as in peacetime) the government cannot take private property in an unconstitutional manner
3. Justice Robert’s theory of executive power emerges

Jan. 24: NSC/Advisory Systems

        Readings:

• “The Committee in Charge of Running the World,” Rothkopf #1

• Americans are highly uneducated about geography, which makes them unable to understand foreign policy and the global international affairs climate - Therefore, Americans cannot and do not participate in the basic business of democracy - Because Americans are stupid, the President has the NSC to keep him/her (hopefully) from doing anything stupid! NSC is a complex web of people and acronyms. This covers the structure of the NSC

• NSA is very powerful because this is a cabinet level position that does not require senate confirmation. They are “first among equals” on the Principals committee

• NSA is top person, principals committee is where most decisions are made (President, VP, Sec State, NSA, Secs and undersecs, others appointed by Pres, AG sometimes invited, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - statutory advisors

• It is a big deal that Trump put Bannon on the Principals committee and removed Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - who takes the intelligence and military out of the decision making process for foreign policy and instead puts the devil (Bannon) who is a political advisor on the committee - then Trump says he didn’t know what he was signing when he made it a law

• The bottom tier committee is the deputies committee (comprised of deputy to senior members of the us cabinet)

• the Deputy National Security Advisor (Chairman)
• the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
• the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
• the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
• the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development
• the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• the Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs
• the Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy

• “America in Decline, the NSC Ascendant” Rothkopf #2 and Rothkopf-end

• Henry Kissinger: Secretary of State for Nixon and Ford, opened relations with China, ended US involvement in Vietnam, prolific writer, and relaxed tensions with Russia - he was basically president without being president
• Kissinger became post-Cold War foreign policy’s first “crossover” superstar - he was an advisor to Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson - Kennedy used him as an advisor, but he refused to give up public speaking and alienated Kennedy loyalist because he toed the party line
• Kissinger and Nixon complemented each other, Kissinger was the international and charming intellectual that approved of the establishment, which Nixon hated. Nixon was the classic American who provided the basic structure of policy - Nixon was coarse and stiff (he called the state department “impossible fags” so he is already on my list).
• Nixon relied more on the NSC because he said that State could not get things done
• National Security Study Memoranda (NSSMs) - agency views on the most important issues of the time
• National Security Decision Memoranda (NSDMs) - what’s the policy decision
• NSSMs and NSDMs are important because this is the first time that the administration undertook large scale contingency plans
• Kissinger expanded the NSC from 12 to 80 professionals
• Kissinger became more relied on by the President because his office was just down the hall while cabinet people were ten minutes away by car
• Kissinger put college classroom debate into the government - he asked the “what if” questions

Class & Reading Notes:

The National Security Council and National Security Advisor were positions created in 1947 with the ‘National Security Act’; it is important to note that when the NSA position was created it was not intended to be an actionable position.

• The CIA was also created under the National Security Act because the US had never had a centralized intelligence office
• Created the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Merged the Department of War and the Department of the Navy into the National Military Establishment, which in 1949 in an amendment to the act was renamed the Department of Defense
• The role of NSA has become a public role in the last 20 years

Three types of NSA’s