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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 May 2020
J.W. Fulbright once called it "American Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century Under an Eighteenth Century Constitution." In no other policy sphere has our governing charter generated as much anxiety about its suitability to the modern world. Can a system with divided authority, with two major foreign policy decisionmaking institutions, meet the need for united national action on life-or-death matters like, for example, the control and deployment of nuclear arms?
There are those who would deny the problem through simple assertion of presidential predominance. Citing authorities from John Marshall (as federalist Congressman) through Woodrow Wilson (as Constitutional scholar) to Edwin Meese (as presidential counselor), executive branch practitioners and even scholars assert repeatedly that, on foreign policy, the president reigns supreme (or at least ought to).
1. This was the title of a Fulbright speech and article published in Cornell Law Quarterly, Fall 1961.
2. “The President is sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” John Marshall, 1800, Quoted in Henkin, Louis, Foreign Affairs and the Constitution, Mineola, N.Y.: The Foundation Press, 1972, p. 45.Google Scholar
3. “One of the President's power is… his control, which is very absolute, of the foreign relations of the nation.” Woodrow Wilson, 1908, quoted idid., p. 304.
4. “It is the responsibility of the President to conduct foreign policy; limits on that by the Congress are improper as far as I'm concerned.” Edwin Meese III, quoted in The Washington Post, April 15, 1983.
5. Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power, New York: Signet, 1964, p. 42.Google Scholar
6. Corwin, Edwin S., The President: Office and Powers, New York: New York University Press, 1940, p. 200.Google Scholar
7. The Federalist, New York: Random House, Modern Library, p. 454.Google Scholar
8. Quoted in Fenno, Richard F. Jr., Congressmen in Committees, Boston: Little, Brown & Company, p. 30.Google Scholar
9. See especially Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr., The Imperial Presidency, Boston: Houghton Mifflin CompanyGoogle Scholar, chs. 3 & 4.
10. “American Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century…,” p. 7.
11. Schlesigner, , Imperial Presidency, p. 51.Google Scholar
12. U.S. Commitments to Foreign Powers, Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, August 17 and 21, 1967, pp. 82, 141.
13. News Conference of August 18, 1967, reprinted ibid., p. 126. Dwight D. 14 Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963, pp. 468- 69
15 See Ransom, Harry Howe, The Intelligence Establishment, Harvard University Press, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Sundquist, James L., The Decline and Resurgence of Congress, Washington, D.C: the Brookings Institution, 1981, p. 99.Google Scholar Sundquist provides a thorough account of the ebb and flow of congressional foreign policy engagement in chapters V, X, and XI.
17. Quotations are taken from the War Powers Resolution, Public Law 93-148. The text and comprehensive history of its enactment and application appear in The War Powers Resolution: A Special Study of the Committee on Foreign Affairs by John J. Sullivan, 1982.
18. Franck, Thomas M. and Weisband, Edward, Foreign Policy By Congress, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 61–162.Google Scholar
19. For a contemporary discussion of the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 and the broader problems of power-sharing on covert operations, see Johnson, Loch K., “The CIA: Controlling the Quiet Option,” Foreign Policy, Summer 1980, pp. 143-53.Google Scholar
20. On the enactment of the “fast-track” procedures, see Destler, I.M., Making Foreign Economic Policy, Brookings Institution, 1980, pp. 170-78.Google Scholar On their implementation in 1979, see Cassidy, Robert, “Negotiating About Negotiations,” in Thomas M. Franck, editor. The Tethered Presidency, New York University Press, 1981, pp. 264-82Google Scholar; Destler and Thomas R. Graham, “United States Congress and the Tokyo Round: Lessons of a Success Story,” The World Economy, June 1980, pp. 53-70; and Destler, “Trade Consensus; SALT Stalemate: Congress and Foreign Policy in the Seventies,” in Thomas E. Mann and Norma J. Omstein, editors, The New Congress, American Enterprise Institute, 1981, pp. 319-59.
21. Ford on evacuation of U.S. citizens from Vietnam in 1975: “In accordance with my desire to keep the Congress fully informed., and taking note of the provision of section 4 of the War Powers Resolution“; Carter on the Iran rescue mission: “Because of my desire that Congress be informed and consistent with the reporting requirements of the War Powers Resolution“; Reagan on U.S. participation in the force monitoring the Egyptian-Israeli Sinai agreement: “consistent with Section 4(a)(2) of the War Powers Resolution” (emphsis added). See House Committee on Foreign Affairs, “The War Powers Resolution: Relevant Documents, Correspondence, Reports,” Committee Print, December 1983, pp. 43, 47, 57.
22. For a fuller analysis of the Lebanon episode, see Destler, I.M., Gelb, Leslie H. and Lake, Anthony, Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, pp. 159-62.Google Scholar
23. Stansfield Turner and George Thibault, “Intelligence: The Right Rules,” Foreign Policy, Fall 1982, p. 130.
24. See I.M. Destler, “Congress and Foreign Policy Operations: The AWACS Sales to Saudi Arabia,” paper prepared for Executive Legislative Relations Project, Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, publication forthcoming.
25. For an analysis and prognosis on the congressional veto in general, including broad reference to other writings on the subject, see Joseph Cooper, “The Legislative Veto in the 1980s,” in Lawrence C. Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, editors, Congress Reconsidered, Congressional Quarterly Press, 1985, pp. 364-89. For a foreign policy-specific reaction to the Court's Chadha decision see, I.M. Destler, “Dateline Washington: Life After the Veto,” Foreign Folic, Fall 1983, pp. 181-86.
26. Lloyd N. Cutler, “To Form a Government,” Foreign Affairs, Fall 1980, pp. 126-43.
27. John G. Tower, “Congress versus the President,” Foreign Affairs, Winter 1981/82, pp. 234, 243.
28. Warren Christopher, “Ceasefire Between the Branches: A Compact in Foreign Affairs,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1982, pp. 999ff.
29. For some of this author's prescriptive thoughts, see: “Executive-Congressional Conflict in Foreign Policy: Explaining It, Coping With It,” in Lawrence C.Dodd and Bruce I. Oppenheimer, editors. Congress Reconsidered, 3rd edition, 1985, pp. 351-60; “Congress,” in Nye, Joseph S. Jr., editor. The Making of America's Soviet Policy, New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 1984, pp. 54–61Google Scholar; “Dateline Washington: Congress as Boss?” Foreign Policy, Spring 1981, pp. 176-80; and “Trade Consensus, SALT Stalemate” (fn. 20), pp. 354-59.