America's Foreign Policy Toolkit

Key Institutions and Processes

Charles A. Stevenson

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781452289908
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Relazioni internazionali

How is foreign policy in the United States really crafted? In America's Foreign Policy Toolkit, Charles A. Stevenson identifies what the key foreign policy tools are, which are best for which tasks, and what factors constrain or push how they're used, bringing fresh insight into the challenges facing national security decisionmakers. Engagingly written with examples drawn from "behind the scenes," Stevenson brings depth and dimension to the institutions and processes of foreign policy. This brief text looks first at the historical context and then in turn at the tools available to the president and congress, and to the shared budgetary tools. The following section surveys each of the diplomatic, economic, military, intelligence, homeland security, and international institutions instruments. The book concludes by considering the limitations of the U.S. toolkit. Each chapter ends with a case study that connects the theory of the toolkit with the realities of decisionmaking.

1	The Framers’ Design

“Foreign troops remained on American soil [in 1786]; ships in its ports flew other flags while U.S. vessels rotted at their moorings. Congress could not enforce treaties. Unpaid debts had destroyed U.S. credit abroad. The lack of respect with which the nation was treated provided the most compelling sign of U.S. weakness.”

—Historian George Herring¹

“[W]hen I saw this Constitution, I found that it was a cure for these disorders. I got a copy and read it over and over. I had been a member of the Convention to form our own state constitution, and had learnt something of the checks and balances of power, and I found them all there. I did not go to any lawyer to ask his opinion…. But I don’t think worse of the Constitution because lawyers and men of learning, and moneyed men, are fond of it.”

—Massachusetts farmer Jonathan Smith²

The instruments for U.S. foreign policy making have their roots in the nation’s early history. The foundations first developed under the Articles of Confederation for governing the new nation created an ineffective central government that states routinely ignored. How then could foreign powers be expected to show it any more regard? This led to numerous problems addressed several years later with the drafting and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The new document strengthened the central government, providing it with tools to wield its power and checks to keep that power in balance. Many of the institutions and processes used to create and carry out U.S. foreign policy today stem from the Constitution. Understanding how they developed provides key context to the foreign policy making process.

In 1786, the United States was weak, vulnerable, and nearly bankrupt, on the brink of becoming a failed state. As George Washington wrote to James Madison, “We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion.”³ These problems weighed heavily on the minds of the delegates who met in Philadelphia the following spring to design a stronger and more durable structure for the young government. To protect the new nation from both domestic and foreign threats, they crafted the Constitution with its various policy tools.

The colonies had declared their independence a decade earlier and, with crucial foreign support, had won enough military encounters to persuade the British to conclude a peace treaty, although 15 months passed after the decisive battle at Yorktown before the preliminary treaty was signed in January 1783. Even then, both sides failed to comply with some of its provisions for another dozen years, leaving America boxed in by hostile forces, including Britain, Spain, and Native American tribes.

The Continental Congress served as the central authority for the Revolutionary War effort, establishing committees to manage the functions of government, such as supplying the army and sending emissaries abroad. The newly independent states agreed upon a framework for a national government called the Articles of Confederation. Drafted in 1777, it was not ratified until 1781, when Maryland, the lone holdout, was satisfied by Virginia’s cession of western land claims to the national government.

The Articles established a “confederacy,” a “league of friendship” among the 13 states, each of which explicitly retained “sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right which is not … expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” Each state had a single vote in the Congress, and nine votes were required to borrow or appropriate money, to engage in war or approve treaties, to build land or sea forces, or to name the top commanders. The government had a common treasury, but taxes had to be voted on and supplied by the state legislatures after receiving requests from Congress. Delegates were chosen by the states each year, and no person could serve more than three years in any six-year period.

America Under the Articles of Confederation

The Articles of Confederation were designed to preserve strong state governments and create a weak central government, and they achieved that purpose. The Articles lacked most of the features and powers that drove the rebels away from the British Crown. (See Table 1.1.) The states continued to have their own armies and navies, to make trade and other arrangements with their neighbors, and even to deal on their own with foreign governments. When asked by Congress for taxes to pay for the national government’s activities, states were often slow or delinquent in providing their shares. They named their delegates each year, but Congress often went for long periods without a quorum to do business. This left the central government ineffective in carrying out policy and enforcing laws.

The blessings of liberty did not include a strong economy, however, and the United States fell into a severe depression immediately after the war. The new government was saddled with wartime debts and repayments of foreign loans. Its paper currency was nearly worthless, and specie (coin money) was in short supply. Britain saw no need to grant its former colonies special trade benefits. Instead, Britain refused to sign a commercial treaty and barred U.S. ships from its lucrative West Indies trade as well as from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. U.S. ships could no longer trade freely in British home ports, where Americans faced higher fees and duties on permitted goods but could not ship fish, whale oil, or salted meats at all. All these restrictions devastated the New England shipping and fishing industries. Britain refused to allow exports of manufacturing items that might promote the creation of infant U.S. industries, but it flooded the American market with other goods, and the Confederation Congress lacked the power to pass import duties. In the years before 1789, America imported two to three times as much from Britain as it exported to the former motherland. State governments contributed to the economic decline by voting for debt relief and issuing paper currency that quickly lost value.⁴ The Continental Congress had the exclusive authority to negotiate with foreign powers, subject to a supermajority of nine states to approve any agreements, but there were no takers.

Table 1.1

Independence From Tyranny

GRIEVANCE AGAINST KING GEORGE III	PROVISION IN ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION
Refused to agree to laws for public good	Congress decides on war, peace, spending, and requisitions from states
Harassed and fatigued legislative bodies and dissolved them repeatedly	Freedom of speech and debate in Congress; annual meetings
Refused to call new elections, leaving people exposed to “dangers of invasion and convulsions”	Annual appointment of delegates; right of recall by legislatures; three-year term limit
Obstructed laws for naturalization	Free inhabitants are free citizens who have freedom of movement
Obstructed justice; made justices dependent on his will	Full faith and credit for judicial proceedings in other states
“Sent swarms of officers to harass our people”	Very limited national government
Kept standing armies without consent	Every state shall have a well-regulated and disciplined militia but no separate navy or army
Made military independent of and superior to civil power	Congress alone decides questions of peace and war
Quartered large bodies of armed troops, “protected them from murders of our people”	No war, treaty, or appropriations unless 9 of 13 states agree in Congress
Cut off trade with the rest of the world	Congress regulates trade
Imposed taxes without consent	States shall contribute to the common treasury
Deprived people of trial by jury	Congress names commissioners for disputes
Took away charters; suspended legislatures	Each state has “sovereignty, freedom, and independence”
Has waged war, “ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns”	Firm league of friendship for common defense
Sent foreign mercenaries for “death, desolation, and tyranny”	Every state shall have a “well regulated and disciplined militia”
Excited domestic insurrections and urged on “merciless Indian savages”	Congress manages relations with Indians

The Declaration of Independence makes 27 specific complaints against King George III—“repeated Injuries and Usurpations”—that separation was meant to overcome. In 1777, the Continental Congress adopted a framework for the new nation, the Articles of Confederation. While most of the former colonies had ratified the Articles by 1779, Maryland held out until 1781 in a dispute over claims to western lands. Before considering how the Constitution of 1787 solved problems inherent in the Articles, it is useful to compare how that initial framework dealt with the grievances against King George III.

In addition to these severe economic problems, the new nation faced several direct threats to its security, as detailed in Box 1.1. Britain, Spain, and even former ally France took hostile actions against the new nation. As the New York chamber of commerce declared in 1787, “All Europe did indeed desire to see us independent; but now that we are become so, each separate power is desirous of rendering our interests subservient to their commercial policy.”⁵

Box 1.1

Threats to America in 1786

The United States faced many national security threats in its early years, including challenges from other countries seeking land in North America and those wishing to take advantage of the young nation’s lack of a strong central government. The following lists security threats to the United States in 1786, when the Articles of Confederation offered little means for the country to combat them. Note that not all of the threats are foreign. The Constitutional Convention gathered in Philadelphia that same year to draft a Constitution that would allow the federal government to deal with such problems.

• Britain and Spain block the United States from taking control of newly awarded territory and support Indian land claims.
• Britain bars the United States from West Indies trade and refuses to sign a commercial treaty.
• Britain backs the Mohawk confederacy to oppose U.S. expansion.
• Britain refuses to vacate five forts on the Great Lakes as promised in a 1783 treaty, reinforcing troops there and adding ships; 6,000 to 7,000 armed loyalists camp along the border.
• Britain bars imports of U.S. whale oil and whale bone, leaving Nantucket virtually ruined.
• Spain denies the United States access to the Mississippi River and to the ports of New Orleans and Havana, posting garrisons at Natchez and Vicksburg.
• Spain regains Florida in 1783, claiming some territories in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia as far north as the Ohio River.
• Spain recognizes Creek independence and promises guns and gunpowder.
• Spain negotiates treaties with the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee and gives arms to resist American settlement.
• Indians conduct ongoing wars on the western frontier, raiding settlements on the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.
• Seven to eight thousand Creek Indians threaten Savannah.
• France imposes taxes on American tobacco and closes the French West Indies to U.S. exports.
• The Barbary States seize U.S. ships for ransom; Algiers declares open war on U.S. ships.
• U.S. ships are often seized near the West Indies, even when not smuggling.
• Secessionist spirit grows in New England and the West.
• Shays’s rebels discuss with Britain possible separation from the Union.
• Vermont sends an emissary to London regarding a possible treaty.

The national government could do little to fight back. It lacked the power to raise taxes or to build a national army and had no centralized executive authority to carry out a national strategy. Seven hundred U.S. troops raised in 1785 to secure the Ohio River had gone unpaid and turned to mutiny and desertion. In June 1786, Secretary of War Henry Knox told Congress that the troops already in the West were “utterly incompetent to protect a frontier” along the Ohio. In October, he warned of “a general combination among the southern and western Indians … to levy war on the frontier.” Congress voted to expand the army from 700 to more than 2,000 soldiers, but within a few months, the plan was dropped because of a lack of funds. The Treasury told Knox that it could not even afford the $1,000 requested for ammunition for troops already in place. By the summer of 1787, while delegates met in Philadelphia, Knox warned that, unless America built up its military power, “a general Indian war may be expected.”⁶

With most of its ships sold, the U.S. navy had pretty much ceased to exist by 1786. Yet, U.S. merchant ships no longer had British protection when sailing in the Mediterranean. Each year, 80 to 100 U.S. ships traded along the North African coast. But, without protection after 1783, several ships were seized by Barbary pirates and their crews imprisoned or sold as slaves. America’s only recourse was to pay ransom and then tribute. The Rhode Island delegation in Congress sent a message to its governor in September, 1786, expressing alarm at the pirate raids and warning that “an enemy on our frontiers stands prepared to take every advantage of our prostrate situation.”⁷

These military threats could not be countered without money, and the central government did not have the proper tools to raise it. Several times during 1786, the Treasury Board told Congress how desperate the situation was, listing the failures of states to provide the requested revenues and the bills and loan repayments coming due, and warning that the fiscal crisis could “hazard … the existence of the Union.”⁸ Congress tried three times in the 1780s to amend the Articles to allow import duties of up to 5%, but one state and then another vetoed the change.

After Shays’s Rebellion—when groups of several hundred men in western Massachusetts blocked courthouses to prevent property seizures—broke out in September–October 1786, Secretary Knox told Congress “that unless the present commotions are checked with a strong hand, that an armed tyranny may be established on the ruins of the present constitutions.”⁹ George Washington was also alarmed and saw the possibility that London was behind the trouble. He wrote to a friend in October 1786. “For God’s sake, tell me what is the cause of all these commotions? Do they proceed from licentiousness, British-influence disseminated by the Tories, or real grievances which admit of redress?”¹⁰

Faced with these foreign and internal threats, with a government lacking the power to raise money, settle disputes, or field a larger army, American political leaders coalesced for reform. A group meeting in Annapolis in September 1786, spearheaded by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, approved a call for a new convention “to render the Constitution of the Federal Government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” They called the “situation of the United States delicate and critical,” mentioning both foreign and domestic “embarrassments.”¹¹ Congress finally agreed to the proposal in February 1787 and summoned delegates to Philadelphia in May.

Some historians see the Constitution as a response to mainly domestic problems, notably Shays’s Rebellion and interstate trade disputes, coupled with a vision of national expansion and greatness.¹² It is almost as if the advocates of a strong central government had been waiting in the wings until enou...