Foreign policy actors

We will describe these different actors and see how they interact over time. The American foreign policy is characterized first of all by an extremely important device and machinery in so far as one has to deal with a diplomacy that became global at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a multi-sectoral diplomacy that is developing in a whole series of areas being one of the absolutely fundamental elements of the concept of superpower. When we talk about superpower, we often take the politico-military aspects, but there are many others with the capacity to intervene in various fields. This diplomacy is taken care of by numerous professional and private actors.

The State Department is not the only player in American foreign policy dealing with transnational history issues. This multipolar character of American foreign policy is the permanent interaction between public and private actors who are not responsible for the diplomatic function. There is an extremely blurred border when it comes to U.S. foreign policy and the distinction between public and private because there is a permanent back-and-forth between the public and private sectors. This phenomenon is a colonization of the public sector by private actors. There is also a proliferation of public institutions whose public nature is sometimes unclear with federal agencies.

One may wonder whether or not American foreign policy is a coherent entity. Even today, the American position is difficult to determine because different actors take the floor and it is difficult to see how they agree. Foreign policy is also permanently between centralisation, i.e. coordination by the state authorities and decentralisation by the fact that the administration and government can be complemented or competing or contradicted by other institutions that will move in a different direction. As long as the United States has an increasingly global policy, we are witnessing a diversification of decision-making centres.

The President/Congress dyarchy

Distribution of original powers

This dyarchy is absolutely fundamental because we have two heads of the executive branch in both domestic and foreign policy. The checks and balances system is a political system that is fundamentally marked by the balance of power. Each power has a counter-power that is made compulsory by the American constitution in order to achieve the synthesis between the strong power to fight against external elements and the respect of freedom within in order to avoid tyranny.

The Powers of Congress

Congress is the dominant power in the United States at first. Congress is the fundamental element in the American political system at first. It is Congress that has the power to declare war and put an end to it through the ratification of treaties, it gives the army the financial and logistical means to function, from the point of view of the implementation of foreign policy it is it that ratifies the appointments in all federal administrations and in particular the Secretary of State who is a key post. On the other hand, Congress and the Senate, through the Foreign Affairs Committee, can deal with a whole series of issues, including the hearing of administrative officials. The Senate and Congress also regulate immigration. It is a fundamental and founding institution that at the beginning of American history has most of the prerogatives.

Powers of the President

The President only comes second in the Constitution in Article 2. In the American legal culture, a president is a potential tyrant, which is why the president is elected through Congress but can also be dismissed by Congress. He's the commander of the armies. The President can launch a military operation without the repeal of the parliament for a limited period of up to 60 days, after which Congress and the Foreign Affairs Committee must approve it, and that is what happened during the intervention in Kosovo in 1999. This also marks a strengthening of the prerogatives of the US President. In negotiating and signing treaties, he represents the nation. This is one of the things the president has taken over as he goes along, but Congress must then ratify it. From 1789 to 1989 only 21 treaties were not ratified out of more than 1500 signed, including the Treaty of Versailles. It also nominates Secretaries and ambassadors.

Changes in power relations

It is both a balance of power and a balance of power from the end of the 18th century to the present day. We are still in a process of this kind with four general ideas:

1. continuous reinforcement of the powers of the President [see the increase in executive agreements at the expense of treaties]: since the end of the 19th century and until today, there has been a strengthening of the President's powers in relation to the powers of the Senate. As the United States expands and emerges on the international scene, this will be in line with presidential prerogatives in foreign policy. A treaty can be signed as such or as an executive agreement. When considered treaty, it must pass through Congress, otherwise if it is an executive agreement, the signed text does not pass through Congress. The President will ensure that the signed texts are "executive agreements" to bypass the power of the Senate.
2. in times of crisis, Congress sits behind the president.
3. The phases of expansion are marked by a preeminence of the executive with strong personalities such as Wilson and Roosevelt.
4. Since 1980, relations have become increasingly conflictual: there is a balance of power, but these relations have become increasingly conflictual internally and externally since the 1970s and 1980s, with a change in majority more than 90% of the time.

From the creation of the American Republic to the end of the 19th century, there was a predominance of Congress in foreign policy, even though Monroe distanced himself from it in the 1804s. There is a hinge between the years 1890 and 1914 where there is a very clear shift in the balance of power marked by Théodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, which breaks down the rather restricted framework of presidential prerogatives. Roosevelt arrogates the mission of "the Americanization of the world..." while Wilson embodies the rise of American foreign policy by traveling in person to the Versailles conference.

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  Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.

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  Thomas Woodrow Wilson.

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  Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1933.

In the inter-war period, there was a continuous increase in the powers of the president. The period from 1919 until the Second World War was marked by a strong confrontation between the President and Congress, which was based on a balance of power between the two institutions. First of all, there is the opposition to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which is first of all a vote by the Senate against Wilson rather than against the Treaty of Versailles, reminding us that it is he who has the power to decide whether or not to ratify the treaty. From the 1930s onwards, when Roosevelt arrived, the confrontation between the president and Congress resumed, among other things, on the establishment of the New Deal in domestic politics, but there were strong objections to foreign policy, since neutrality laws were passed by Congress against Roosevelt's advice.

After these strong oppositions in the 1930s was the time of the Second World War, when Congress stood behind Roosevelt, what Arthur Schlesinger called the beginning of the "imperial presidency" until the 1950s when presidential power reached its peak in foreign and domestic policy.

In the 1950s, there was a change of scene in which Congress regained an advantage with the Vietnam War, which was first disputed by the public and then by the Senate in particular with regard to the expenses it entailed. In 1972 the Case Zablocki Act was passed, requiring the president to consult Congress for any executive agreement limiting his or her capacity. In 1973 the War Power Act was passed, stipulating that the president must seek congressional approval for a commitment of U. S. military troops beyond two months. These are two significant elements of the pendulum reversal.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Senate will embark on an evaluation of federal programs, and in particular federal programs intended for the outside world. After the Second World War, the United States embarked on the implementation of global aid policies. In the 1980s, the Reagan presidency relaunched the Cold War without reference to Congress, a time when much of the initiative fell to the federal government.

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  Official portrait of George H. W. Bush, 1989.

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  Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States.

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  George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

The 1990s was marked by a fairly constant confrontation between the presidency of Bill Clinton, who, during almost every term of office, had to deal with a Republican-majority Senate, and therefore American foreign policy was marked by a series of presidential decisions and counter-decisions. There was the intervention in Somalia in 1994, but very quickly Congress refused to continue funding this intervention, leading to the withdrawal of the United States, which led to a failure of the intervention. In 1995, the United States intervened in Yugoslavia at the head of NATO. This intervention is done, but it only took a short time for it to be refused. Beginning in the 1990s, the United States blocked payment of the U. S. contribution to the United Nations decided by Congress, and even today funds are still not paid to the United Nations as a contribution. In 1999, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which was a top priority for Clinton, was refused ratification. During the Clinton presidency, interference between domestic and foreign policy was very much present.

In the decade 2000, in the aftermath of September 11, the Patriot Act was passed to strengthen presidential prerogatives in the fight against terrorism. Between 2001 and 2004, the Congress stands in solidarity with President George W. Bush. The invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq could only be possible because the presidential function has regained control over its prerogatives.

There is a clear thread running through the balance of power between the Presidency and Congress. There is a process that has evolved in favour of the presidential pole.

The bureaucratic maze

It is the idea that in the implementation of U. S. foreign policy. There are more and more institutions involved in American foreign policy. It is a crucial phenomenon in American history that is the bureaucratic proliferation which is a phenomenon of all major industrial states with a proliferation of bureaucratic and administrative organizations. In order to understand American foreign policy, this dimension must be taken into account.

In the 1970s, Graham Alisson developed the concept of bureaucratic politics. It is an idea that allows us to think about political and state decision making in the context of a complex decision-making process and rivalry between Departments. This bureaucratic maze is colossal in the United States to illustrate this polyphony of American foreign policy. The long-lasting phenomenon of the rise of the American president is a dyarchy between federal administration and Congress.

Departments

The Department of State

Department of State Organizational Chart.

The Department which is most important from the outset is the State Department because it divides the federal administration in the implementation of foreign policy. In 1789 they were small administrations, while from the 20th century onwards they grew. The Department of State saw its headcount increase from 6 in 1789 to 20,000 in the 1960s. The Secretary of State has six under-secretaries who must negotiate among themselves. Policy planning Staff is the governing body. There are a whole series of floors that make the implementation of this complex policy complex.

In the long run, there is a very traditional State Department administration founded as a traditional diplomacy that is the business of professionals and which has taken a long time to adapt to the new diplomatic realities. It is a rather classic concept of international relations.

This State Department, which functioned in symbiosis with the President at the beginning of the 19th century, will see its relations with the President deteriorate as the President's prerogatives will increasingly be exercised to the detriment of Congress, but also to the detriment of his Secretary of State, who initially became a collaborator rather than an executor. The reports become difficult because the secretary of state has difficulty admitting the strengthening of presidential powers. Gradually, the State Department will be marginalized and competing with other departments that will take more initiatives in foreign policy making.

The Department of Defense

The Department of Defense, which was originally divided into a War Department and a Navy Department, will merge to form the Department of Defense. This is a department that will become more and more important. In the rise of the Department of Defense, there are two world wars and in particular the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In 1945, there was a partial demobilization since there were still other fronts and the Cold War was looming. The War Department, which must be deflated after a conflict, remains important, especially since the signals remain red in a whole host of areas. The Cold War arrived with the vote of the National Security Act, which finally merged the Department of War, Navy and the U.S. Navy and the Department of Aviation in a "super-department" of defense symbolized by the Pentagon. In 2009 it was 2 million employees, a budget of 500 billion dollars. During the Cold War 75% of the American administration works for this department. Today, the Department of Defense has taken the lead over the State Department.

Structure of the DoD in March 2012.

Other departments will make the relationship between the United States and the world unique because American foreign policy and expansionism are expressed in other ways in a multiplicity of policy areas.

The Treasury Department

U. S. Organizational Chart Dept. of the Treasury.

The Treasury Department becomes extremely important, especially at the time of the Versailles Treaty negotiations. The United States, in the aftermath of the First World War, was to play a financial role, particularly in the economic issues of the inter-war period, with the question of reparations, debts from wars and Allied credits, which were resolved through a number of plans such as the Dawes plan and the Young plan. The development of these plans is largely done with the help of the Treasury Department playing an increasingly important role in American diplomacy as economic issues become increasingly important in international relations. In the aftermath of World War II, the Treasury Department played a prominent role in the Conference of Bretton Woods. From the 1970s onwards, this department increased its role in financial matters during the G8 summits.

The Department of Commerce

The Department of Commerce manages U. S. economic and trade relations with the rest of the world. From the time the American power gained in importance, during the twentieth century its role will increase. The major GATT and WTO negotiations are largely conceived at the Department of Trade.

The Department of Justice

Considering the recent development of international judicial bodies during the 20th century with the International Court of Justice in particular and the International Criminal Court, the Department of Justice is at the forefront. This department will play a major role in the fight against drug trafficking.

The foreign policy initially conceived at the State Department, as American expansion progresses and the dilatation of its areas of intervention, there is a polarization of the places of decision of the American foreign policy.

The National Security Council[NSC]: A State Department?

There are other agencies that play a role in the implementation of U.S. foreign policy, and in particular the National Security Council, which was seen as a State Department. It was created by the National Security Act in 1947. It is a restricted body for the necessary coordination of foreign policy organs in a Cold War context. Its limited composition will grow rapidly. It is an organization that will soon overshadow the Department of State because it has more direct access to the president involved in the implementation of major U.S. foreign policies from the 1960s onwards.

Intelligence services

Intelligence services are organizations that have multiplied since the 1910s and 1920s. By the late 1980s, there were 10 intelligence services identified in the United States that often competed with each other. In particular, the proliferation of intelligence services has prevented the flow of information about the Pearl Harbour attack leading to the centralisation of services.

Until the Second World War, it was considered that there should not be a single intelligence service that would create a situation close to the German Nazi state. With the Second World War, there was a process of centralization that took place with the creation of the Office of War Information in 1941, which disseminated information and propaganda. Two major pieces of information were created with the Office of War Information [OWI] and the Office of Strategic Services[OSS] in 1942, which dealt with intelligence and espionage. The prerogatives of these two agencies are clearly defined.

Between 1945 and 1947 a dismantling is envisaged but with the advent of the Cold War, the process of centralization will be advanced with the National Security Act which will create the CIA merging the OWI and OSS. The CIA's mission is to collect intelligence, particularly in communist countries, and to conduct a series of covert missions. The CIA reports directly to the National Security Council. In 1961 the CIA will plan the Bay of Pigs operation, which was a failure, but also the Condor operation and a whole series of other things, such as financing contracts in Nicaragua to pay back the Marxist-Leninist regime in place.

Cold War scandals led to the adoption of the Intelligence Oversight Act [IOA] in 1991 to frame the CIA's activities. However, the CIA does not mean the end of other intelligence services. There is official centralization with the creation of the CIA, but in practice the question of intelligence remains decentralized. In addition, there is competition between the FIB, which deals with internal affairs, and the CIA, which deals with external security. When it comes to the fight against terrorism, these two services compete with each other. There are extremely tenuous links between different structures.

Government Agencies

It is yet another stage in foreign policy. Government agencies are public or para-public structures that are more or less attached to the Departments being both linked and autonomous. They are federal agencies independent of the Departments or secretariats but take part of their prerogatives from these Departments or secretariats.

American foreign policy is a thousand sheets of paper between extremely different organizations that report to very different people. Control over all of these organizations is not as strong as one might think. There are a multitude of ad hoc and non-departmental structures such as the United States Information Agency [USIA] created in 1953 and integrated into the Department of State in 1999, the United States Agency for International Development [USAID], 1961. Partly integrated into the Department of State after 1989, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency [ACDA] was founded in 1961 and integrated into the Department of State in 1999.

Private actors

Private actors initially appear to be fairly straightforward but are more complicated than they appear to be. Private actors have a role in U.S. foreign policy. In U.S. foreign policy, private actors are even more important than in other countries. The federal state, in American history, comes second only. Historically, the federal state is weak and gradually asserting itself during the 20th century, the actors having gained in importance will maintain it.

The division between public and private actors is closely linked to the question of general interest. The general interest, the public interest, the interest of the nation is not only in theory embodied by the sovereign. More generally, what defines the general interest in the United States is the balance of power between the various actors in American foreign policy. The American general interest is only the result of the balance of the various forces that are investing in the political field, which makes it possible to explain a number of aspects of American foreign policy.

Private actors participate in foreign policy in three ways:

• Lobbying: putting pressure on the public authorities to steer foreign policy in a particular direction;
• through field action: by conducting their "own diplomacy";
• by expert work: in the construction of foreign policy.

Lobbying in Congress

Lobbying is particularly active in Congress. Lobbying is an integral part of the American political culture, even being indicated in the Constitution of 1787 as a "right to petition", meaning that every citizen has the right to petition Congress. It is an essential element of the freedom of expression that underpins a lobbying right that will become institutionalized throughout American foreign and domestic politics. Lobbying is built according to the principle of the Checks and Balances with the idea that everyone can express their opinion and the one who is able to mobilize more in their favour wins. The general interest was the result of a sum of interests representing the lobbying system.

Lobbying is first and foremost a practice that will be legally regulated from the 1940s onwards in order to avoid a certain number of excesses, then legally recognized as such in the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act of 1946 and supplemented by the Lobbying disclosure Act of 1995, which determines precisely which groups are accredited to Congress. It's a series of interest groups that have been represented by specialized firms in Washington.

There are three types of organisations and lobbies working in foreign policy at the Congress.

• NGOs: like Human Rights Watch;
• economic lobbies: all trade union associations such as the American Chamber of Commerce or employers' associations such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the AFL-CIO. The Congress will be approached by a series of large associations representing groups from the production sectors to represent the interests of their corporate branches;
• Ethical groups: practically all diasporas have their own lobby group in Congress, such as the Israelis who will push for the implementation of a foreign policy in favour of Israel, the Cuban lobby, Armenians, etc.

Lobbyists are not necessarily of private origin. The federal administration sometimes arouses a number of lobbies to override Congress, such as the American Israel Public Committee and administration to support the Eisenhower administration in implementing a foreign policy in favour of the Israeli state or the Cuban lobby in the Reagan administration to tighten immigration policy.

Action on the ground

Lobbying is only one element of the action of government actors, much of this work is done on the ground. From a transnational perspective, these actors act alongside, outside, against, parallel to the administration. By acting in parallel, they act outside of state boundaries and the state context. Non-governmental actors are not in contact with countries, the border issue is not of particular interest to them. Their latitude of action is not that of the American government, which is generally more flexible and responsive to events. It is questionable whether these non-state actors are completely independent or structurally dependent on the US state. No U. S. non-governmental organization is completely independent of the U. S. government, nor do they have the same understanding of the national interest as the state interest.

Foreign policy is conducted by a host of parallel organisations. Protestant missions throughout the world, for example, have both their own specificity, acting in some way, but above all, there are structures that are organizations that are evangelized movements promoting at the same time an Anglo-Saxon way of life and values, in particular constituting a significant strike force throughout the 19th century.

The great philanthropic foundations that developed from the end of the 19th century onwards are throughout the 20th century implementing philanthropic diplomacy. Foundations are organizations that set up humanitarian campaigns in Latin America, Asia and Europe that are both campaigns for the eradication of diseases and at the same time do so with an American apparatus that helps modernize public health facilities. It's a projection of American foreign policy. These large organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation in the inter-war period, the Ford Foundation in the Cold War, conduct a true diplomacy with substantial funds.

NGOs developed during the First World War, such as CARD in the interwar period and with refugee aid committees. Between 1975 and 1988 will be set up Watch-Human Rights Watch and in 1993 will be founded Transparency International. They are humanitarian organizations that will act in particular in the First World War. These organizations are part of a global projection of the United States into the world embodying a number of principles.

The industrialists and bankers led a banking diplomacy in the inter-war period, with the establishment of loans that allowed a number of post-World War I reconstruction in coordination with the State Department. The role is so important that they are more expansionist than the U. S. government itself because their financial interests are not the geopolitical interests of the U. S. government at the time, particularly in order to penetrate a number of banking markets.

Annexes

• Casey, Steven. "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the Politics of Mobilization, 1950-51*." Diplomatic History 29.4 (2005): 655-90.