Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ralph G. Carter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Texas Christian University. He is a co-author of Making American Foreign Policy and the editor of Contemporary Cases in U.S. Foreign Policy: From Terrorism to Trade.

James M. Scott is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Deciding to Intervene: The Reagan Doctrine and American Foreign Policy, also published by Duke University Press; co-author of The Politics of United States Foreign Policy and American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process; and editor of After the End: Making U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War World, also published by Duke University Press.

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"I now see the foreign policy-making process in a different light than I did before reading "Choosing to Lead." Ralph G. Carter and James M. Scott show that Congress can and regularly does play an important role in foreign policy making. In the future, foreign-policy analysts will have to consider that role rather than assume that only the Oval Office matters."--A. Cooper Drury, author of "Economic Sanctions and Presidential Decisions: Models of Political Rationality"

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CHOOSING TO LEAD

Duke University Press

Contents

Preface.......................................................................................................vii1. Beyond the White House: Bringing Congress into the Foreign Policy Picture..................................12. From Problem to Policy: A Theory of Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurship..........................243. Surveying the Landscape: Congressional Foreign Policy Entrepreneurs since World War II.....................524. The Rising Tide: Entrepreneurship in the Cold War Consensus Period, 1946-1967..............................775. Players in the Game: Entrepreneurship in the Cold War Dissensus Period, 1968-1989..........................1156. Contending with the Thaw: Entrepreneurship in the Post-Cold War Period, 1990-2000..........................1547. After 9/11: Entrepreneurs into the Twenty-First Century....................................................2058. Part of the Landscape: Conclusions on the Entrepreneur Effect..............................................221Notes.........................................................................................................247Bibliography..................................................................................................255Index.........................................................................................................287

Chapter One

BRINGING CONGRESS INTO THE FOREIGN POLICY PICTURE

President George H. W. Bush once claimed: "I have an obligation as president to conduct the foreign policy of this country the way I see fit" (Devroy 1989, A, 27). The president's claim reflects a common perspective widely adopted in popular accounts as well as academic models and conceptual images of foreign policy. Yet this characterization of foreign policy is fatally impaired, as it fails to account for consequential policy makers in Congress who play important roles and have significant impacts on American foreign policy. The lens suggested by the former president is simply not wide enough.

Foreign policy "can be said to be the sum of official external relations conducted by an independent actor (usually a state) in international relations" (Hill 1993, 312). For a country like the United States, a wide range of choices typically exists to confront any given issue. Understanding the choices requires attention to the actors, preferences, and processes of policy making. As Peter Trubowitz (1998, 241) argues, "it is the realities of power inside a country, not the distribution of power in the international system, that determines the course of the nation's foreign policy." Along with the actions themselves, the origins of and motivations for the actions are important. Thus, in this book foreign policy is defined as the goals that the federal government's officials "seek to attain abroad, the values that give rise to those objectives, and the means or instruments used to pursue them" (Wittkopf, Kegley, and Scott 2003, 14).

So, from where do the goals of United States foreign policy come, and who selects the instruments for their pursuit? Which policy makers would a wider lens include to better understand foreign policy? These questions defy easy answers. On one hand, most observers stress the role of the president as the preeminent actor in foreign policy making, and most studies of the subject focus on the president and other White House participants in the process (Rudalevige 2005). Bert Rockman (1994, 59) summarizes this view well when he writes that "because of constitutional interpretations of presidential prerogatives in foreign policy and the president's unique ability to act, leadership in foreign policy is normally thought to be the particular responsibility of the president." Put more simply, "the captain of the ship of state is the president" (Crabb and Holt 1992, 297, emphasis in original).

Although an equal branch of government, Congress is less often mentioned as an important actor in the foreign policymaking process. Although there are exceptions (e.g. Blechman 1990; Hersman 2000; Howell and Pevehouse 2007; Lindsay 1994a; Martin 2000; Ripley and Lindsay 1993), relatively few studies attribute any systematic or significant influence by Congress in foreign policy. Moreover, in the eyes of many observers Congress seems neither prepared nor willing to challenge presidential preferences in foreign policy making (Hinckley 1994). Instead, "Congressional acquiescence in foreign affairs ... is the product of a powerful set of internal norms and attitudes, customs and institutions, a veritable culture of deference" (Weissman 1995, 3).

Yet inside the Washington Beltway, a different perspective is found. According to Lee Hamilton (R-Ind.), longtime member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, more recently a leader of the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Group, and currently the director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, "although the president is the chief foreign policy maker, Congress has a responsibility to be both an informed critic and a constructive partner of the president" (Hamilton 2002, 7). Some observers go much further and claim that "it is impossible to understand fully the foreign policymaking in the United States without accounting for Congress" (Ripley and Lindsay 1993, 6). Most presidents would ruefully agree. Virtually every president since World War II has at some point castigated Congress for intruding into the "presidential" realm of foreign policy making. President Ronald Reagan illustrated the typical Oval Office frustration when he pounded his desk and told Republican congressional leaders, "We've got to get to where we can run foreign policy without a committee of 535 telling us what we can do" (Hoffman and Shapiro 1985, A, 22).

In foreign policy making the president cannot be both preeminent and hamstrung; Congress cannot be both acquiescent and an important actor that must be taken seriously. Thus a puzzle is posed: Which view is correct-the preeminent presidency or the assertive Congress?

A careful examination of all the facts suggests that the balance favors the latter choice-the assertive Congress. Even the most diehard defenders of the preeminent presidency admit that Congress occasionally plays important roles (Weissman 1995). Well-known instances of congressional assertiveness in foreign policy making include:

-ending United States participation in the Vietnam War, passing the War Powers Resolution, and investigating and publicizing covert operations and intelligence community activities in the 1970s;

-prohibiting funding for the Nicaraguan contras, promoting a greater emphasis on human rights in Central America, promoting and encouraging the Central American Peace Plan, legislating a nuclear freeze, and imposing economic sanctions on South Africa in the 1980s;

-codifying the economic embargo on Cuba, funding the dismantling of Soviet nuclear weapons (thereby keeping Soviet nuclear scientists and engineers gainfully employed), and voting down the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the 1990s.

Part of the analytical problem is that "Congress is not truly an 'it' but a 'they,' and the hundreds of members who constitute that plural have their own political needs and substantive agendas" (Rudalevige 2005, 428). As...