Lesson 51 of 1524
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy is a goal plus a tool. Naming only the goal leaves out how the country intends to get there.
Practice this chapterIsolationism keeps the country out of lasting foreign commitments. Liberal internationalism accepts commitments, institutions, and cooperation. Containment was the Cold War strategy of stopping the spread of a rival’s power.
The State Department runs diplomacy. The Defense Department runs the military. The National Security Council coordinates advice inside the White House. None of the three replaces the Senate’s treaty role.
Hard and soft power
Hard power coerces. Soft power attracts.
A sanction or a deployment is hard. A respected example is soft. Most real policies mix them.
Worked example
The president negotiates a written agreement with another country and calls it a treaty. The Senate never votes on it. Is it a treaty in the constitutional sense, and what is it instead if the president still intends to carry it out?
- 1Article II says the president makes treaties by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, provided two-thirds of the senators present concur.
- 2There has been no Senate vote. The two-thirds requirement is unmet.
- 3The document is therefore not a treaty under the Constitution, whatever the press release calls it.
- 4If the president adopts it on executive authority alone, it is an executive agreement. It can guide the executive branch, and a later president can abandon it more easily than a ratified treaty.
Result: It is not a treaty. Carried out anyway, it is an executive agreement.
Why. The Senate vote is what turns a negotiated text into a treaty. Skipping that vote does not illegalize every international deal, but it does keep the deal in the weaker category.
Only Congress may declare war. Presidents have used military force without a declaration. That practice does not amend the clause that gives the declaration to Congress.
Practice margin
This chapter
A fresh set from this chapter only. Choose 10 or 20. Multiple choice and fill-in, with no repeat inside the set.