Empereur

US Presidents and Foreign Policy

According to American history, Presidents’ participation in foreign policy making has an increasing trend. The ideal of separation of power based on the Constitution was not to minimize, but to constrain the power of president. The goal is to avoid having an accumulation of power whereupon it would lead the latter to abusive act. However, the edge of presidential power has a certain degree of flexibility; by nature it is expandable with the consent of constituency and legislative braches, and indeed, politicians are by nature opportunists and power seeking, when the opportunity comes, they want to seize this unique chance to strengthen their wherewithal. As a result, with unprecedented power, the current American President – George W. Bush is intentionally creating an American empire, just as President McKinley at the last turning century, President Bush is asserting a new role for future American presidency.

Since early American history, Presidents have dominated foreign policy. At the early period, the main objective was the expansion of the United States, at least in terms of concept. Begins with the very first President, George Washington, he set the country’s early approach to foreign policy in his famous Farewell Address of 1796, he declared that “Europe has a set of primary interest, which to us have none, or very remote relation… our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course.” President Jefferson had a more positive, idealized broadly pan-American conception about the ideal dimension of the US “America has a hemisphere to itself, it must have a separate system of interest which must not be subordinated to those of Europe.” During President Monroe’s years, Monroe Doctrine could be taken as the point at which, in American and in certain European eyes, the US system begun to have parity with the European system. By thus separating Europe from America, Monroe emphasized the existence of distinct American, and specifically US, interests. His successor, John Quincy Adams, in a message to the House of Representatives on March 15, 1826, he declared that “America has set of primary interests which have none or a remote relation to Europe.” Later, both Presidents John Tyler and then James Polk used Monroe Doctrine to justify US expansion to the South and West.

In the 20th century, US presidents continued to dominate foreign policy, and their power grew significantly. Starting with President William McKinley who led the nation into the Spanish-American War, despite the country’s previous policy of isolationism; he justified American involvement on moral grounds. The United States was supporting Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain. The military success against Spain on all fronts had not only restored McKinley’s public popularity, but also made him the most influential personage in the United States by far. The war against fallen Spanish empire permitted the United States to built its’ own, it was a historical transition for both the country and the White House. For America, from this moment, the independence was completed, and under an age of imperialism, its foreign policy becomes interventionist. Politically, it engendered the transformation of presidential office from its late-nineteenth century weakness into a recognizable prototype of its present day form.

President McKinley’s role should be emphasized with a greater importance, because as the 25th president of the United States (1897-1901), William McKinley set the path for his successors to the modern US Presidency and ideal of American oversea expansionism. One of McKinley’s famous phases was: “We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is Manifest Destiny.” McKinley viewed the unprecedented imperial and economic expansion of the United States as such unique opportunity, he naturally sized it. His argument of Manifest Destiny is in my view to legitimatize his action, to reinterpret the greediness of the United States and lead it into a new historical course that requires a new kind of leadership. During his four and half years of presidency, the United States emerged from more than a century of isolationism and became one of the great powers of the world.

McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26^th American president was probably the first American President to have a real sense of a World Balance of Power. In 1910 he told Baron Van Eckardstein, that should Great Britain fail in her Traditional role, “the United States would be obligated to step in at least temporarily in order to restore the balance of power in Europe.” “In fact” he argued, “we ourselves are becoming, owing to our strength and geographical situation, more and more the balance of power of the whole world.”

T. Roosevelt was a visionary president because he understood that an increasing world dependency on US power will enable the country, and its leader to impose American will on the international system. This scheme was well understood by T. Roosevelt’s successors. Starting with Woodrow Wilson, his fourteen points during the Versailles Peace Conference after the Great War enabled the US to introduce its believes to the world, including self determination, collective security, personal liberty and freedom as universal democratic values. Wilsonian style of diplomacy was - we plan to change the world; therefore we must work with the world. Subsequently, before WWII was over, the United States assumed the role of advocate of centrist world liberalism. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’: freedom of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear established post WWII American moral leadership and its international influence. President Eisenhower’s intervention against invasion of Suez Canal by France and Great Britain was a case in point. During that period, the UN, and International Law were the moral weapons for America’s crusade against tyranny, injustice and to promote the enterprise of American world leadership.

Today, the American President is defacto the diplomat in chief and enjoys unprecedented power. A President can supervise diplomacy conduct in different ways, in addition to career or appointed ambassadors, a President can also send personal representatives or secrete missionaries, who report back to President directly. In addition, the modern technology is making American President more powerful than ever.

On one hand, the development of technology gave to Presidents more means for freedom of movement and communicating with foreign leaders. Letter, telegrams and give way for the Red Line phone, and vision phone, the advancement of technology is making the President available at any moment, anywhere, especially during the time of crisis. Yet the powerful position of modern American President is threatening American liberty, its very political system, and its world leadership. Like it or not, President George W. Bush is creating intentionally a global Pax Americana, using the Air Force, the Navy and the Army as a imperial force to dominate, to punish and to imposing order. The Europeans, among others, fearful to such unprecedented uncontrollable power are deserting America, not receiving support at the UN from France, and Germany in Europe, and Mexico and Canada in the Americas is the most convincing prove.

The history of American presidency shows that Presidents had limited power at the first. As the nation’s influence increases, President’s power in general, and in diplomacy in particular, increases. De facto, at various periods, starting after the overthrow of British imperial power, American presidents have attempted to eliminate or reduced the gap between ideals and institutions by concrete efforts to reform their institution and practice so as to make them to the ideals of the American Manifest Destiny. Today, the American President is undoubtedly the most powerful man in the world, and the United States is the strongest country in human history, yet with such unprecedented military and economic power, the US is not only resented by the rest of humanity, but it is losing its global influence, its moral leadership and its very best political tradition. What irony.

Note from the author:

This is a draft paper; its quality is ‘ok.’ If you liked it, please leave me a note by email, if not, may be it is about time to make your own.

PS. And don't tell me your need my help for your high school paper because you are only 12.