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Partisanship in Foreign Policy
| Article
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19768 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1991 |
2,605 Words |
| Author
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Lee Edwards
Lee Edwards is senior editor for the Current Issues section
of THE WORLD & I. His latest book is The Power of Ideas: The
Heritage Foundation at Twenty-five. |
If President Bush surprised observers (and set an important precedent) by asking the U.S. Congress for the authority to use force to expel Iraq from Kuwait, Congress in turn confounded its critics by passing a bipartisan resolution giving the president the authority he requested. Far better than its critics, Congress understood that under the U.S. Constitution and by reason of many sound decisions over the years, it has the right to play a primary, not a secondary, role in the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy.
The Founding Fathers considered Congress the most representative branch of the people, the depository of democratic ideals and wisdom. Of 18 powers they gave to Congress in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, 7 affect foreign policy directly.
Congress was given the power to declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, make rules for the government and the regulation of the armed forces, grant letters of marque and reprisal, define offenses against the law of nations, regulate foreign commerce, and to advise and consent on treaties and ambassadorial appointments.
With regard to that first power, advocates of a strong executive have made much of the Founder's changing the language from Congress having the power to "make war" to "declare war." But James Madison explained in his Constitutional Convention notes that the change meant that Congress would have the power to initiate war, although the president could act immediately to repel sudden attacks (that is, take defensive but not offensive action) without congressional authorization.
Several years later, in debate over the Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, Madison said emphatically that "the power to declare war, including the power of judging of the causes of war, is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature."
Although the Constitution only specifically authorizes the president to receive foreign envoys, negotiate treaties, appoint ambassadors, and serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he was, of course, expected to play a (but not the) central role in foreign policy.
What, then, did the Founders intend? Which branch--the legislative or the executive--did they envision as having the primary responsibility for U.S. foreign policy? In a word,
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