The President's Inner Foreign Policy Team

In: The review of politics, Band 30, Heft 3, S. 292-307

Abstract

As Chief of State and head of government, the President is the epicenter of the management of American external relations and the formulation of foreign policy. Not only does he welcome the leaders of other countries who come on summit visits, receive personally the diplomatic emissaries of foreign governments accredited to the United States, and participate in many other formal diplomatic functions, but he also is responsible for executing those segments of the law that pertain to international affairs, for appointing United States diplomats and communicating with other governments, for making treaties, and for initiating and enunciating foreign policy. Addressing himself to the last of these, President Truman cryptically declared: "The President makes foreign policy." Dean Rusk later commented that this "is not the whole story," but "it serves very well if one wishes to deal with the matter in five words."