THE FOREIGN POLICY PRESIDENCY AFTER THE COLD WAR: NEW UNCERTAINTY AND OLD PROBLEMS

In: Politics & policy, Band 25, Heft 3, S. 471-485

Abstract

Post‐Cold War US foreign policy and policy making cannot escape constitutionally defined and political constraints of the past: divided government and Vietnam. In an era when "vital interests" are no longer self‐evident, "foreign" and "domestic" issue areas are interpenetrated and the presidential foreign policy establishment is, like the Congress, subject to a much broader range of domestic political pressures. Though a pragmatic internationalism survives, a system designed to deliberate and depart incrementally from the status quo requires leadership and, as during the Cold War, the locus of foreign policy leadership is the presidency.