PUBLIC-PRIVATE DIALOGUE:
AN OPEN U.S. FOREIGN POLICY SYSTEM
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"U.S. foreign policy emerges from a dialogue between public officials...and private citizens," says Robert Schulzinger, a professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of eight books on the history of U.S. foreign relations. "Government officials constantly are able to measure and refresh their views with the help of the most thoughtful, experienced, and committed members of the public," he says. |
The United States has an unusually open foreign policy system. While the president and his principal lieutenants stand at the summit of foreign policy, they cannot act alone. Literally hundreds of agencies within the government help form decisions. Some of these departments and bureaus are obvious -- the State, Defense, Treasury, and Commerce Departments; the National Security Council; and the offices of the President's Special Trade Representative and the President's Coordinator for National Drug Policy. The foreign policy role of some other agencies is less immediately apparent, but the Energy and Justice Departments and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, for example, have major roles in the U.S. foreign policy process.
But the foreign policy of the United States can never be understood by looking solely at the government. Throughout American history, and especially in the 55 years since the end of World War II, men and women working outside the government have played major roles in shaping the contours of U.S. relations with the rest of the world. They have done so through writing, teaching, and appealing directly to Congress and the executive branch. They have worked through the political process to elect new administrations with different points of view.
Outsiders have often become insiders. Many of the most important government officials come from the private sector, serve for a few years, and then return to universities, research institutes, the media, business, or law firms. They continue to comment on and seek to influence the course of U.S. foreign relations from their positions outside the government. This constantly changing cast of characters produces an ongoing conversation over the direction and content of U.S. foreign policy. Sometimes the volume of the discussion makes it hard to comprehend individual voices or themes. But the very unruliness of the discourse makes it more democratic. Outsiders have regular opportunities to influence the course of public affairs. Government officials constantly are able to measure and refresh their views with the help of the most thoughtful, experienced, and committed members of the public.
People outside the government who are interested in foreign affairs have a dense web of outlets to use in helping policy-makers to set the diplomatic agenda and adopt specific policies for implementation. There are scores of journals of opinion devoted either exclusively or in large measure to foreign affairs. The journals Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Public Interest, and The National Interest, just to mention a few of the most prominent, all feature articles on the outstanding issues of the day. All of them are read seriously by the top officials of the government. The authors of most of the articles in these journals come from outside the government. They are professors, bankers, business executives, lawyers, labor leaders, members of the clergy, and leaders of human rights and relief organizations.
These quarterly journals of opinion make up only a small portion of the outlets available for people outside the government to express their points of view. In addition, there are the weekly and monthly journals of opinion -- such as The New Republic, The Nation, The National Review, and The Weekly Standard -- that run the gamut of the political spectrum. For the most part, their contributors do not have government positions.
Starting in the 1970s, the major newspapers of the country -- The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times -- opened their columns to outsiders on what were called op-ed ("opposite the editorial") pages. Now virtually every newspaper in the country has an op-ed department. These are filled with thoughtful comments, far more extensive than is possible in a letter to the editor. In the past 15 years, the number of electronic journalism outlets has exploded, offering another venue for the expression of views from the private sector. CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and many smaller radio and cable TV operators carry round-the-clock discussions of public affairs. The airwaves are filled with comments by non-governmental experts offering their opinions. Whenever there is a war or other international crisis or noteworthy event, these media spring into action to offer comprehensive coverage and a diversity of views on the situation as it unfolds.
In addition, outsiders use a variety of educational and public forums to bring influence to bear on contemporary foreign policy topics. Public seminars on the major issues of the day are conducted by the major schools of international relations including the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, to name just a few. An influential role in this area also is played by research institutes such as The Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Council on Foreign Relations -- all with headquarters or offices in Washington, D.C. At these institutions, faculty members and research fellows -- many of whom have worked for the government and intend to do so again -- express their views and consult with government officials on a range of foreign policy concerns.
What is most significant about the vast amount of public opinion available today is that government officials pay attention to it. They consider the comments of outsiders when creating, adjusting, and implementing their policies. Many U.S. government policies in the post-Cold War era -- formulated in response to an array of international developments -- have been profoundly influenced by the views of outsiders. Among them: humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti; the promotion of human rights in Bosnia and Kosovo; the creation and ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization; restrictions on the use of landmines; the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); provision of economic assistance to former Communist states; relations with China and Taiwan; the normalization of relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; the continuation of economic sanctions on Cuba and Iraq; the promotion of peace in Northern Ireland; and the effort to resolve the dispute among Israel, the Arab states, and the Palestinians.
In every one of these episodes the U.S. government created policy in consultation with, and as a result of, the ideas and opinions of non-governmental actors and sometimes the pressure they exerted. On matters ranging from Northern Ireland to China and Taiwan, the entire spectrum of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy issues has been influenced by the opinions of highly accomplished and thoughtful men and women who work outside the government.
The thriving community of non-governmental outsiders has been the source of many of the most important officials in every presidential administration of the past 40 years. Henry Kissinger probably set the standard. He made his reputation in the 1950s and 1960s as a professor of government at Harvard and a regular participant in the seminars and study groups of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 1969 to 1977 he served in the Nixon and Ford Administrations as national security adviser and secretary of state. Since 1977 he has been a private citizen who consults regularly with the U.S. government, private business, overseas governments, and political candidates.
This pattern has been followed repeatedly in recent years. Former Secretaries of State George Shultz, James Baker III, and Lawrence Eagleburger, and current Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have transferred easily back and forth between roles in government and academia. So did President Clinton's first national security adviser, Anthony Lake; his second secretary of defense, William Perry; and his second director of central intelligence, John Deutch. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, a friend of President Clinton's since their years together at Oxford as Rhodes Scholars in the late 1960s, worked for decades as a journalist for Time magazine before taking an official position in government. While Talbott wrote for Time, he delved deeply into the complexities of arms control, disarmament, and managing the transition to open markets in the former Soviet Union. Former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, who had immense authority over the foreign economic policy of the United States, came to government from the Wall Street financial world in New York. After he left office, he took another job as co-chairman of Citigroup, one of the nation's largest banks and brokerage houses. His successor as secretary of the treasury, Lawrence Summers, had a distinguished career as a professor of economics at Harvard University before he joined the staff of the World Bank. From there he went to the Clinton Administration, serving on the president's Economic Policy Council and then as deputy secretary of the treasury before becoming secretary in July 1999.
In all areas of U.S. foreign relations, policy emerges from a dialogue between public officials -- elected and appointed -- and private citizens. Some individuals who go back and forth between jobs in the private sector and government service report that they usually develop their most innovative and influential ideas while working outside the government. Many more people never work for the government at all, but the views they publish, discuss, and present in face-to-face meetings with government officials play an essential role in shaping American foreign policy.