Looking Beyond Traditional Actors: The U.S. Congress
Joshua O’Brien
The literature of international relations is full of material on the contributions of executives, militaries, and foreign ministries. In the United States, the popular perception of foreign policy is that it is handled primarily by the executive. And international relations, more generally, seems to imply the relations of states as the natural, core definition. But the view that international relations is only the relations of states is incomplete. There are a plethora of other actors worth our consideration—both within and outside of states.
To illustrate this point I want to provide an example from each category. From areas beyond states, I have focused on the Catholic Church previously, and I hope to expand on this in the future.
From within states, I want to focus on the United States Congress. In the classical, 19th century view, Congress has the primary responsibility of declaring war and ratifying treaties. All else in foreign affairs is left to the more responsive offices of the President and his cabinet. Since the middle of the Cold War, this view has hardly held. Congress has claimed significant power over military involvement through the War Powers Resolution. Beyond this controversial document, Congress has also taken increasing sway over the budgets of the State Department and Defense Department since the Vietnam War. It has also become more in-tune with specific issues, often to the point of causing issues for a President’s policy.
In 1990, the United States Congress was blind-sided by the rapid build-up in Desert Shield. The Congress was supportive of early efforts but feared President Bush was committing the country to war against Iraq. The legislature wanted to give more time to sanctions, despite the fragility of the international coalition. U.S. policymakers were forced to strategically appease Congress to pursue an authorization to use military force. This culminated in Secretary of State James Baker’s summit with the Iraqi Foreign Minister in Geneva. The Summit was a strategic blunder in international relations terms—it undermined American resolve. But domestically, it convinced Congress that all other options were exhausted, and forced the country to war.
Other examples of Congressional considerations blundering strategy can be easily found through the post-Cold War era. In 1995, a Congressional repeal of the Bosnian arms embargo kickstarted the Dayton process. In recent years, humanitarian concerns led Congress to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, a bill which the executive branch argued would harm its strategic interests with the People’s Republic of China.
The U.S. Congress is only one example of a domestic actor, albeit a particularly powerful one in a particularly powerful country. There are internal political and economic actors in states across the world, that all have effects on foreign policy. It is important as strategic thinkers and scholars to consider their role—all too often it is easy to assume single-mindedness in a state’s intention—that it is one actor, with one wheel. In reality, it is more like that scene from Mike Myers’s The Cat in the Hat. Two children and an anthropomorphized feline, with three steering wheels, all trying to drive the same car.