Localizing Foreign Policy

Abstract

A leading article in a 1983 issue of the Wall Street Journal headed ‘George v. Maggie’, concerned a dilemma then facing President Reagan: in the long-running dispute over the practice, employed by some US state governments, whereby they taxed foreign corporations on the basis of their worldwide earnings (the ‘unitary taxation’ controversy examined later in this book) how should the president balance the pressures flowing from the international environment on the one hand — epitomized by the intervention of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher — and domestic sensitivities, particularly those of California, presided over by Governor George Deukmejian, on the other? Foreign policy or domestic politics? Both—or more precisely an intricate blend of the two which has become increasingly familiar in the conduct of contemporary foreign policy.