Abstract
The President is the principal policy-maker for the United States in foreign affairs, but his program does not automatically become the foreign policy of the nation. He cannot dictate to his major competitors or allies abroad; he cannot enforce his will on all of his opponents; and his ability to secure agreement among the diverse offices of the federal bureaucracy is at best restricted. The President’s constituencies can both strengthen and weaken his position; his dependency on others to supply him with information and to carry out his directives may severely limit him; competition within the executive branch may dilute his policies or require him to expend limited resources to consolidate his position; and attention devoted to one issue diverts him from other issues.
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References
From the transcript of remarks to participants in the White House Seminar in Government, August 27, 1963, as reported in Congressional Quarterly (September 6, 1963 ), p. 1551.
James Rosenau, among others, has discussed the uneven access different participants have to the press. See his Public Opinion and Foreign Policy ( New York: Random House, 1961 ).
Theodore Sorensen, Decision Making in the White House ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1963 ), p. 44.
Whether or not the President actually increased his standing in the international community, particularly in Moscow, because of the missile crisis is not as important as his belief that his stature increased. Cf. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days, John F. Kennedy in the White House ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965 ), p. 841.
This problem of administrative control has been discussed by Peter Woll in American Bureaucracy (New York: Norton, 1963), pp. 142–171.
For a discussion of role, see Neal Gross, Ward Mason, and Alexander McEachern, Explorations in Role Analysis ( New York: John Wiley, 1958 ), pp. 48–69.
Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 727725.
McGeorge Bundy, “The Presidency and Peace,” Foreign Affairs,XLII (April, 1964), p. 363.
See Dean Rusk’s testimony, U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty,88th Cong., 1st Sess., 1963, p. 52. For a discussion of the diplomacy involved and the negotiating history of the agreement, see Arthur H. Dean, The Test Ban and Disarmament: The Path of Negotiation (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), particularly pp. 1–106.
Rusk, Harriman and Martin Agronsky on NBC,“ Bulletin of the Department of State, XLIX, No. 1259 (August 12, 1963 ), p. 243.
Based on press reports from the New York Times,July 15–26, 1963 and interviews, Washington, D.C., Spring, 1964.
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© 1970 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Terchek, R.J. (1970). The President and the Treaty. In: The Making of the Test Ban Treaty. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9502-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9502-7_2
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