U.S Foreign Policy: Traditions and Divisions

PROF. SEABURY: I think that in this country, on this matter we're talking about, there's always been a kind of schizophrenia between what I would call a Jeffersonian tradition and a Hamiltonian tradition. A great Hamiltonian, Chief Justice Marshall, once said that what the nation required was an executive who could "act with secrecy and dispatch." This whole question of centralization versus what you call in your lectures "pluralism" -- pluralism being exemplified by the Jeffersonian view. So you have this oscillation through American history, and, therefore, the Hamiltonians become very popular in times of very great crises, and then they fade back into the woodwork again, and the Jeffersonians re-emerge.

I would say we do have that oscillation, but I think it's more of a Jeffersonian oscillation than a Hamiltonian. Even during times of war, it's rather difficult for us to get our act together. I am not saying it necessarily in criticism, because I think the pluralistic Jeffersonian strand has many great virtues and strengths to it, and it enables us, when it is necessary, to draw on all sorts of groups and sources of strength in our society.

PROF. SEABURY: But it does require, when you have a need for action, it does require a fundamental assumption that there's a really great, great crisis going on.

That's right, that's right, certainly, yes.

PROF. SEABURY: I think it was Steward, during the Civil War, who said, "We elect a President every four years and he is our tyrant for his tenure in office." But he was talking about those kinds of circumstances.

That's right.

PROF. SEABURY: There is another thing that I think we've got to make clear here in talking about strategy, and that is that, in a way, strategy is the art of generalship. If one is talking of that generalship, that means, again, the notion of a command and control system whereby you have a unitary view of things. But then the unitary view involves some kind of conception of where you are actually going, a purposeful capacity.

Now, I think when you turn to the Soviets and their contrast with us, they may not have a great scheme, a world scheme, a world conquest, but they do have a philosophical consensus that is never, or very rarely, challenged within the Politbureau about the nature or the purpose of the Soviet system. And that we do not have. Therefore, you have this strange oscillation of American strategic purposes.

In your lecture, Professor Huntington, you identified three strategic goals that you thought were quite clear for us: deterring the Soviets, defending our allies in Europe, and identifying our vital interests in the Third World.

Those are three goals of military strategy, and it seems to me those are the three major goals -- strategic deterrence on the one hand; and deterring and, if necessary, defeating an attack on the North Atlantic area or NATO, secondly; and then being able to project our forces and defend vital interest in the other areas of the world.

Before we discuss military strategy, which you emphasized in your lecture (that is, that we seem to wind up with a military strategy rather than a national strategy), I would like to ask you, what is it about our particular system that distorts the national strategy-making process? Both of you have talked a little about public opinion. The problem of the media seems to be pretty important. Is that a fair assessment?

That certainly is one of the major factors involved, but that, it seems to me, is just a part of this more general pluralism, and the fact that, as Professor Seabury said, there are significant differences over goals. We see that almost every time we pick up a newspaper, where there will be some issue that will come up that essentially involves a conflict between the American belief in human dignity and human rights -- and we're appalled by what goes on in some Central American country, or in South Africa, or in the Soviet Union -- and the American belief that we shouldn't intervene in other people's affairs. And these are two deeply felt American beliefs, and yet we're continually torn, one way or another. Should we intervene? Shouldn't we intervene? What should we do, if we can do anything? We have that sort of conflict.

But then also, you have the conflict among much more specific interests and purposes within the government. Trying to get the bureaucratic agencies of our government to cohere and to march in step towards a particular goal is, in most cases, virtually impossible, because the State Department, the Defense Department, and the Treasury and the Commerce Departments, and all the other departments and agencies that may get involved in matters of national strategy will all have their own interests and concerns.

Export controls as a part of a national strategy is a good example, isn't it?

It is, it's a very good example, because, historically, under the Export Control Act, the president really did have virtually tyrannical powers. The Export Control Act used to provide that the president could stop the export of anything going out of the country. But trying to exercise that power, and, particularly, given all the economic interests involved in trying to use it to achieve some purpose with respect to another country, the Soviet Union or some other country, is just extraordinarily difficult. Now Congress has written in several restrictions on that presidential power, although both President Carter, and, even more so, President Reagan have tried to use that power in a variety of ways.

But in both cases, each seemed to want to respond to a particular constituency. In the case of President Reagan, surprisingly selling grain to the Soviets when it seems inconsistent with his overall strategy of a more hard line towards the Soviet Union.

That's what his own Secretary of State certainly said at the time.

Paul?

PROF. SEABURY: Well, I was thinking, in your lecturers and now, Sam, you were talking about this curious pluralism in America. But you're saying that you have pluralism within the Executive branch of the government.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

PROF. SEABURY: And here you come across some very grave problems, because you can have a pluralism built within your government in the bureaucracy which, in fact, may even conflict with a pluralism or the balance of a pluralism outside of the system. Of course, then you're teetering on the edge of anarchy and contradictions that make any foreign policy impossible.

The point I was raising here is whether one can make a generalization about this matter of pluralism that moves through time. For example, I think it's fairly clear that up until the Johnson administration, we had a conception of presidential authority in the early part of the Cold War, which was then destroyed in Watergate, in Vietnam, and so forth. And then we began to get the vacuums being filled by other authorities and forces. And, therefore, this thesis that you are presenting has to be looked at in a kind of a time-set. I think since the Carter period, which I think was the lowest point -- I'm sorry, since you happened to be attached to that strange experiment -- but that was the low point, after Watergate and Vietnam, of presidential authority.

I would disagree vigorously with you there. I think what you said about the early years of the Cold War was certainly true, and that reflected the fact that there was a consensus from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. Congress fell in line, by and large -- almost invariably supported almost anything the president wanted to do. One also has to note that for a good part of that period, Eisenhower was president, and he was very cautious about the exercise of presidential power. He certainly wasn't a weak president, but when it came to whether or not we should intervene in Indochina and so forth, it was very clear Eisenhower didn't want to. Congress didn't either, but he didn't want to. And so the issue was never joined. But, by and large, for that twenty-year period, Congress supported the president.

And then, as you say, as a result of Vietnam and then Watergate, we went through a ten-year period where Congress didn't approve anything the president wanted in foreign policy or defense policy. Congress carved out an entirely new role for itself in reducing defense appropriations and passing the War Powers Act, in effect, legislating our defeat in Vietnam by prohibiting the use of American forces in or around Indochina in order to support our allies there. And this was Congress coming back with a vengeance with respect to the president.

I think since 1975 or 1976, however, we are in a still different phase in which you have more of an equilibrium, if not presidential dominance as it was before 1965, it's not congressional dominance as it was from '65 to '75. Instead, it is something more like an equilibrium in which a president, if he really wants something and thinks it is necessary, will be able to get congressional approval; but he'll have to work hard at it. This was the case with President Carter on several items in his administration -- the Panama Canal Treaty, for instance, which he had to work hard at, but he got congressional approval.

PROF. SEABURY: He didn't get approval of SALT.

Well, that for a variety of reasons. If it hadn't been for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he would have gotten approval of SALT. It would have been a very tough battle, in my view, but I think he would have gotten it. He was also able, on a number of issues involving weapon systems -- the sale of planes to Saudi Arabia, the question of how many carriers for the Navy -- these were big battles with Congress, but he was able to win them.

He also won with Congress on the normalization of relations with China. Now, I think President Reagan, in his relations with Congress, has been quite similar. He has had to go out and fight in order to get the approval for deploying the Marines back into Lebanon in 1983 -- that brought up the whole War Powers question and so forth. But he was able, in due course, to get what he wanted out of Congress. And he was able, in 1984, to get the MX approved. In both cases it was narrow votes, but that was just the way Carter had.

PROF. SEABURY: Isn't it the case, though, Sam, that sometimes when you go to Congress and you ask for something, you know what the balance of forces within Congress is, and you tailor your demands, or demands are tailored to that? For example, the funding of the Contras today. This is going to be a big issue next month in Congress.

That's right.

PROF. SEABURY: And the amount of money which is being requested in Congress is absolutely trivial.

That's true. That's true. Well, in some cases, of course, the president may not be able to get what he wants. I'm not saying a president always get what he wants, but I'm saying, it seems to me, if you look at the record from '76 down to the present, that Congress will make it very difficult for the president. But the president is usually able, whether he's Democrat or Republican, and where he is convinced that what he is doing is necessary in the national interest, he can convince a sufficient number of congressmen to go along. President Reagan, in the case of the MX, for instance, did win a number of Democratic representatives and senators, who voted with him and deviated from the Party stand.

If we look at the case of the Contra legislation, that is, the funding of those who seek to overthrow the Sandinista government, what are the countervailing forces here against presidential will and desire? Is it America's moralism and virtue, that is, that we shouldn't seek to overthrow a government? Is it the Vietnam syndrome? What factors are at play here?

Well, it seems to me there's a problem here in that you have a situation somewhat comparable to that of the Marine deployment at Lebanon, in that it is not entirely clear what the real goal is. I think it is perfectly obvious that the administration has emphasized with respect to the Contras different goals at different times. And, at first, it was simply trying to stop a flow of arms into El Salvador, then it was to put pressure on the Sandinista government to liberalize and become more moderate. More recently, the president and other members of the administration have indicated that we really wanted to overthrow that government. There certainly has been a shift in emphasis.

This raises real questions in people's minds. Why are we there? If the real goal is to overthrow the Sandonista government, will this do it? It seems to me that a judgment has to be: not this current level of activity. And there's a problem that we're reportedly doing this in a covert manner, although it's the most overt and obvious sort of thing imaginable. Should we be doing it that way, or should we be doing it some other way, if we really do want to do it? And where will it all end? It seems to me that those are the issues which have come to the floor with respect to this Nicaraguan involvement.

Paul, what's your response to that?

PROF. SEABURY: I think you're quite right, Sam. I think it's a problem that would exist even if you had a greater degree of Executive authority. What you've mirrored within the Reagan administration, these countervailing forces, is not simply a matter of Congress.

Sure, that's right.

PROF. SEABURY: You have to get your own act together. You had that debate, for example, last November between Secretary Schultz and Secretary Weinberger on the conditions under which one should have recourse to force. And that State Department/Defense Department debate is a very fundamental one.

Absolutely.

PROF. SEABURY: So these things will not go away.

One question I wanted to pose to you, Sam, though, is an interesting one because if one looks at this matter of strategic coordination, command and control, in the light of the Constitution ... I remember a very distinguished constitutional lawyer once said that "the Constitution is a written invitation of struggle for the privilege of conducting American foreign policy." On the other hand, the Constitution does, clearly, outline certain kinds of functions that the respective branches perform. I remember some years ago during some of the big foreign policy fights of the early fifties, Walter Lippmann once described the situation as a "functional derangement of power," where you had a usurpation of Executive powers by the Congress.

Yes.

PROF. SEABURY: Now, if you take, for example, this weird struggle over the control of the intelligence community, which happens to be a fascinating subject to me. Previously, you had a condition in which nobody disputed the authority of the president to have exclusive command over these things, and now what you have, of course, is the intelligence community going to Congress as well as to the president. In fact, the bureaucrats within the Agency employing that trick in order to get their own ways known, and then going public! I don't think there's a single, other country that I know of in the world today, except maybe West Germany, where you have this inexcusable situation, where there is no sense of where command and control should lie.

I think that's a very good description of what has existed since the early 1970s. It clearly has had some rather unfortunate effects upon our intelligence agencies. While many members of Congress are highly responsible and have acted with great responsibility in discharging their functions as members of the intelligence oversight committees in Congress, there is the fact that there have been a whole series of leaks and revelations, and other things which can't help but have an impact on our ability to conduct our intelligence activities. And, also, can't help but have an impact upon the willingness of other intelligence agencies from allied powers to share information and cooperate with us, because they never can be sure that what they do or what they tell us won't end up in a speech on the floor of Congress or in the story in the Washington Post.

Is there much that we can do about this, Paul?

PROF. SEABURY: Let's push this a bit further, because, again, it's not simply Congress but it's also the "fourth branch of government" that comes in here. And here you have the great phenomenon of the leak, which we have not discussed yet. If the entire process becomes a sieve, as from time to time it is, then you have a problem of another fundamental character: namely, how can a democracy which engages in perpetual leaking be able to compete in world politics with those who do not abide by that rule? Even in the Reagan administration, it has become even worse than it was previously. Maybe I exaggerate.

Well, recollecting my experience in the Carter administration, it hard for me to conceive that it could be worse, but maybe. The problem of the leak is that you can make a case that when people feel strongly, bureaucrats or officials in government, they should have the ability to go out and make a case or release information. I think everybody would agree that there is much information that is classified that should not be classified. Nonetheless, the prevalence of the leak as a Washington phenomenon has a very dysfunctional effect on the making of policy in terms of a more responsible and democratic making of policy. Because what it leads to, of course, is that the key policymakers want to be off by themselves, they want to exclude a wide range of people within the government, because they are afraid of leak. If you get more than two or three people in a room, then it will become leaked to the press. And this means that you have a lot of decision-making taking place not in the more responsible and statutory arenas such as, say, meetings of the National Security Council or something of that sort, but rather with the president and one or two advisors just going off in a corner by themselves. This narrows the range of debate and participation, and it has an unfortunate impact upon the overall process.

PROF. SEABURY: Sam, what would your feelings be? I understand now that the Central Intelligence Agency people have been pushing for a much tougher enforcement of secrecy and demanding legislation that would effectively deter people who, without authorization, publish. How far do you think that ought to go?

It seems to me that if somebody becomes an official in the government and works in highly sensitive areas, they willingly accept a responsibility to protect confidential information. If they violate that, they certainly ought to be subject to some penalties.

Now, I don't think in our system we can have any way of imposing penalties upon newsmen who may publish that information, because that would be a violation of freedom of the press. Under our system, the press is free to publish anything they can get their hands on, and that's a constitutional right. But I don't think somebody who chooses to go to work for the Central Intelligence Agency or the Defense Department has a constitutional right to release confidential information to members of the press.

PROF. SEABURY: But you're not in favor of public beheadings?

No.

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