Friends and Foes: How Congress and the President Really Make Foreign Policy

Friends and Foes sheds new light on the institutional dynamics that affect the way Congress and the Executive branch interact in the formation of U.S. foreign policy. Rebecca K.C. Hersman suggests that policymakers need to look beyond the major headlines and high-profile votes to understand how this process appears to practitioners in both branches of government. Most foreign policy practitioners struggle within porous, fragmented institutions where policy is driven more by communities of like-minded individuals than by disciplined organizations. Conflict is as much intra-institutional as it is inter-institutional, and issue loyalties often outweigh partisan ties or institutional allegiances. Numerous examples and three longer case studies from the mid-1990s are used to illustrate how foreign policy is really made: the transfer of three U.S. ships to the Turkish military; the Brown Amendment, which revised proliferation sanctions toward Pakistan; and the ratification process for the Chemical Weapons Convention.