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Guy Zuv's US Foreign Policy

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In Guy Zuv’s U.S. Foreign Policy on pages 109 to 131 and in McCormick’s The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy, Chapters 9 and 10, they talk about a similar theme. This theme is the very one-sided power the executive branch has in foreign policy over the legislative branch. At the very beginning of this Nation’s history there has always been an argument over who has what power in foreign policy decisions. Starting off this power was to be given to the executive branch, however, do to the founding fathers hesitance of giving one man that much power they gave the Congress the ability to limit the President’s powers. These methods include things such has having control of the nation’s wealth and being the only ones who can declare war. …show more content…

In fact, when thinking about foreign affairs congress is thought of as a major player very little in pour recent history. Yet, this was not how it was originally designed to be. Our founding father worried about given the president a kind of absolute power when involved with foreign affairs. Though they believed he should be a big part in it, they feared how close it was to the power the king of England had at this time, which was the absolute opposite kind of position they wanted a person to have in the newly formed United States. This is why a balance of power was put into place, in this case having the congress have major controls over declaring war and keeping the nations wealth away from the president, also known as presidential disempowerment. However, reflecting on past situations we see that congress have either turned a blind eye on the president’s action in foreign policy or was unable to gain the upper hand. This can be seen early on in the United States with George Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793. Even though congress argued that this went over them to go to war the matter was soon hushed since the law was vague enough that it allowed the president to have more power than actually specified. Yet, this was one of few instances where the President took control more than congress in foreign policy, at least in early …show more content…

Before this even the President, and the United States in general, did not have much interaction with other nations. After the war, however, the United States fulfilled its now known identity as the police of the world and also became to involve itself with politics overseas. Since the Presidents limitations where already soft to start with before this change in foreign policy it made it become even more relaxed and unstable. This can be seen in numerous wars from then till now including Truman’s war in North Korea, in which he did even discuss with congress, Bush’s war in Iraq, and even Obama’s war in Syria. While the explosion of Foreign policy and the relaxed checks and balances system are some of the problem these wars weren’t as controlled by governments checks and balance system as they should have been, there exist many other factors that can explain this broken system. The most common being loopholes in the policies. Truman was able to get away with going to war in Korea by exploiting the policies in place by the United Nations. He stated that the matter was UN police action and was not considered an “American war” therefore did not need the consent of congress. Though by the end of the ordeal, it was anything but an American war Truman still was able to supply and execute his war. Obama also did similar loopholes when attaching Syria. The method he used was successful

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