Society + Culture,

Democracy and the Making of Foreign Policy
By John Gershman

The recent attention focused on how American foreign policy can promote democracy abroad has obscured something just as fundamental and controversial. How does U.S. foreign policy influence democratic values, practices, and institutions at home? And what roles do and should democratic processes play in shaping America's foreign policy? The aim of this brief discussion paper is to raise some of these questions as a way of contributing to a strategic dialogue on these less prominent dimensions of the relationship between democracy and U.S. foreign policy.

I. Perspectives

It's worth beginning with what kind of democracy we have in mind. Concepts of deliberative democracy emphasize that policymakers are expected to reflect the deliberate and informed opinions of the citizenry. If public opinion reflects the deliberate and informed opinion of the citizenry, then divergence between the opinions of citizens and leaders is a problem either because policymakers are not taking into account the informed opinion of citizens or because citizens have uniformed opinions. Populist versions of democratic theory emphasize popular sovereignty and electoral accountability.

Elite theories of democracy conjoin with realist theories of international relations in the view that policy and public opinion need not coincide. Suspicious of citizen competence in foreign policy matters, they are wary of the push and pull of parochial interests that make it impossible to forge a coherent and consistent picture of the national interest. Foreign policy is best formulated and implemented by experts. The historian Walter LaFeber calls this “the Tocqueville problem in American history.” How can a democratic republic, whose vitality rests on the pursuit of individual interests with a minimum of central governmental direction, create the necessary national consensus for the conduct of an effective, and necessarily long-term, foreign policy?” 1

Does a gap between public opinion and the opinion of policymakers reflect a “democratic deficit” in foreign policy? Depending on the theory of democracy one espouses, such gaps may be of more or less concern.

In practice, Congress usually ignores polls and responds to vocal publics as if they were the majority. Public opinion appears to enter the policy process merely to legitimate goals and policies chosen for other reasons.

The view is not a new one. Writing in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America worried about the ability of the U.S. political system to carry out effective foreign policy which in his view demanded secrecy and the rapid response of professionals, not consigned to the reckless and uninformed processes of democratic deliberation. 2

In the same vein Walter Lippman complained in the 1950s that public opinion had “compelled the governments, which usually knew what would have been wiser, or was necessary, or was more expedient, to be too late with too little or too long with too much, too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or too appeasing in negotiation, or too intransigent.” 3 Twenty years later George Kennan added that “Our actions in the field of foreign affairs are the convulsive reactions of politicians to an internal political life dominated by vocal minorities.” 4 And in 1985, Peter Rodman, now the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, claimed that Congress could be an “artificial institutional drag” on the President's ability to conduct a coherent and effective foreign policy. 5

Policymaking during the presidency of George W. Bush represents a distinctive turning point, as substantial as earlier turning points under FDR, Truman, Nixon, and Reagan. During these administrations there were significant shifts in geopolitics and each period was marked by distinctive approaches to managing key relationships and creating institutions to advance American interests. There were important changes in the way foreign policy was formulated (e.g., creation of the National Security Council under Truman) and there were important shifts in the social foundations and key foreign policy constituencies within the United States. President Bush's approach to foreign policy has been characterized as a vanguard foreign policy:

• its animating ideas have been formulated by a very small group;
• it has been implemented in a remarkably disciplined way;
• it is based on the idea of leadership by action and representation rather than consultation;
• it seeks legitimacy in re-election rather than public support for specific policies;
• it favors executive dominance over the Congress;
• it involves a secretive style of policymaking, an unusually prominent role for vice president and his staff in foreign policy, and a reliance on the military as the primary instrument of foreign policy. 6 

The Bush administration's foreign policy leadership has systematically chosen to sidestep traditional foreign policy mechanisms and create their own. These have reduced the deliberation processes common to earlier administrations.

Some Broad Animating Questions about U.S. Foreign Policy and U.S. Democracy

What are the consequences of American global primacy and the prosecution of the “global war on terror” for American democracy?

What role is there for think tanks as idea creators and connectors to the public? Is it correct that the large majority of foreign policy think tanks have been marginalized from any kind of influence?

Does this marginalization go beyond traditional party alignments?

Is there a democratic deficit in U.S. foreign policy? If so, why is it not decisive in electoral outcomes?

Has the media played a constructive role facilitating constructive policy debates, shaping public opinion, and/or communicating that opinion to policymakers?

II. Foreign Policy and Democracy

Four main issue areas illustrate how contemporary U.S. foreign policy shapes and is shaped by democracy at home. These are:

• U.S. foreign policy and civil liberties at home
• Militarization of U.S. security policy and the democratic control over the use of military force
• U.S. foreign economic policy, inequality, and democracy
• U.S. foreign policy, international law, and global governance—the potential complementarities and trade-offs between national and popular sovereignty

A. U.S. Security Policy and Civil Liberties

The dominant current in foreign policy thinking holds that U.S. security policy has either deterred or defended against threats to the United States, and that any trade-offs of liberty for security have been justified. 7 A subordinate current argues that there have been periods of unnecessary and destructive erosions of civil liberties and democratic accountability in the name of security, typically framed either as a trade-off between security and civil liberties, or a trade-off between the need for a rapid response to security threats versus the inherent slow process of democratic decision-making.

The security versus liberty debate has revolved around two main axes: first, the appropriate scope of freedom of speech and scope of acceptable political dissent in wartime; and, second, the appropriate levels of government secrecy or transparency.

The issues that have attracted the most public attention are the USA PATRIOT Act, court cases regarding the rights of “enemy combatants,” the use of torture and degrading interrogation techniques, and domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens by the National Security Agency. The debates over security versus liberty in foreign policy date to the first conflicts of the young U.S. republic in the late 18 th century, and have continued through the present in the current context of debates over the “war on terror” and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. 8

Freedoms sacrificed in wartime appear not to have been lost forever but later reclaimed, often after decades of activism. A danger of the “global war on terror” is that it is framed as an endless war, and as such the “state of emergency” that is used to justify restrictions on civil liberties becomes institutionalized.

Freedom of Speech and Dissent

In the first half of the 20 th century, policy debates over the relationship between security and democracy focused on the criminalization of dissent and stigmatization of particular domestic movements (anarchism, socialism, and communism or fascism) as threats to U.S. democracy.

During the Cold War they focused on the impact of the “national security state” on civil liberties and the openness of political debate (McCarthyism, loyalty clause) and restrictions on immigration (i.e., the McCarran Walter Act). In the post-9/11 period advocates of civil liberties attacked similar restrictions on political discourse and forced the sunset provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the greatest divide has been between rights granted to citizens and to immigrants. Provisions of the Patriot Act that granted new authority to the executive branch to act against non-citizens were not subject to the sunset clause.

The security/human rights balance is an eternal tension in American democracy. Traditionally, the chief threats to liberty seem to emanate from a combination of an imperial executive branch combined with legislative and judicial institutions that are unwilling or unable to exercise checks on executive power. This highlights the important watchdog role that citizens must play.

Government Secrecy

Transparency and access to information are essential for citizens to be able to make informed decisions about policy and to be able to hold officials accountable. The Bush administration has been criticized by “right to know” and transparency advocates for being excessively secretive even pre-dating the 9-11 attacks and the war in Iraq. The emphasis on secrecy coincides with an approach to policymaking that strengthens executive autonomy and aims to weaken the separation of powers. Congress and the courts have both been struggling to find the right mix of government secrecy and transparency that balance effective decision-making and accountability in foreign policy in an era of new threats to the nation.

Some Animating Questions on Security and Civil Liberties

What is the right balance between security and liberty that the post-9/11 world demands of U.S. citizens and non-citizens living in the United States?

Is the U.S. a nation at war and if so is this is a persuasive rationale for imposing new restrictions on public expressions of dissent and restricting civil liberties in ethnic and/or religious communities deemed potential enemies of the United States?

Do the demands of combating terrorism require that we allow the police and the military to engage in acts which would otherwise be considered torture?

Do new immigration restrictions inhibit the free flow of ideas and reduce the richness of our educational institutions and public dialogue in ways that undermine democracy?

B. The Military

A second set of issues involves the relationship between the military, foreign policy, and U.S. democracy. They bring to light three broad issues.

The first is the increasing reliance on the military as the primary tool of foreign policy, what some have called the “militarization” of foreign policy.