280D - Foreign Policy

American foreign policy seems to be haunted by Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous

appraisal of democracies as severely lacking in effective foreign policy. In his Democracy

in America Tocqueville argued that “it is especially in the conduct of their foreign relations

that democracies appear to me decidedly inferior to other governments.”1 Democracies like

America cannot, in Tocqueville’s opinion “combine its measures with secrecy, or await

their consequences with patience” and there was a “propensity which induces democracies

to obey impulse rather than prudence, and to abandon a mature design for the gratification

of a momentary passion.”2 Tocqueville was not the first to worry about the potentially

detrimental effect of democracy on foreign policy, and his judgment still looms over

American historians and policy makers today. However, if Tocqueville predicted and

observed this aspect of democracy on foreign policy, why is it that historians of American

diplomacy have yet to come up with a uniform definition of the impact of domestic politics

on foreign policy? It is clear that realists like Kennan and revisionists like Williams drew a

distinct line between domestic and international, however they lamented the fact that they

were still so severely intertwined.

As much as realists or neorealists try to eschew the idea, domestic politics and

foreign policy have an intimate relationship. Nevertheless, historians of American foreign

policy have been trending more towards the international. International histories should

have a disclaimer attached to them as Thomas Zeiler points out in his recent article in The

Journal of American History entitled “The Diplomatic History Bandwagon” that “one must

be careful here, for rooting the field in international history risks losing sight of the

1 Tocqueville – Democracy in America Volume 1 2992 Tocqueville 300

Venkatasubramanian 1

Americanness that is the very character of U.S. diplomatic history.”3 Though many works

mention domestic politics as a source of foreign policy decisions, they are hesitant to do so.

There could be many reasons for this: historians might be afraid of bringing an even more

complicated set of variables into the mix or perhaps utilizing only American sources might

not tell an objective tale. This historiography will take a chronological look at works over

the past few decades on foreign policy during the Cold War, specifically works that include

the role of domestic politics, in order to understand the progression of how the issue is

handled and whether there is a single aspect that draws some historians in and repels others.

Before delving into the historiography, it is important to look at some terms and

how they help explain the relationship between the domestic and the international. Realism

emphasizes that the international system is fundamentally anarchical and that there is not a

single authority that can settle international disputes. Also, the crucial unit in realist

ideology is the state, it is a “unitary actor” and “because the central problems for states are

starkly defined by the nature of the international system, their actions are primarily a

response to external rather than domestic political forces.”4 Liberalism emphasizes the

coexistence of a state of war with a state of peace; the state is also not a unitary actor but

composed of a diverse conglomeration of groups and interests.5 Aussenpolitik is a concept

that emphasizes that international relations affects domestic arrangements and that states

conduct foreign policy for strategic reasons, in response to international pressures not to

achieve domestic ends. Innenpolitik on the other hand roots foreign policy in the social and

3 Zeiler - 10604 Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations - 545 Ways of War and Peace 19


economic structure of the state, rejecting the notion of rational statewide objectives.6

Domestic politics has to do with specifically “with the development and impact of

governmental institutions, along with the proximate influences on their action.”7 Mark

Leff’s definition of political history thus includes not just congressional politics, but also

public opinion, the media, economic policies, and much more. Defining domestic politics

can be tricky in itself because in doing so, one is emphasizing the difference between the

international and the domestic, and perhaps the very demarcation between the two is a

factor in the intense debate this essay looks at.

Whichever school of thought historians find themselves in, especially if they don’t

fit perfectly into a single theory, most historians of American foreign policy do not neglect

the role of domestic politics. However, certain historians pass different judgments on this

role. Realists, such as Kennan, emphasize the corrosive effect domestic politics has on

strategic foreign policy. Revisionists, mainly Williams, focus on the specific relationship

between politics and economics and their role on foreign policy. The various approaches to

domestic politics all focus on a fundamental division between the domestic and the

international; however, the blurring of this line, or a trend towards the international has

created a backlash and an even more vehement emphasis on “centering” America in the

history of American foreign policy. Can this line be effectively blurred? Are those that

“center” America correct in saying that international history simplifies as much as it

complicates? Nevertheless, authors such as Melvin Small and Frederik Logevall, whose

6 Fareed Zakaria. “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay”, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition. by Jack Snyder. International Security, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Summer, 1992), pp. 177-198.7 Mark Leff, "Revisioning U.S. Political History," American Historical Review (June 1995), 829.


focus was on domestic politics, still leave gaping holes in their works, especially when it

comes to actually defining the specific impact of domestic politics and its own driving

factors.

George Kennan’s American Diplomacy, published in 1951, was a foundational

realist text which emphasized the line that should exist between domestic and international

policy. A line that Kennan insisted should not be crossed. Kennan illustrated that “we have

seen that a good deal of our trouble seems to have stemmed from the extent to which the

executive has felt itself beholden to short-term trends of public opinion…and fro what we

might call the erratic and subjective nature of public reaction to foreign policy questions.”8

Though the state was in theory supposed to act rationally and unified, the state had been

guided and would guide public opinion throughout many unfortunate decisions during the

course of the twentieth century. Kennan blamed the Truman and Eisenhower administration

for distorting the public opinion into thinking the Soviet Union had “aims and intentions it

did not really have.”9 Kennan felt that the only kind of foreign policy being made to combat

the Soviet Union was fuelled by public opinion’s falsely formed fears. Another aspect of

American diplomacy which Kennan argued was overrun with public passion was “the

inevitable association of legalistic ideas with moralistic ones: the carrying-over into the

affairs of states of the concepts of right and wrong, the assumption that state behavior is a

fit subject for moral judgment… And when such indignation spills over into military

contest, it knows no bounds short of the reduction of the lawbreaker to the point of

complete submissiveness - namely unconditional surrender.”10 He argued that when public

8 Kennan 939 Kennan 17010 Kennan


opinion was utilized to extend military conflicts, the cost would be too great to bear, namely

Vietnam and Korea.

In the expanded 1984 edition, Kennan elaborates on the relationship between

diplomacy and the military. He argued that the “commitment to massive civilian

destruction” would seriously lead the American people astray.11 The sheer amount of

militarization after his containment policy took form, led Kennan to question his own

policy. The militarization process for Kennan had helped to work “ourselves into a blind

alley,” because of the lack of precedent Kennan believed there was no “rational way to

relate to the other processes of our society the industrial and financial effort required to

maintain a great armed forces establishment in what is nominally a time of peace.”12

However, Kennan argued that the real problem with maintaining such a large military might

be “compounded by certain deeply ingrained features of our political system.”13 In this

explanation Kennan emphasized the “domestic political self-consciousness of the American

statesman,” because his decisions were more concerned with the domestic political

repercussions to his actions.14 To Kennan, the congressman and senator, were more

dedicated to their constituencies than the national state as a unitary actor. Unless diplomacy

could be dealt with rationally and uniformly by the state, there would always be mistakes.

Kennan’s work is one of the first where a clear line is drawn between the domestic and

international spheres. Even though certain histories did not align perfectly with the realist

ideology.

11 Kennan 17512 Kennan 17613 17614 178


William Appleman William’s foundational revisionist work, The Tragedy of

American Diplomacy, published in 1959, offers a scathing look into the gap between

American rhetoric and practices in foreign policy. Williams emphasizes material and

economic factors as drivers of foreign policy decisions. While this is not a traditional

definition of domestic politics, economic factors should be considered as immensely

relevant to domestic issues and in turn foreign policy decisions. Williams utilizes this logic

to argue that the United States did not become an imperial power by accident, it was eagerly

in pursuit of overseas markets, and its role as a leading power only increased that eagerness.

Williams’ central thesis also included the idea that the transformation of the American

economy gave rise to the powerful elite who exerted “preponderant influence” on the

economic and political decisions of the nation, thus echoing Lenin’s stance on imperialism

as the highest stage of capitalism. Though he did not identify completely with the realist

ideology, he does emphasize that foreign policy decisions, instead of responding to actual

problems abroad (like the rhetoric stated), responded to economic and political from within.

However, the revisionist approach to the Cold War would soon be challenged by the

“post-revisionists” who insisted on moving past revisionist and orthodox interpretations

because the influx of new sources meant that a new interpretation was necessary. John

Lewis Gaddis, the first to attempt a move away from revisionist thought, wrote The United

States and the Origins of the Cold War in 1972 and Strategies of Containment in 1982, that

both emphasize that while the United States was not to blame for the Cold War, many of its

decisions did result heavily from the tensions between domestic and international. In the

Origins of the Cold War Gaddis analyzes the years 1941 to 1947 to illustrate the many

factors that constricted American foreign policy. First, America and the Soviet Union,


emerging from World War II as the leading powers, wished not to repeat the mistakes of the

interwar period. Gaddis, quoting Roosevelt to emphasize his opinion on domestic politics

“while power politics should not control international relations, ‘we cannot deny that power

is a factor in world politics, any more than we can deny its existence as a factor in national

politics.’”15 As Kennan had postulated, domestic problems should theoretically have no role

in international relations; however, Gaddis, like his predecessors, argued that domestic

factors led to a series of missed opportunities for the United States to formulate a stronger

foreign policy. Gaddis’ examples include the pressure to avoid the mistakes of the past,

disregard for the power of Soviet ideology, the tension between the ideological path of self-

determination in the Eastern-European case versus a strategic route of cooperation with the

Soviet Union, and the inability of the US to abandon its nuclear monopoly or extending aid

to the Soviet Union because public opinion was rampantly anti-Soviet.

One aspect that Gaddis touches upon, but does not delve further into, is the issue of

public opinion on foreign policy. Though he gives examples of Roosevelt’s manipulation of

the public and Congress in terms of Stalin’s motives, he does not develop the role of the

government in fostering the anti-Soviet sentiment. Perhaps this is because he hopes to

eschew as much as possible the revisionist ideology that places blame on the United States.

Instead of focusing on who or what specifically was to blame, Gaddis is looking into

structural changes and issues that helped transform the nature of American foreign policy.

1946 was a crucial turning point for Gaddis, because it signaled a shift from conciliatory

towards aggressive confrontation. While he detailed the increase in aggression by the

Soviets, it is the influence of this aggression on the US combined with the rising discontent

15 Gaddis 17 – US and origins of cold war


over “appeasement” that pushes the United States over the line into the aggression that was

the Truman Doctrine.

In Strategies of Containment Gaddis offered a detailed analysis of the strategies and

motivations that created American foreign policy from the Truman to the Nixon

administration; he told the story of the growth of containment into an unruly policy that

predisposed the end of a coherent American foreign policy. The origins of containment lay

for Gaddis in Roosevelt’s insistence on restricting the consequences of the American-Soviet

“bargain” during World War II, which promised the Soviet Union a prominent place in the

postwar order in exchange for assistance in the war. Roosevelt thought Soviet hostility had

to do with external problems, but as his plan of Soviet integration failed, the Kennan’s

thesis in his “Long Telegram” that the Soviet Union suffered from internal problems that

could not be solved with foreign policy. Gaddis divided his progression of containment into

five stages: Kennan’s original thesis, Truman and NSC 68, the New Look of Eisenhower,

flexible response from Kennedy and Johnson, and Nixon’s and Kissinger’s détente.

While Gaddis argued that containment was supposed to have taken the path of

maintaining its integrity and security in the international arena, the intensely psychological

path containment took made it vulnerable to failures. In Origins of the Cold War, Gaddis

outlined the limitations of the US government because of domestic factors, this book looked

at the consequences of these factors. The burdens of public opinion, congressional politics,

and strong anti-Soviet sentiment were too heavy for the policy of containment to balance.

Gaddis’ approach in both these books is nothing less than impressive because of the vast

amount of primary sources utilized. His pursuit of sources outside the United States

borders, however, signaled a shift in the historiography, as historians became more


interested in placing the United States within the context of the overarching transformations

in the international arena.

Peter Gourevitch’s article “The Second Image Reversed: the international sources of

domestic politics” illustrated the beginnings of the process of internationalization in

American diplomatic history. Writing as an international relations specialist, Gourevitch

argued that the comparative approach had been neglected, and he used this approach to

reverse the question. In reversing the question, postulating that domestic structure and

politics may actually be a consequence of international politics, Gourevitch promoted

internationalization as a viable method to study the Cold War period. His article was

outlined into three main parts: the first discussing the impact of the international system on

domestic politics, the second emphasizing the traditional factors that make domestic

structures far from apolitical and a huge influence on the international system, and the final

part discussing the role of interdependence as a theory that combats classical realist

ideologies. Gourevitch believed that “international relations and domestic politics are so

interrelated that they should be analyzed simultaneously, as wholes.”16 However, this

relationship was not new to the Cold War period, it had been present since the early modern

era. Gourevitch’s analysis of the interrelationship is crucial, especially as a part of the I.R.

school because it illustrates that the shift towards internationalization did not just erupt in

the field of history.

Nevertheless, the internationalist trend did have a serious effectiveness lag, as there

were many historians still emphasizing the domestic problems of the twentieth century as

16 Peter Gourevitch “The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics.” (International Organization Vol. 32 Iss. 04 September 1978), pp 881 - 912.


key sources in the blunders of foreign policy. Robert Dallek, in his The American Style of

Foreign Policy, published in 1983, discussed how Americans have greatly misinterpreted

foreign policy because they have been longing for a past that no longer exists, a past

containing a distinctive kind of American individualism and communality which no longer

existed. In his chapters on the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, he argued that the

communist threat from outside “justified the need for ‘togetherness,’ conformity, or

organizational loyalty as a substitute for traditional individualism.”17 Dallek uses key

foreign policy decisions, such as late-nineteenth century expansionism, containment, and

Vietnamization, as more atavistic and inward-looking than actually focused on creating new

policy. Similar to Kennan’s analysis, Dallek believes that American foreign policy, in its

pursuit of rational decisions, has actually “continued to use foreign policy in nonrational

ways to express current hopes and fears.”18 Though realists emphasize a clear border

between domestic and foreign affairs, historians of American foreign policy were clearly

troubled by the fact that there was a serious intermingling of the two spheres. While Kennan

argues that the foreign policy was far from rational, Dallek offers more tenable reasoning as

to why it was irrational.

Returning back to political science, it is important to make note of one of the most

important models created to measure the impact of domestic politics on presidential

decision making, and in turn foreign policy decisions. Ostrom and Job’s 1986 article “The

President and the Political Use of Force” created a cybernetic model of decision making

that would illustrate that between the presidencies of Truman and Ford, political uses of

17 Xix - Dallek18 Dallek xix


force are more prevalent than for other reasons. Ostrom and Job emphasize that the

president, "in seizing certain opportunities to use force but rejecting others, the president

clearly operates in a 'political' fashion. He assesses a range of actors, not only in the

international context, but also in the American domestic context and in the context of his

political leadership."19 Ostrom and Job argue that the president acts not “as a rational

decision maker, but in a fashion similar to that suggest by the cybernetic approach to

decision making. Operating in a context that has been described as 'structural uncertainty',

the president is not able to determine the state of the environment, locate available

alternatives, or assess the consequences of those alternatives, in short, the raw materials of

rational choice are absent.”20 Their analysis accounts for international, domestic, and

political pressures in presidential decision making, but the application of the cybernetic

model revealed that during the years of 1948 to 1976, domestic political factors played a

larger role. Observations in this study include that during national campaigns, the

propensity to use force increases, as well as the inverse relationship between popularity and

the use of force.

There are studies that disagree with Ostrom’s and Job’s conclusions, mainly on the

fact that domestic and political factors overwhelm the international factors. Moore’s and

Lanoue’s 2003 study questioned not if domestic factors mattered in the international arena,

but if they truly mattered most during the Cold War period. They argued that “conflictual

foreign policy behavior can be explained adequately without reference to presidential

19 Ostrom and Job 542-54320 543


popularity or domestic electoral politics."21 While Ostrom and Job postulated that presidents

did not focus their attention on solely international factors, Moore and Lanoue argued that

“foreign policy is driven by a rational expectations process that presidents prefer

international tools to domestic tools for solving foreign policy problems, and that presidents

generally seek to match the conflictual behavior of other countries.”22 So while there is still

a debate over the extent to which domestic factors play a role in foreign policy, the

existence of domestic factors has not been neglected.

As stated previously, the trend towards internationalization was much more drawn

out than expected, and some histories took a fused approach to the history of the postwar

period, discussing global issues but maintaining an overarching focus on the United States.

Thomas McCormick’s America’s Half Century, published in 1989, offered an explanation

of America’s rise and fall in the postwar period. McCormick argued that a hegemon has

possession of enough economic, military, and ideological power that no other nation can

challenge it successfully. However, for McCormick, as was for his predecessor Williams,

economic supremacy was the base of all hegemonies, especially the American hegemony.

McCormick, unlike realists, made the unit of analysis the global capitalist system instead of

a state. Though McCormick does attempt to focus on relating foreign policy to domestic

politics, he does end up simplifying the hegemony into its own actor, thus in turn neglecting

the intense domestic confusion over certain policy decisions such as the Truman Doctrine

and NATO. McCormick’s work, while a laudable reprise of New Left ideas in a widespread

21 Moore and Lanoue, “Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy: A Study of Cold War Conflict Behavior” (The Journal of Politics, vol. 65) 376.22 Ibid 379


history, did not approach the level of domestic observation and complexity contained in

Dallek and Gaddis.

Melvin Small rejects looking at American foreign policy through an international

lens outright, focusing exclusively in Democracy & Diplomacy on the role of domestic

politics on foreign policy. Instead of focusing on the liberal relationship between

democracy and diplomacy, Small emphasized the traditional view that democracies, as

Tocqueville suggested, were ill-equipped to conduct successful foreign policy. Small

looked a cases where domestic politics have had an influence on foreign policy, from the

1790s to the 1990s, and the continuities were remarkable. Party conflicts, electoral

considerations, media and public opinion, and lobbyists have always shaped foreign policy.

However, the problem is, that Small has nothing to compare this vast and meaningful

“impact of domestic politics” to, because appraising domestic politics value in foreign

policy requires a counterfactual that was not influenced by such factors. He does offer a

realist “rational actor” model of the state, but what state truly acts objectively and

uniformly? Also in his counterfactual state citizens are all informed and judge issues based

on utilitarian reasons. Now the fact that this is a ridiculous image may give us the answer to

our question: yes, domestic politics is inseparable from the history of foreign policy in

America.

Craig and Logevall in their 2009 book, America’s Cold War, make the same

argument, that “for much of the Cold War, the domestic variables predominated over the

foreign ones.”23 Though one could spend the postwar period just focusing on America’s

decline, Craig and Logevall suggest that it was nevertheless always supreme and “had

23 Craig and Logevall - 6


primary responsibility for much that happened during the epoch.”24 Unlike Dallek or

Gaddis, Craig and Logevall have to defend their focus on the domestic arena because the

trend towards internationalization was in full swing. Thomas Zeiler stated that diplomatic

historians were driving on “the bandwagon of internationalization.”25 Historians in the past

couple decades have begun to argue for a “holistic approach” to American history, focusing

mainly on how American decisions influenced the world and vice versa. However, Craig

and Logevall emphasized that “America-centered questions demand immersions in

American sources and knowledge of American institutions.”26 Though the approach is

commendable, Craig and Logevall do suffer some of the same problems that Small did.

They do argue that domestic pressures prolonged the conflict, but this counterfactual that

the Cold War could have ended in the 1950s is problematic because it lies on the

assumption that states are unitary actors that cannot be swayed by irrational choices, which

almost every author mentioned here cannot seem to find an example of. Boxing presidents

and their administrations into realist or idealist camps does emphasize the impact of

domestic pressures; however, it also seems to unnaturally overshadow pressing

international concerns that surely played a larger role.

It is usually at a nexus where the most interesting behaviors can be observed, and

the intersection of domestic and foreign policy during the Cold War is no exception. While

realists, revisionists, and post-revisionists differ on the extent and nature of the influence of

domestic politics on foreign policy, they all observe that it does exist. However, in

24 Craig and Logevall 525 Thomas W. Zeiler, The Diplomatic History Bandwagon: A State of the Field. The Journal of American History, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Mar. 2009), pp. 1053-107326 Craig and Logevall 5


observing this wide set of historians and political scientists, it is clear that the judgment they

give to domestic politics is very different. Kennan blames domestic politics for

transforming foreign policy into a severely moralistic form that construed ideology to be

more important than it really was. Williams and McCormick focus instead on foreign policy

being influenced heavily by domestic economic concerns, and it was not the state acting as

a whole, but an elite group of people pursuing overseas markets. Gaddis, though he hopes to

transcend the revisionist stance, returns back to a strongly realist one, insisting that the

American state was constrained heavily by its decisions that transformed domestic politics

and in turn foreign policy. He observes the structural deficiencies of the foreign policy

during the Cold War, in an attempt to qualify certain decisions. Dallek focuses distinctly on

the deficiencies of the motivations behind domestic politics, as a result he does champion

the realist standpoint, but he does take the analysis of domestic politics and its irrationality

much further than his predecessors. The political scientists have had skin in the game since

the beginning, and Ostrom’s and Job’s cybernetic model of decision making attempts to

empirically prove the Innenpolitik stance. While Moore and Lanoue have accepted the

influence of domestic politics, they question whether it was the most significant influence in

Cold War foreign policy. Thus the question of gradation in this case was prevalent in all

arenas of academia. Small, Craig, and Logevall all hoped to describe a history of American

foreign policy, with a distinct emphasis on the “American.” However, their approach was

not able to answer why domestic politics, more so than international pressures, affects

foreign policy decisions. Both their works end up assuming a rational state as the ideal, but

this counterfactual does not take them far enough.


The key dilemma is that a focus on America makes the history vulnerable to gaps

when it comes to context. In asserting the importance of domestic politics, historians may

artificially downplay other factors. However, at the same time, an international approach

can also lose the nuances of domestic decision-making that was key in a certain event. It is

difficult to describe a truly “intermestic” history of the Cold War because it has yet to be

written; such a history would have to maintain a level of detail that may be impossible for

international historians as well as a strong grasp of the importance of each detail in a larger

narrative and context that might be foreign to certain political historians. If such a work

wanted to make a significant mark, it would have to refrain from turning into a reference

book, but taking a strong stance with such a broad area of study risks generalization.

Whatever is in store for the relationship between domestic politics in foreign policy, these

above works have addressed it effectively enough for one to notice a pattern. Bringing

attention to this consistent undercurrent in the scholarship has offered an interesting study

into the development of the continuities and breaks in the historiography.


280D - Foreign Policy

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