Chapter 32: Foreign Policy and National Security — America's Role in the World

"The conduct of foreign relations is in its nature political." — Marbury v. Madison dicta, 1803, restated by Chief Justice Marshall and quoted by every executive seeking discretion ever since.

"The Founders divided the foreign-policy power. Modern presidents have un-divided it. Whether that is good or bad for the republic is the question of our era." — composite of three separate scholarly arguments that all sound roughly the same.

A reader who came to this book hoping to learn what America's foreign policy is will leave this chapter slightly disappointed. American foreign policy in 2026 is not one thing. It is a contested terrain — across parties, within parties, between branches, between generations of foreign-policy professionals who came up under different consensuses and now disagree about which consensus to inherit.

This chapter does three things. First, it lays out the constitutional and institutional architecture of American foreign policy: what the Constitution says, what the agencies do, and how the gap between the design and the practice has grown over two centuries. Second, it presents the major foreign-policy traditions competing for influence — realism, liberal internationalism, neoconservatism, progressive internationalism, "America First" nationalism, and libertarian non-interventionism — each in its strongest form, because each has serious adherents and each has won and lost arguments at different moments in American history. Third, it walks through the contemporary live issues that animate American foreign-policy debate as of 2026: China, Russia and Ukraine, the Middle East (Israel-Gaza, Iran, the Gulf), NATO, the Indo-Pacific, the war-powers debate, the defense budget, and the long argument about what trade policy and democracy promotion are for.

Two disciplines run through the chapter. The first is the steel-man rule: every tradition is presented in the version its smartest, most reasonable adherents would recognize as their own. The second is the two-sides-on-contested-questions rule: where partisan disagreement is genuine and intelligent people disagree, the chapter presents the disagreement and refuses to adjudicate. On Israel-Gaza, on Russia-Ukraine, on the right relationship with China, on whether the post-1945 alliance system is an asset or a burden — there are American patriots and serious analysts on every side. The chapter presents the arguments. The reader decides.

Constitutional foundations

The Constitution divides foreign-policy authority between the President and Congress. It does not say so in those words, and the divisions it draws are notoriously ambiguous, but the basic structure is clear if you read Articles I and II side by side.

Article II, Section 2 — what the President gets.

The President is "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States." That is the war-fighting authority — the power to direct military operations once Congress has authorized them, or once they are underway in defense of the United States.

The President "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." That is the treaty-making authority — shared with the Senate, but the President is the actor who negotiates and signs.

The President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls" — the diplomatic-appointment authority, also shared with the Senate.

The Recess Appointments Clause has been narrowed since NLRB v. Noel Canning (2014), but historically allowed the President to fill vacancies during Senate recesses without confirmation.

The President "shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers" (Article II, Section 3) — the recognition power, which has come to mean the President decides which foreign governments the United States recognizes as legitimate.

Article I, Section 8 — what Congress gets.

Congress has the power "to declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water"; "to raise and support Armies"; "to provide and maintain a Navy"; "to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces"; "to provide for calling forth the Militia"; "to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia"; "to define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations"; and "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations."

In plain English: Congress declares war, raises and funds the military, regulates international commerce, and defines America's posture toward international law. The President fights wars Congress declares, signs treaties the Senate ratifies, and appoints ambassadors the Senate confirms.

The actual practice. The actual practice of American foreign policy has drifted, especially in the post-1945 era, far from the Founders' design. The last formal declaration of war was in 1942, against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania (the declarations against Germany and Japan came in December 1941, and against Italy in 1941; against Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania in 1942). Every major American military action since — Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Gulf War, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, the long shadow war against ISIS, the Soleimani strike in 2020, the Houthi strikes in 2024 — has been conducted without a declaration of war. Some had Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs); some had none.

Why the drift happened, and the responsibility shared between branches. The standard narrative — "the imperial presidency seized foreign-policy power from a passive Congress" — captures part of the truth but misses how Congress has often preferred the present arrangement. Voting to authorize war is politically costly. If the war goes well, the President takes credit; if it goes badly, members who voted for authorization wear that vote forever (as many Senate Democrats discovered after voting for the 2002 Iraq AUMF and then running for president, or for re-election against insurgent challengers). Congress's structural incentive is to avoid definitive authorization votes — to permit the President to act, criticize if it goes wrong, and claim credit if it goes right. The Founders did not anticipate this dynamic. Modern reform proposals (war-powers reform; AUMF repeal and replacement; the bipartisan Kaine-Lee-Murphy effort to require congressional authorization for hostilities against Iran) have repeatedly been blocked by the same pattern: members support reform in the abstract but balk at the specific vote that would constrain a president of their own party.

Treaty-making has similarly evolved. The President now signs many international agreements as executive agreements (which do not require Senate ratification) or as congressional-executive agreements (which require simple-majority approval in both houses, not the Article II two-thirds Senate vote). The Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA, 2015) was an executive agreement; the Paris climate accord (2015) was treated similarly. Whether this evolution is constitutional adaptation or constitutional erosion is genuinely contested.

The chapter returns to these questions throughout. For now, the headline: the Founders divided foreign-policy authority. Modern presidents have accumulated most of it. Congress has often acquiesced, sometimes protested, occasionally clawed back. The result is a foreign-policy system in which the executive sets the agenda and the legislature reacts.

Institutional structure

Foreign policy is made and executed by a sprawling apparatus. Six pieces deserve attention.

The State Department. Roughly 70,000 employees worldwide as of 2024 (about 13,000 Foreign Service officers, 11,000 Civil Service, plus locally-employed staff at posts overseas). Embassies in approximately 190 countries. The Secretary of State is the President's chief diplomatic officer; the department runs America's diplomatic relations, negotiates most agreements short of formal treaties, manages the visa system, and coordinates assistance abroad. Bureau structure includes regional bureaus (Africa, East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, Near East, South and Central Asia, Western Hemisphere) and functional bureaus (Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; Counterterrorism; Conflict Stabilization Operations; etc.).

The Department of Defense. About 1.4 million active-duty service members and roughly 770,000 civilian employees as of 2024 — the largest single employer in the world. Five services (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force) plus the Coast Guard (under Homeland Security in peacetime, transferable to Navy in wartime). Eleven combatant commands organize forces by region (CENTCOM, EUCOM, INDOPACOM, AFRICOM, NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM) and function (TRANSCOM, STRATCOM, CYBERCOM, SPACECOM, SOCOM). The Secretary of Defense is the President's chief military advisor (along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs).

The Intelligence Community. Eighteen agencies coordinated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), created after the 9/11 Commission. The major agencies include the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for human intelligence and covert action; the National Security Agency (NSA) for signals intelligence; the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for military intelligence; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for imagery; the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) for satellite collection; the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at State; and intelligence components of the FBI, DHS, Treasury, and the four service branches. ODNI does not "command" these agencies in the way the Secretary of Defense commands the services; it coordinates and integrates their products, most visibly through the President's Daily Brief.

The National Security Council (NSC). Created by the National Security Act of 1947. Statutorily includes the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Treasury, and Secretary of Energy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence as statutory advisors. The National Security Advisor (technically the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, ATPNSA) heads the NSC staff in the Executive Office of the President — see Chapter 10. The NSC's job is to coordinate foreign-policy decisions across departments and present options to the President. Different presidents have run it differently: some make it the dominant locus of foreign-policy decision-making (Nixon-Kissinger; some argue Obama); others rely more on State or DoD (typically post-Cold War Republican administrations have pushed back on a dominant NSC).

USAID and economic statecraft. The U.S. Agency for International Development handles foreign assistance and development. As of 2025, USAID was partially merged back into State Department structures under the Trump-2 administration's reorganization. The Treasury Department runs sanctions through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) — a tool whose importance has grown enormously in the past two decades, with sanctions against Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, and a long list of designated individuals and entities. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), part of the Executive Office of the President (Chapter 10), negotiates trade agreements.

The architecture is complex enough that "the U.S. position" on any given foreign-policy question often reflects internal compromises among State, DoD, the IC, the NSC, Treasury, USTR, and the White House political operation. When commentators say "Washington is divided" on a question, they often mean these institutions are pulling in different directions inside one administration.

The major foreign-policy traditions

American foreign policy is debated within a recurring set of intellectual traditions. Each has produced serious thinkers, governing administrations, and policy outcomes. None has a monopoly on truth, and each has strengths and blind spots its honest adherents acknowledge. The chapter steel-mans six.

Realism / restraint

Core argument. States operate in an anarchic international system. There is no world government. Survival is the first goal, security the second, prosperity the third. Power, especially military power, matters more than ideology or institutions in determining outcomes. American foreign policy should be calibrated to the actual distribution of power and to America's vital interests — narrowly defined as the security of the homeland, the freedom of the seas, the prevention of any single hostile power from dominating Eurasia, and the preservation of U.S. economic prosperity.

Implications. The United States should be cautious about military intervention in places that do not affect vital interests. It should not try to remake other societies in its image; that exceeds American capacity and produces backlash. It should distinguish between primary interests (where it must act and bear costs) and secondary interests (where it should rely on regional powers, allies, or burden-sharing). It should treat alliances as instruments — useful when they advance American interests, costly when they entangle America in others' wars.

Leading thinkers and institutions. Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz on the academic side. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in the contemporary debate. Stephen Wertheim and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (founded 2019) on the policy-advocacy side. Older realists like George F. Kennan, who designed containment, and later worried that containment had been over-applied.

Strongest version of the argument. Power asymmetries determine the actual range of choice in international politics. Wishful thinking about "the rules-based order" doesn't change the fact that great powers — Russia, China, the United States — pursue their interests as they perceive them, and that small powers' fates are largely determined by which great-power orbit they fall within. Pretending otherwise leads to commitments America can't keep, wars America can't win, and credibility problems that undermine the genuine commitments. The Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Libya intervention, NATO expansion past where America was willing to defend — realists argue these were predictable failures of overextension.

Liberal internationalism / "rules-based order"

Core argument. The post-1945 international order — built around the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, eventually WTO), NATO, the network of bilateral alliances, the body of international law — is an American achievement and an American interest. It produced unprecedented peace among the great powers, unprecedented economic growth, and unprecedented spread of democracy. Sustaining it is the single most important American foreign-policy goal. America's allies are not burdens but force multipliers; the institutions are not costs but the infrastructure of American influence.

Implications. The United States should lead. It should pay disproportionate costs in defense and in institution-building because doing so produces disproportionate benefits — for the United States, for its allies, and for the global public. It should use its power to enforce the rules (sometimes including with force), to expand the community of democracies, and to integrate rising powers into the order or to balance against them if they refuse integration.

Leading thinkers and institutions. Robert Kagan in his liberal-internationalist mode (his The Jungle Grows Back, 2018, is the canonical recent statement); John Ikenberry of Princeton; Anne-Marie Slaughter of the New America Foundation and former State Department director of policy planning. The Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution's foreign-policy program, Foreign Affairs magazine in its mainstream voice.

Strongest version of the argument. The era of great-power peace from 1945 to today is historically anomalous. Before 1945, great powers fought continent-shattering wars roughly every generation. The post-1945 order — backed by American power, American institutions, and American willingness to bear costs — is what suppressed that pattern. If America retreats, the pattern returns. The question is not whether maintaining the order is expensive (it is), but whether the alternative is more expensive (it has been, every time it has been tried).

Neoconservatism

Core argument. Liberty is universal. The active promotion of democracy, especially through American power, is both a moral obligation and a strategic interest, because democracies do not fight each other and tyrannies are inherently threatening to American security. American power should be used vigorously — including militarily — to defeat tyrannies, build democracies, and preserve American primacy.

Implications. Sustained high defense budgets. Forward deployment. Willingness to use force preemptively if a tyranny is acquiring capabilities that threaten the United States or its allies. Skepticism of détente with adversaries, support for democratic dissidents, and commitment to maintaining a unipolar or American-dominant international system.

Leading thinkers and institutions. William Kristol (founder of The Weekly Standard, 1995–2018, now of The Bulwark); the older work of Robert Kagan (his earlier writing with Kristol on "neo-Reaganite" foreign policy); Charles Krauthammer on "the unipolar moment"; the Project for the New American Century (1997–2006); the Foreign Policy Initiative; in academia, the more hawkish strand of liberal internationalism that overlaps with neoconservatism.

Strongest version of the argument. Tyrannies aggress. They aggress because tyranny is a logic of power that does not respect borders or peace. The United States learned this in the 1930s when American non-intervention let Hitler and Tojo build up the capabilities that produced Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust. The Cold War vindicated active confrontation: the Soviet Union fell because American power, American resolve, and American support for democratic dissidents wore it down. Saying America cannot or should not promote democracy abroad is to abandon both a moral obligation and a long historical lesson.

Standard critique to acknowledge. The Iraq War (2003) is the touchstone case neoconservatives have to address; many of its architects were neoconservatives, and the war's human, financial, and strategic costs were enormous. Honest neoconservatives — including some who supported the war — distinguish between democracy promotion (defensible) and democracy imposition by armed nation-building in non-permissive environments (much harder to defend). The post-Iraq neoconservative tradition has narrowed its claims accordingly.

Progressive internationalism

Core argument. American foreign policy should reflect progressive American values: prioritization of human rights, democracy, climate, public health, and economic equity over narrow security or commercial interests. The United States should reduce militarism, support multilateral institutions, address climate change as the existential threat it is, and confront the imperial and racial dimensions of past American foreign policy.

Implications. Lower defense budgets, particularly cuts to nuclear-weapons modernization and forward-deployed conventional forces. Skepticism of arms sales to authoritarian partners. Conditioning aid on human rights. Aggressive climate diplomacy. Engagement with adversaries (Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea) where engagement is feasible. Restraint on military intervention.

Leading thinkers and institutions. Senator Bernie Sanders's foreign-policy team (Matt Duss, his foreign-policy advisor 2017–2022); Ben Rhodes (deputy national security advisor under Obama, The World as It Is, 2018); the foreign-policy work of the Center for American Progress in its progressive mode; Jacobin magazine's foreign-policy coverage; some elements of the Quincy Institute that overlap with progressive non-interventionism.

Strongest version of the argument. American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era was captured by a narrow elite consensus that consistently underweighted humanitarian costs, civilian casualties, climate, and the long-term consequences of supporting authoritarian partners (Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Egypt's military government, the Philippines under Duterte, etc.). It produced the Iraq War, the Libya intervention, Yemen, the failure to act effectively on Iran, the failure to act effectively on Israel-Palestine. A progressive foreign policy would re-anchor American power to American values — and would recognize that values include human rights and climate, not just democratic-procedural questions.

"America First" / nationalist conservatism

Core argument. American foreign policy should serve concrete American interests — jobs, security, sovereignty — rather than abstractions like "the rules-based order" or "democracy promotion." Allies should pay their share. Adversaries should be confronted with leverage, including economic leverage. The United States should not bear costs for a system that has hollowed out American manufacturing, indebted American consumers, and entangled American troops in wars without clear endings.

Implications. Tariffs and trade enforcement. Renegotiation of alliance burden-sharing. Skepticism of multilateral institutions when they constrain American action. Willingness to negotiate with adversaries (Russia, China, North Korea) when negotiation serves concrete interests. Skepticism of "endless wars" and democracy-promotion missions. Prioritization of the China challenge over peripheral commitments.

Leading thinkers and institutions. Robert Lighthizer (USTR under Trump-1, No Trade is Free, 2023); Elbridge Colby (deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, Trump-1; The Strategy of Denial, 2021, on China-focused defense posture); Sumantra Maitra of the Center for Renewing America (the "dormant NATO" idea, 2024); Curt Mills of The American Conservative; the foreign-policy work of Compact magazine and American Affairs. In Congress, Senator J.D. Vance's foreign-policy positions before becoming Vice President; elements of Senator Marco Rubio's positions in his Trump-aligned phase.

Strongest version of the argument. The post-Cold War foreign-policy consensus failed on its own terms. The promise of democracy promotion produced not democracy but Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan. The promise of free trade produced the China Shock — measurable concentrated job losses in U.S. manufacturing communities, with no commensurate gain in democratization or moderation in Beijing. The promise that NATO would not be the United States' primary burden produced two decades of European free-riding on American defense spending. A foreign policy that takes these failures seriously must change course on each. Negotiation with adversaries from a position of strength is better than open-ended confrontation; selective tariffs are better than free-trade absolutism; alliance management requires demanding contributions, not begging for them.

Standard critique to acknowledge. Critics on both left and right argue that "America First" risks alliance erosion, deterrence failure, and a return to the 1930s pattern in which American disengagement enabled aggression. Honest "America First" thinkers respond that they are not advocating disengagement but prioritization — concentrating American power on the China challenge and the homeland, while pushing allies to take primary responsibility for their own regions.

Libertarian non-interventionism / restraint (right-wing variant)

Core argument. A free society at home is incompatible with an empire abroad. Standing armies, surveillance states, and indefinite wars erode the constitutional order. The United States should defend its territory, secure its borders, maintain a credible deterrent, and otherwise avoid foreign entanglements.

Leading thinkers and institutions. The Cato Institute's foreign-policy team; Ron Paul and Rand Paul in Congress; the older non-interventionist tradition of Robert Taft. Overlap with the realist Quincy Institute on many issues, though grounded in different premises (libertarian principles about state power, rather than realist claims about the international system).

Strongest version. Every major American war since 1945 has been initiated by the executive without a declaration of war, fought with borrowed money, and accompanied by expansions of executive power and surveillance authority that outlasted the war. The most honest defense of constitutional liberty is to stop generating the political pressure for these expansions — by not fighting wars unnecessary to American security.

Where these traditions overlap

The traditions are not airtight. Realists, "America First" nationalists, progressive non-interventionists, and libertarian non-interventionists agree on much regarding restraint — though they justify restraint differently. Liberal internationalists and neoconservatives share assumptions about American leadership while disagreeing on tactics. The Trump-2 administration's foreign policy in 2025–2026 draws from "America First" nationalism, with realist influences (Colby) and selective neoconservative-style hawkishness on certain adversaries. Biden-era foreign policy combined liberal internationalism with progressive elements on climate and (partially) on Iran.

In any administration, the specific policy positions reflect coalitions and compromises among these traditions. Knowing which tradition an argument comes from helps a citizen understand what is actually being argued — and what the alternatives would be.

Reading the traditions in actual debates

A practical exercise: take any contemporary foreign-policy column or congressional speech, and ask which of the six traditions it is drawing from. The exercise is not always clean — most actual policy positions blend multiple traditions, and partisan messaging often obscures the underlying tradition for tactical reasons. But the exercise is useful. A speech arguing that the United States should defend Taiwan because Taiwan is a democracy and democratic solidarity matters is drawing from the liberal-internationalist and neoconservative traditions. A speech arguing the same conclusion because Taiwan is a critical node in the semiconductor supply chain and PRC capture would shift the global balance of power is drawing from realism and "America First." Same conclusion; different reasoning; different implications for what the United States would actually do if deterrence failed.

Citizens who can perform this analytical move — separating the conclusion from the reasoning that supports it — are equipped to evaluate foreign-policy claims on their merits rather than on tribal cues. That capacity is the chapter's most ambitious goal.

Recent major issues

The chapter turns now to the contemporary issues that animate American foreign-policy debate as of early 2026. On each, the chapter presents the empirical situation, the major positions, and where the partisan and intra-party fissures lie.

China

The transformation of the consensus. From roughly 1979 (Deng Xiaoping's reforms, U.S.-PRC normalization) through approximately 2017, the dominant American policy toward China was engagement — the bet that economic integration and rising prosperity would moderate the Chinese Communist Party's behavior, draw China into the rules-based order, and eventually produce political liberalization. The bet was bipartisan; it was the policy of the Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama administrations. Permanent normal trade relations (PNTR, 2000) and China's WTO accession (2001) were the high-water marks.

By 2017, the consensus was breaking. The Trump-1 administration explicitly identified China as a strategic competitor, launched a tariff war (Section 301 tariffs starting 2018), and shifted intelligence-community resources toward counter-China priorities. The Biden administration continued and extended this shift: it kept most Trump tariffs in place, added export controls on advanced semiconductors (October 2022, expanded 2023), expanded investment restrictions, and reorganized State Department China policy. The Trump-2 administration starting 2025 has further expanded tariffs, broadened technology decoupling, and shifted military posture toward the Indo-Pacific.

By 2026, the bipartisan consensus is competition with China. The disagreement is about tactics.

The points of disagreement. Hawks (Colby; Senator Tom Cotton; the Trump-2 China team) argue for accelerated decoupling on critical technology, far higher U.S. defense investment in the Pacific (especially the Navy and long-range strike), and explicit deterrence of any PRC move on Taiwan. Engagers — a smaller group now — argue for selective decoupling on national-security-critical sectors, continued cooperation on climate and pandemic preparedness, and against a "Cold War 2.0" framing that they argue overstates the threat and forecloses diplomatic options. Realists (Mearsheimer; some at Quincy) frame the China problem as Mearsheimer has long framed it: a rising power in Asia is the primary geopolitical reality of our era, and American policy should organize around containing PRC expansion in the Western Pacific.

Taiwan. Taiwan is the question on which all these traditions are tested. The U.S. position since 1979 has been one of "strategic ambiguity" — the United States does not formally recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, but it provides arms, supports Taiwan's de facto autonomy, and has not committed to defending Taiwan in a PRC invasion (though presidents have at times implied otherwise). In 2026, the question is whether to maintain ambiguity or shift to "strategic clarity" (explicit defense commitment). Hawks generally favor clarity; realists are split (some argue clarity is the better deterrent; others argue it commits the United States to a war it might not be able to win); progressives are skeptical of war commitments generally. The Trump-2 administration's position has been ambiguous by design.

Russia and Ukraine

Pre-2022. U.S. policy toward Russia from 1991 to 2022 went through several phases — engagement and assistance under Yeltsin, growing tensions under Putin (especially after 2008 Georgia and 2014 Crimea), the Trump-1 administration's mixed signals (some sanctions tightening; some normalization talk), and Biden-era posture-building in 2021 in response to Russian troop buildup.

The 2022 invasion and the response. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The U.S. and European response was swift and large: the most extensive sanctions regime ever imposed on a major economy (asset freezes on the Russian central bank's overseas reserves, exclusion of major Russian banks from SWIFT, energy-sector restrictions); large-scale weapons transfers to Ukraine (HIMARS, Javelin and Stinger missiles, eventually M1 Abrams tanks, F-16 fighter jets, ATACMS long-range missiles); and a substantial increase in NATO force presence on the eastern flank.

By early 2025, the United States had appropriated more than $175 billion in Ukraine-related funding (military and economic combined), the largest single-conflict commitment since the Iraq War.

The polarization. Through 2022 and 2023, U.S. support for Ukraine was broadly bipartisan, though with growing dissent on the right (Senator J.D. Vance; Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene; elements of the populist right). By 2024, the partisan polarization had hardened: Democratic majorities and a shrinking Republican majority continued to support Ukraine aid; an increasing share of Republican voters and officials questioned it. The Trump-2 administration came into office in January 2025 with an explicit position that Russia and Ukraine should negotiate a settlement and that U.S. support should be conditional on Ukrainian willingness to negotiate.

The American positions, steel-manned.

Liberal internationalist / "rules-based order": Russia's invasion was a direct violation of the most fundamental principle of the post-1945 order — that borders cannot be changed by force. Letting it succeed would invite further aggression (by Russia and by other revisionist powers, especially China observing). U.S. support for Ukraine is the cheapest deterrent strategy in modern history: at less than 5 percent of the U.S. defense budget, it has degraded the conventional military of America's second-largest nuclear adversary without putting American troops in combat. Continuing support is in U.S. interests; abandoning Ukraine is not.

Realist / restraint: The war is in a geographic theater where Russia has more vital interests than the United States. NATO expansion to Russia's borders contributed to (though did not justify) Russian aggression. The risks of escalation — including nuclear escalation — are non-trivial. Europe should bear the primary burden; America's primary theater is the Indo-Pacific. A negotiated settlement, even on terms unfavorable to Ukraine, is preferable to indefinite war. U.S. support should be calibrated to push toward negotiation, not to prevent it.

Progressive: Sympathetic to Ukraine's sovereignty and to the human costs of Russian aggression. Skeptical of the military-industrial complex's interest in indefinite war. Concerned about the corruption risks in large weapons-transfer programs. Supportive of humanitarian aid; more cautious about open-ended military commitments.

"America First" nationalism: The war is a European problem; Europe should pay for its own defense. The United States has spent enormous sums on a war that does not affect U.S. vital interests; the China challenge demands those resources. A negotiated settlement that ends the killing is preferable to a long war that bleeds Ukraine, hardens Russia, and depletes U.S. munitions stocks needed for Pacific contingencies.

Where things stand in early 2026. Negotiations are ongoing. The Trump-2 administration has reduced certain forms of military aid while maintaining intelligence-sharing and some weapons transfers. European NATO members have substantially increased their defense spending (Germany, Poland, the Baltics most prominently). Ukrainian and Russian battlefield positions have been relatively static. The eventual shape of any settlement is uncertain. Case Study 1 walks through the policy debate in detail.

A note on the polarization itself. The shift in Republican voter sentiment on Ukraine between 2022 and 2025 is one of the more striking partisan realignments in recent foreign-policy history. According to Pew Research surveys, in March 2022, 49 percent of Republicans said the United States was providing about the right amount or too little support to Ukraine; by 2024, that share had fallen below 30 percent, while a majority of Republicans expressed concern about excessive support. Democratic voters' support for Ukraine aid has remained relatively stable in the 60–70 percent range. The realignment is real, recent, and consequential for what the United States is willing to do — and citizens who want to understand the policy debate need to take both sides' concerns seriously rather than assuming one side has captured the truth.

The Middle East

Israel-Hamas-Gaza, 2023–. Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people (the worst single-day death toll in Israeli history) and taking roughly 250 hostages. Israel responded with an extended military campaign in Gaza that, as of early 2026, has produced casualty estimates in the tens of thousands (the Gaza Health Ministry's reported figures, debated by various analysts) and unprecedented destruction of Gaza's civilian infrastructure. The campaign has expanded at times to Lebanon (against Hezbollah), Syria, and Yemen (against the Houthis), and to direct exchanges with Iran in 2024 and 2025.

The U.S. response: continued large-scale military aid to Israel (longstanding, with significant additional packages since October 2023); diplomatic efforts to limit civilian casualties and to pursue hostage releases and ceasefires; the Biden-era introduction of certain conditions on specific weapons transfers (with significant internal debate); the Trump-2 administration's continuation of military support with shifts in diplomatic emphasis.

The American policy debate has been intense and is sketched in Case Study 2. The chapter does not adjudicate the underlying conflict; it presents the American policy debate.

Iran. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, 2015) limited Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The Trump-1 administration withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 and reimposed sanctions ("maximum pressure"). The Biden administration attempted to negotiate a return to the JCPOA; talks did not succeed. Iran's nuclear program has advanced since 2018; as of 2026, Iran has accumulated significant stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, though it has not (publicly) constructed a weapon.

In 2024 and 2025, Israel and Iran exchanged direct strikes for the first time — Israeli strikes on Iranian targets, Iranian strikes on Israeli targets, including the unprecedented Iranian large-scale missile and drone attack on Israel in April 2024 and Israeli responses. The United States provided defensive support to Israel (intercepting incoming missiles) and conducted some strikes against Iranian-backed groups in the region.

The policy debate: maximum pressure (continue sanctions and military deterrence), engagement (negotiate a follow-on agreement), and military action (strike the Iranian program before it produces a weapon) all have advocates. The Trump-2 administration's position has emphasized leverage with simultaneous openness to negotiation.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait remain major U.S. partners, with substantial U.S. military presence in the region (Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar; the Fifth Fleet headquartered in Bahrain; partnerships with Saudi Arabia and the UAE). Tensions have included the Khashoggi murder (2018), the war in Yemen (Saudi-led, with U.S. support; subsequent partial U.S. disengagement), and human-rights concerns. The Abraham Accords (2020, signed under Trump-1) normalized Israeli relations with the UAE and Bahrain; further normalization (including with Saudi Arabia) was a Biden-era priority that was disrupted by the Gaza war.

The structural questions. Beyond any particular conflict, three structural questions run through American Middle East policy. First, the energy question: U.S. energy independence (the United States became a net energy exporter in 2019, the first time since the 1950s) has reduced the direct economic stake in Middle East oil — but allies and trading partners (Europe, East Asia) remain dependent on Gulf energy, so the United States still has reason to care about the security of energy flows. Second, the China question: China is now the largest trading partner of most Gulf states, and Chinese diplomatic influence in the region has grown (most visibly in the 2023 China-brokered Saudi-Iranian rapprochement). The United States is competing for influence with a peer in a region that was, for most of the post-1945 era, an American sphere. Third, the values question: how much weight should the United States place on human-rights and democratic-governance concerns in dealing with authoritarian partners? The answer has varied by administration, by partner, and by the specific issue — and is genuinely contested across the foreign-policy traditions.

NATO and European alliances

The pre-2017 consensus. NATO is the foundational American alliance — 32 member states (after Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024), a mutual-defense guarantee under Article 5, and the institutional framework for U.S. defense cooperation in Europe. The pre-2017 American consensus, across both parties, was that NATO was a strategic asset.

The Trump-era questioning. The Trump-1 administration questioned the value of the alliance, criticized European allies for low defense spending (most NATO members were below the 2 percent of GDP target), and at times implied U.S. defense commitments were conditional. The Trump-2 administration has pushed harder on burden-sharing — including suggesting a higher target (3 percent or even 5 percent of GDP).

The European response. European defense spending has risen substantially. Germany announced a special defense fund of €100 billion in 2022 (the Zeitenwende). Poland is now the highest-spending NATO member as a share of GDP. France, the UK, the Nordics, and the Baltics have all increased spending. The strategic question is whether Europe is moving toward a more autonomous defense capability (which the U.S. has historically encouraged in theory and discouraged in practice) or whether NATO is adapting incrementally.

The American debate. Liberal internationalists argue NATO is the most successful alliance in modern history and worth its costs. "America First" nationalists argue burden-sharing is overdue and that European free-riding subsidized American adversaries' priorities. Realists are split: some see NATO as overextended (Mearsheimer's classic argument); others see it as the most efficient mechanism for balancing Russian power.

Pacific alliances

The U.S. system of Pacific alliances — Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, plus the security partnership with Taiwan and growing ties with Vietnam, Indonesia, and India — is the centerpiece of the China-focused strategy. AUKUS (2021) deepened defense industrial cooperation among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including the eventual transfer of nuclear-powered submarine technology to Australia. The Quad (United States, Japan, India, Australia) has elevated as a regional grouping. Japan has revised its defense posture, increased defense spending toward 2 percent of GDP, and acquired counter-strike capabilities.

The Pacific commitment is bipartisan. The disagreement is about resourcing — whether the U.S. defense industrial base can support the Pacific posture and continue commitments elsewhere — and about diplomatic emphasis.

Latin America

U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere has been comparatively understudied in major media but is highly active in 2026. Mexico is the United States' largest trading partner (overtaking Canada in 2023). U.S.-Mexico cooperation on migration, fentanyl trafficking, and cartel violence is contested both within the United States and within Mexico. Cuba remains under U.S. sanctions. Venezuela has been the focus of sanctions, sanctions relief, and re-imposition. Brazil and the Trump-2 administration have had public frictions in 2025 over various issues. Across the hemisphere, U.S.-China competition for influence is real and growing.

Africa

U.S.-Africa policy combines counterterrorism cooperation (with declining American troop presence in the Sahel after coups in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso); the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA, due for reauthorization); development assistance; and explicit competition with Chinese influence (notably through the Belt and Road Initiative's African investments). The U.S. position in Africa has been described by analysts as understaffed and underfunded relative to American interests there.

The Sahel security situation has deteriorated markedly in the 2020s. Coups in Mali (2020, 2021), Burkina Faso (2022, twice), Niger (2023), and Gabon (2023) have replaced governments that were U.S. and French security partners with juntas that have, in several cases, expelled French troops, expelled American forces (the U.S. air base at Agadez in Niger, closed in 2024), and brought in Russian security partners (Wagner Group successors). Whether this represents a temporary setback for Western influence or a structural shift in African geopolitics is debated; either way, it has reduced the U.S. counterterrorism footprint and complicated cooperation against jihadist groups operating across the region.

Across the continent, the strategic question for U.S. policy is whether to lead with security, commerce, or governance — and how much weight to put on competition with China versus engagement on Africa's own terms. African leaders themselves have repeatedly resisted being framed as pawns in great-power competition; the more successful U.S. engagements (the Africa Leaders Summit in 2022; specific commercial partnerships) have come when American policy treats African states as agents rather than terrain.

Across all regions: the limits of American power

A theme worth surfacing across all the regional discussions: American power, while still by most measures the largest in the world, is more constrained than it was in 1995 or 2001. Other powers — China, Russia, India, the EU, regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran — have more independent capacity than they did. This does not mean American power has collapsed; it means American policy has to operate in a more multipolar environment. The implications cut across the traditions discussed above. Liberal internationalists argue this means alliance management is more important than ever; realists argue it means harder choices about prioritization; "America First" advocates argue it means stop trying to do everything; progressives argue it means moving from American dominance to American partnership in genuinely multilateral solutions.

All four arguments contain truth. None has fully won the policy debate. The next decade of American foreign policy will be substantially shaped by which of them prevails — and by the events the United States cannot control that will force adaptation regardless.

War powers

The constitutional question of war powers may be the most consequential ongoing debate about American foreign policy.

The original design. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to declare war. Article II, Section 2 makes the President Commander-in-Chief. The Founders' design, articulated in the Federalist Papers and in later writings by Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson, was that Congress would make the decision to enter war and the President would prosecute it. The President was empowered to repel sudden attacks on American territory but not to initiate offensive war without congressional authorization.

The drift. Since 1945, presidents have initiated military action on their own authority repeatedly: - Korea (1950): No declaration; Truman acted under UN Security Council resolution. - Vietnam: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) provided authorization that critics argued was based on misrepresentation; later expansion proceeded without further authorization. - Grenada (1983): No congressional authorization. - Libya (1986 strikes; 2011 intervention): No congressional authorization. - Panama (1989): No congressional authorization. - Bosnia and Kosovo (1990s): No congressional authorization for Kosovo; partial congressional involvement in Bosnia. - Afghanistan (2001): Authorized by the 2001 AUMF, which has been used to justify operations in dozens of countries since. - Iraq (2003): Authorized by the 2002 AUMF, which is still on the books. - Syria (2017, 2018): No new authorization; Trump-1 administration cited Article II. - Iran (Soleimani strike, 2020): No new authorization; Trump-1 administration cited Article II and the 2002 AUMF. - Yemen (2024): Houthi strikes; no new authorization.

The 1973 War Powers Resolution. Passed over Nixon's veto. Requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of introducing forces into hostilities and to withdraw within 60 days (extendable to 90) absent congressional authorization. Every president since Nixon has questioned its constitutionality. Compliance has been partial. Congress has rarely enforced it. The empirical reality: the WPR has had little effect on presidential war-making.

The case for executive flexibility. Modern military threats — terrorism, nuclear proliferation, hostage situations, fast-moving regional crises — require rapid action. Congress is structurally slow. The President as Commander-in-Chief has the responsibility for force protection and operational decisions. Article II provides plenary authority for the defense of American interests and personnel. Congressional consultation is appropriate but not always feasible before action; congressional funding is the more meaningful long-run check.

The case for congressional prerogative. The Constitution's text is clear: Congress declares war. The Founders specifically rejected the British model in which the executive could initiate war alone. Modern executive war-making is a constitutional erosion that has cumulative effects: it permits open-ended commitments, weakens deliberative checks on military action, and has produced exactly the long, unauthorized, often unsuccessful wars the Founders sought to avoid. Congress's failure to assert its prerogative is partly responsible for the drift, and reasserting it (through repealing outdated AUMFs, requiring time-limited authorizations, and enforcing the WPR) is a constitutional duty.

Both arguments are constitutionally serious. The 2001 and 2002 AUMFs remain on the books in 2026; periodic efforts to repeal or replace them have produced bipartisan support but no successful legislation. The chapter returns to this debate in Chapter 38, on institutional reform.

Defense budget and posture

The fiscal year 2024 U.S. defense budget was approximately $890 billion** (Department of Defense base budget plus overseas contingency operations and certain related items in the broader national-defense topline). The fiscal year 2025 enacted level is approximately **$895 billion with subsequent supplementals.

Comparative context. This is approximately three to four times China's official defense spending (with significant uncertainty about the true PRC figure due to off-budget items). It is roughly the combined defense spending of the next ten countries. As a share of GDP, U.S. defense spending is approximately 3 percent — historically modest for the United States (the Cold War average was roughly 5–7 percent), though high relative to peer democracies (most NATO allies are at or below 2.5 percent).

Major components. Personnel (roughly $190 billion); operations and maintenance (~$330 billion); procurement (~$170 billion); research, development, test, and evaluation (~$140 billion); military construction (~$15 billion); other.

Force structure debates. The major recurring disagreements: end-strength (active-duty force size, with hawks pushing for increases and progressives for reductions), shipbuilding (the Navy's shipbuilding plan has consistently fallen short of requirements; the relevant industrial base is concentrated in a handful of yards), Air Force modernization (B-21 bomber program, F-35 sustainment, next-generation air dominance), Space Force (created 2019; budget growing), cyber operations (CYBERCOM expansion), and nuclear modernization (the trillion-dollar, multi-decade program to replace Cold War-era ICBMs, submarines, and bombers).

The recurring debates. Hawks argue current spending is inadequate to meet the China challenge plus other commitments. Progressive critics argue much of the spending is misallocated (legacy systems, contractor inefficiency, proliferating bases). "America First" nationalists argue the United States is over-committed globally and that defense spending should be re-focused on homeland and Pacific. Realists generally support significant defense spending while questioning specific programs. All positions have empirical and analytical foundations.

The defense industrial base. A topic increasingly central to all of these debates is whether the United States can actually produce what its strategy requires. Munitions stockpiles for the Pacific, shipbuilding capacity, the workforce in advanced manufacturing — none of these can be conjured quickly. The Ukraine war exposed the limits of the U.S. munitions production base; in early phases, U.S. and allied production of artillery shells fell well short of what Ukraine was consuming. Reform proposals across administrations have included multi-year procurement authorities, expanded private-sector partnerships, and direct industrial-policy investments through CHIPS Act-style mechanisms. The intersection of foreign policy and industrial policy (Chapter 27) is one of the most consequential developments of the 2020s.

Veterans and the human cost. The defense budget is also, in a sense, a veterans' policy. Approximately 19 million American veterans are alive in 2026; the Department of Veterans Affairs budget exceeded $325 billion in fiscal year 2025, exceeding the State Department, USAID, and most cabinet departments. The legacy of the post-9/11 wars — physical wounds, traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress, the substantial veteran-suicide problem, the burn-pit and toxic-exposure issues addressed in the PACT Act of 2022 — is a continuing federal commitment that does not appear in the topline defense number but is part of the genuine cost of foreign-policy decisions.

Intelligence and covert action

The Intelligence Community's institutional structure (above) supports a range of activities including collection (signals, imagery, human, open-source), analysis (the President's Daily Brief; National Intelligence Estimates), and covert action.

Covert action authorities. Title 50 of the U.S. Code authorizes the CIA to conduct covert action (action "to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly"). Covert action requires a presidential finding — a written determination by the President that the action is necessary to support U.S. foreign-policy objectives. Findings must be reported to the congressional intelligence committees, and in particularly sensitive cases to the Gang of Eight (the bipartisan leadership of both houses plus the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees).

Drone strikes and targeted killing. The post-9/11 drone program has been a major component of counterterrorism. Strikes under presidential authority, using the 2001 AUMF, have killed senior al Qaeda and ISIS leaders, civilians whose deaths have been the subject of substantial controversy, and most prominently, in 2020, Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. The legal and ethical framework — including standards for civilian casualties and due-process concerns when American citizens have been targeted — has been debated across administrations.

Cyber operations. U.S. Cyber Command, established in 2009 and elevated to a unified combatant command in 2018, conducts both defensive and offensive cyber operations. The blurring of cyber operations with intelligence collection, with covert action, and with conventional military operations has raised substantial congressional-oversight questions.

Post-Snowden reforms. Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures of NSA mass-surveillance programs produced the USA FREEDOM Act (2015), which ended bulk collection of U.S. telephony metadata under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, and produced ongoing debates over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (last reauthorized in 2024 with significant new restrictions). Surveillance authorities remain politically contested, with civil-liberties concerns from both left (privacy advocates) and right (anti-surveillance conservatives skeptical of FBI authority) intersecting.

The intelligence-policy interface. Intelligence is supposed to inform policy, not make it. In practice, the line is harder to draw than the doctrine implies. The intelligence community's assessments influence which threats get attention, which budget priorities are pursued, and which diplomatic options seem feasible. When an administration disagrees with an IC assessment — as Trump-1 did on Russian electoral interference and on Iran's nuclear program at various points — the resulting public conflict can damage the IC's perceived independence. When an administration over-relies on IC assessments — the pre-Iraq War WMD assessments are the canonical case — the IC absorbs the political cost of policy choices its assessments only partially supported. Maintaining the analyst-to-policymaker firewall is an ongoing institutional challenge that intersects directly with democratic accountability for foreign-policy decisions.

Trade policy

Trade policy is foreign policy. The post-WWII consensus on trade liberalization — the GATT (1947), the WTO (1995), bilateral and regional free-trade agreements (NAFTA, CAFTA-DR, KORUS, TPP) — was bipartisan from roughly the late 1940s through approximately 2015. It has collapsed.

The Trump-1 reversal. Tariffs on washing machines and solar panels (2018), steel and aluminum (2018, with national-security framing), and the long China tariff escalation (Section 301, 2018–2020). Renegotiation of NAFTA into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, 2020). Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

The Biden continuation. Biden retained most Trump tariffs, expanded export controls (especially on advanced semiconductors), enacted significant industrial-policy legislation (CHIPS and Science Act 2022, Inflation Reduction Act 2022 — Chapter 27), and pursued a "worker-centered trade policy" rather than additional traditional FTAs.

The Trump-2 expansion. Beginning January 2025, the Trump-2 administration has imposed a baseline tariff regime on imports from most countries, with higher tariffs on specific countries and sectors. Subsequent negotiations have produced bilateral and regional adjustments. The trade-policy environment in early 2026 is the most tariff-heavy since the early 1930s.

The legal architecture and the constitutional question. The President's tariff authority comes from a stack of statutes Congress enacted at various moments: Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (national-security tariffs); Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (responses to unfair foreign practices); the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA, 1977); and the Trading with the Enemy Act (1917). Each delegates substantial discretion to the President. The constitutional question is whether the cumulative scope of this delegation amounts to Congress giving away its Article I, Section 8 power "to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." Lawsuits filed in 2025 have challenged specific tariff actions on these grounds; the Supreme Court is positioned to weigh in on at least some of these cases under its evolving major-questions and non-delegation jurisprudence (Chapter 14). The outcome will shape the boundary between executive and legislative trade authority for a generation.

The bipartisan turn. Industrial policy — government direction of investment toward strategic sectors, particularly semiconductors, batteries, and critical minerals — is now bipartisan, though the parties differ in instruments and emphases. Free trade as the default ideology is no longer dominant in either party.

Soft power and democracy promotion

The United States has long maintained capabilities for what scholars call "soft power" — influence through attraction rather than coercion. USAID has been the principal development-assistance agency, with budgets historically around $25 billion per year for development and humanitarian assistance combined. As of 2025, USAID has been substantially reorganized and partially merged into State Department structures under the Trump-2 administration's consolidation effort, with significant program consolidations and budget reductions in some areas.

The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) funds democracy-promotion programs. The National Endowment for Democracy (created 1983) is a quasi-governmental entity that funds civil-society organizations abroad. Voice of America and Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty broadcast U.S.-funded news in dozens of languages; the U.S. Agency for Global Media oversees them.

The contested role: democracy-promotion advocates argue these programs are inexpensive, distinguish the United States from authoritarian competitors, and support the long-run interests of a democratic order. Realist skeptics argue they often function as foreign-policy theater, antagonize regimes the United States has to deal with on other matters, and have produced unintended consequences (encouraging democratic transitions that fail and produce backlash). Progressive critics have at times argued that the actual conduct of U.S. democracy promotion has selectively targeted left-leaning governments while supporting authoritarian partners; conservative critics have at times argued the reverse.

Climate as foreign policy

Climate change connects to foreign policy in several ways. The Paris Agreement (2015) is a non-binding framework under which countries make voluntary contributions to emissions reduction. The United States has joined, withdrawn (Trump-1, 2017), rejoined (Biden, 2021), and is the subject of continuing negotiation in 2026. U.S.-China climate cooperation has at times been the largest single area of substantive U.S.-China engagement (the 2014 Obama-Xi joint announcement, for example) and at times an area of friction. Climate-driven migration is increasingly a foreign-policy issue, both in U.S.-Mexico relations and in U.S. responses to migration from Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, and (prospectively) low-lying Pacific island states.

The integration of climate into national-security planning has been bipartisan in some respects (the Department of Defense has long incorporated climate into operational planning, regardless of administration) and contested in others (the priority climate gets in diplomatic and assistance budgets has shifted markedly between administrations).

A note on the foreign-policy elite and democratic accountability

A recurring critique of American foreign policy from across the ideological spectrum is the disconnect between the foreign-policy elite and the broader American public. Scholars including Stephen Walt have written about "the Blob" — the cluster of think tanks, executive-branch alumni networks, congressional staff, journalists, and academics who circulate among foreign-policy positions and who tend to share a roughly liberal-internationalist worldview regardless of which party is in power. Critics on the right (Maitra; Mills) and on the left (Wertheim; Duss) make versions of the same argument: that the institutional inertia of this network makes major course corrections difficult, that it has weathered both Trump-1 and Biden largely intact, and that it has insulated foreign-policy decision-making from democratic accountability.

Defenders argue the network reflects genuine expertise — that foreign policy is genuinely complex, that institutional memory matters, and that ostensibly democratic alternatives (more populist or more partisan foreign policy) have produced worse outcomes when tried. The argument is unresolved.

What is clearer empirically is that public opinion on foreign policy is less partisan than public opinion on most domestic issues, and that on many foreign-policy questions (alliance commitments, defense spending, support for Ukraine, the China challenge) the partisan polarization has increased substantially in the 2020s — driven significantly by elite cues from political leaders and partisan media. Whether this represents democracy responding to elite leadership or partisan capture distorting public judgment is itself contested.

For citizens trying to engage seriously with foreign policy, the implication is: read primary sources where possible. The State Department posts public testimony and policy speeches. The Defense Department publishes its strategy documents. Treasury publishes its sanctions lists. Congressional hearings are televised. Tracking what officials actually say and do — rather than how partisan media represents it — is one of the few ways to see past the elite-public information asymmetry.

What this chapter has and has not done

This chapter has done the following: laid out the constitutional and institutional architecture; presented six foreign-policy traditions in their strongest form; walked through the major contemporary issues in the policy debate; examined war powers, the defense budget, intelligence and covert action, trade, soft power, and climate.

It has not adjudicated the contested questions. On Israel-Gaza, on Russia-Ukraine, on the right relationship with China, on whether the alliance system is an asset or a burden, on how aggressive the United States should be in promoting democracy abroad, on how much of the defense budget is about real threats versus sustained constituencies — these are questions on which serious analysts, serving senators, and consequential thinkers disagree. The chapter has presented their disagreements. It has refused to declare a winner.

The two case studies that follow walk through specific policy debates — the Russia-Ukraine response from 2022 to 2026, and the American policy debate around Israel-Gaza from 2023 to 2026 — in the same steel-manning discipline. The exercises ask the reader to do the analytical work themselves: trace a sanctions list, analyze the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, identify the foreign-policy presence in their own congressional district, and steel-man positions across the spectrum of traditions.

A citizen who reads this chapter and disagrees with it has read it well — because the chapter does not have a position to disagree with. A citizen who reads this chapter and finds clarity about what the disagreements actually are has read it as it was meant to be read.

Chapter 32 of "American Government and Politics: How Power Works." Continued in Chapter 33, on the policy process — how foreign-policy decisions get made inside the institutions described here, and how they intersect with the domestic-policy machinery covered in Chapters 27–31.