Checks and Balances Eroded Long Before Trump.

In the age of Donald Trump, it often feels as though one individual has the power to chart the United States course in the world all by himself. Since taking office as U.S. president, Trump has made a series of unilateral decisions with enormous consequences. He walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He imposed tariffs on Canada, China, Mexico, and the European Union. In June, he single-handedly upended the G-7 summit by insulting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and withdrawing the United States from the groups joint communiqu. In July, his European travels produced more diplomatic fireworks, with a NATO summit in Brussels that raisedquestions about his commitment to the organizationbefore his deferential press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Each choice has brought howls of outragebut little real pushback. Congress, for example, has proved unable to block the president from starting a trade war with China and with U.S. allies. For all of Trumps talk of a shadowy deep state bent on undermining his every move, the U.S. governments vast bureaucracy has watched as the president has dragged his feet on a plan to deter Russian election interference. Even the United States closest allies have been unable to talk Trump out of damaging and potentially withdrawing from institutions of the liberal international order that the country has led for decades. How can a political system vaunted for its checks and balances allow one person to act so freely?

In reality, the problem goes well beyond Trump, and even beyondthe well-documented trend of increasing presidential power. Constraintson the presidentnot just from Congress but also from the bureaucracy, allies, and international institutionshave been eroding for decades. Constraints are like muscles: once atrophied, they require bulking up before the competitor can get back in the game. Trump did not create the freedom of action he is now routinely displaying. He has merely revealed just how difficult it is to prevent it.

In Congress, the combination of declining foreign policy expertiseamong members and increasing political polarization has reduced the ability of legislators to supervise the executive branch even if they had the appetite to do so. The bureaucracy, meanwhile, has lost its incentive to cultivate and wield expertise as decision-making has become centralized in the White House and congressional action and oversight on foreign policy have declined. And U.S. allies, for their part, have become less able to check the presidents foreign policies as the alliances have become ensnared in U.S. partisan politics. Similarly, the postCold War era has frequently seen presidents circumvent international institutions.

Going forward, any attempts to stem the growth of presidential power will have to confront not just the damage done by Trump but also the deeper problem that damage has exposed: that the bodiescharged with constraining presidential power have been steadily losing both their willingness and their capacity to rein in presidents. Many have written eloquently, particularly since 9/11, about the need for checks on presidential power. But the reality is that Congress is in no shape to reclaim its role in foreign policyand neither are the other traditional sources of constraint on U.S. presidents. It may take a major shock, such as the rise of China, to reboot the system.

LEGISLATORS GONE AWOL

The Constitution grants Congress the ability to constrain the presidenton issues such as trade and the use of force. Although formal votes on presidential foreign policy are rare, the legislative branch can act as a check on the president in several other, more informal ways. Senators and representatives can hold hearings that generate debate and expose decisions to public scrutiny. They can also force the president to anticipate congressional reactions to policy, leading him to check himself before Congress checks himan important, if often invisible, formof oversight. For example, he might shape the details of a controversialinternational agreement to make suremembers of Congress will not balk.

But Congress oversight of U.S. foreign policy has declined markedlysince the early Cold War, and especially since the mid-1990s. As thepolitical scientist Linda Fowler hasput it, Something is amiss in theSenate and its national security committees. The two Senate committees tasked with oversight of foreignpolicy and national securitythe Foreign Relations Committee andtheArmed Services Committeehaveheld substantially fewer hearings(both public and private) over time, resulting in far less supervision of major foreign policy endeavors, such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, than was the case for Cold Warera military interventions.

Why this decrease? The rise of partisanship is one important reason. Although foreign policy has never been fully isolated from politics, political polarization began to rise in the 1970s, and it increased sharply in the 1990s. Today, members of Congress reflexively support their own party. In periods of unified government, this means extreme deference to the president. In periods of divided government, it meanscongressional gridlock. Neither scenario yields much in terms of congressionaloversight.

Legislators have become less and less interested in the details of foreign policy.

Polarization also gives presidents reason to simply ignore Congress when making foreign policy. As the political scientist Kenneth Schultzhas argued, with members less willing to cross the aisle, it is more difficultto get bipartisan support for ambitious or risky undertakings, particularly the use of military force and the conclusion of treaties. And so presidents opt for alternatives such as executive agreements over formal mechanisms such as ratified treaties. Consider the Irannuclear deal. In 2015, President Barack Obama, concerned that hecould not get a treaty with Iran past the Republican-controlled Congress, chose to make an executive agreement (which made it all too easy for Trump to tear up the deal later).

Another trend that has sapped Congress influence is the decline of congressional expertise on foreign policy and national security. Simplyput, legislators used to know more about foreign policy than they do now. Greater expertise strengthened Congress formal and visible role, since committees could engage in greater oversight of the executivebranch. Expertise also reinforced Congress invisible means of constraining presidential power. Presidents had to think about how a seasoned committee chair or member would assess a policy. Duringhis initial escalation of the Vietnam War, for example, President Lyndon Johnson was careful to maintain the support of powerful committee chairs, such as Senator J. William Fulbright, who led the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974. Fulbright shepherded the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through the Senate in 1964, but two years later, his probative hearings helped shift public opinion against the war.

Congressional expertise also led to serious, bipartisan policies that could force the presidents hand. A good example is the CooperativeThreat Reduction Program, an initiative for safely securing and dismantlingweaponsof mass destruction in theformer Soviet Union. Senator SamNunn, a Democrat from Georgia, andSenatorRichard Lugar, a Republican from Indianatwo defense stalwarts who had been deeply involved in arms control agreements during the Cold Warproposed it in 1991 as an amendment to the annual defense bill. The George H. W. Bush administration initially opposed the legislation because it diverted $500 million previously authorized for other purposes, but Nunn and Lugar prevailed, backed up by 86 votes in the Senate. They were able to pass their bill because the existing polarization was still manageableand because both senators were respected experts on defense and foreign policy.

The program was a high-water mark of expertise-informed legislation. In the years since, legislators have become less and less interested in the details of foreign policy. In 1994, a small group of newly elected congressional Republicans even proudly declared that they did not own passports.

Several factors explain the decline in expertise. Changes in the way senators now divide up committee roles, by increasing the number ofcommittees they sit on, have led to greater breadth at the expense of depth. The media, facing fragmentation and declining budgets, have paid less attention to the crucial committees, especially the SenateForeign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, thus diminishing their value as reputation burnishers on Capitol Hill. Increased turnover has led to less seniority, particularly on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, reducing the number of specialists to whom other senators can look for leadership on complex issues. Add in polarization and gridlock, which, by reducing overallcongressional activity, also reduces the incentives to develop specialties, and the result is a Congress with decidedly less expertise.

An inflection point in the long-term decline of congressional oversight came after 9/11, when Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force, a measure intended to combat terrorism but that presidents ended up interpreting broadly. For nearly 17 years, the AUMF has served as the legal justification for expanding military operations across the Middle East, many of them only tenuously related to the original intent. But legislators have shown little appetite for seeking a new AUMF, which would constrain the president when it comes to the many counterterrorism missions the United States now conducts in places such as Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. Thats because the status quo actually suits many members of Congress. It lets themavoid voting on military operationsalways risky, since they can beheld accountable for their decision on the campaign trailand it allows them to fixate on the legality of the operation without having to take a position on its wisdom.

Obamas decision in August 2013 to seek congressional authorizationfor the use of force in Syria in response to the regimes use of chemical weapons may at first glance look like a sign of deference. But it actually exposed how weak legislators war-making powers had become. Unable to gain backing even from the United Kingdom, Obama announced that he would seek congressional authorization before launching an attack. Apart from a few Republicans who insisted that the president could not strike Syria without legislative approval (something they would not insist on later when Trump carried out strikes in 2017), most members were visibly eager to avoid being drawn into the debatethereby proving how much Congress had been sidelined. As Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser, confirmed in his memoir, the president sought a vote knowing he might lose, which would firmly demonstrate legislators lack of support for greater U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. (As events played out, the issue became moot when, at Russias prodding, Syria pledged to give up its chemical weapons.)

Congress is equally reluctant to stand up to the president on trade. Despite misgivings over Trumps protectionist measures, Democratic and Republican legislators have essentially given up on the issue. In June, Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed a bill that would require the president to seek congressional approval for tariffs enacted in the name of national security. But he has not been able to gain sufficient support for the measure from fellow Republicans, who, with midterm elections looming, are reluctant to cross Trump.

There still are some dedicated foreign policy hands willing to fight to give the legislative branch a voice. In 2017, for example, Congress managed to impose additional sanctions on Russia against the presidents wishes. But overall, Congress has relinquished its authority on foreign policy and trade to the executive branchand would have trouble reclaiming it even if it wanted to.

THE BUREAUCRACY SIDELINED

The United States emergence as a global power a century ago requiredthe development of a strong civil and foreign service to manage relationswith other nations. Knowledgeable and experienced bureaucrats came to serve as ballast against impulsive changes. Naturally, presidents have found it frustrating that they cannot get the bureaucracy to do their bidding. President Harry Truman, for example, complained thatthestriped pants boys at the State Department were failing to implementhis policies. But in recent decades, some of the same forces that have weakened Congress have also undermined the bureaucracys ability to check presidential power.

Ever since Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which created the National Security Council, presidents have tried to sidelinethe career bureaucrats at the State Department in favor of a morepolitically attuned White House cadre on the NSC staff. Building onPresident John F. Kennedys establishment of a more White Housecentric foreign policy process, Henry Kissinger, as President Richard Nixons national security adviser, cut the bureaucracy out of importantinitiatives, such as the opening to China and arms control talks with theSoviet Union. His counterpart during the Carter administration,Zbigniew Brzezinski, ensured that White House dominance over foreignpolicy continued, for example, by keeping the State Department out of negotiations in 1978 over the normalization of relations with China.

Although President Ronald Reagan reempowered the State Department for a brief period under the leadership of George Shultzin part by shuffling through six national security advisers in his two termsthe pendulum swung back under President George H. W.Bush. His powerful secretary of state, James Baker, sidelined his own bureaucracy and relied on a handful of political appointees to manage such policies as German reunification and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The following three administrations steadily expanded the NSC, whose professional staff doubled in size with each presidency. From just 50 staffers under George H. W. Bush, it grew to 100 under Bill Clinton, 200 underPresident George W. Bush, and 400 under Obama. No longer was the NSC functioning merely as a coordinator of policy; it was also implementing it, largely at the expense of career officials in the StateDepartment. Even officials at the Pentagon came to feel overpowered. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates complained of White House micromanagement of military affairs.

Presidents may find a more powerful NSC useful, but it weakens thebureaucracys ability to provide strong, independent expertise. Politicalinsiders chosen by the president to run White House operations becauseof their loyalty may have little experience crafting policy. Clinton, for example, came into office after 12 years of Republican administrations; his relatively inexperienced White House team struggled mightily on policy regarding Bosnia, Haiti, and Somalia. But the more that policies are crafted and implemented by the White House, the less incentive bureaucrats have to use their expertise to fill the void. If bureaucrats arent given a hand in crafting and implementing policy, why bother?

Some future presidents may find themselves dangerously unfettered by allies.

Far from stopping presidents from steadily drawing the machineryof foreign policy closer to the Oval Office, Congress has played itsown role in the erosion of the bureaucracy as a check. With the increasing importance of quick presidential action during the Cold War, Congress acquiesced in the growth of presidential power, not only over itself but also over the bureaucracy. As the political scientists Sean Gailmard and John Patty have argued, if Congress could not restrain the president, their next best option was to ensure that the presidents policy choices [were] supported by trustworthy advice that the president [would] heed. If the president was going to centralize foreign policy and listen mainly to officials in the White House, Congress at least wanted the chief executive to make informed decisions. So it has done little to restrain the growth of the NSC staff.

There is, however, one part of the U.S. government bureaucracy that has seen growth rather than decline: the Pentagon. Especially since 9/11, U.S. foreign policy has been steadily militarized, and Congress has funded the Pentagon at higher and higher levels without increasingoversight concomitantly. The main victim is the State Department. InAfrica, Latin America, and the Middle East, regional military commanders can eclipse U.S. ambassadors in bilateral relationships. The military does have an impressive ability to get things done quickly, butthe risk is that policy will tilt too much toward using force to solve problems. As Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said, If you dont fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.

Despite these trends, the State Department was able to maintain its deep reservoir of expertise for many years, which gave it some power to shape presidential decision-making. But under Trumpsfirst secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the executive branchs disdainfor the State Department reached its apex. Positions at the undersecretary and assistant secretary levels were left vacant. In December 2017, Barbara Stephenson, a former ambassador and president of theAmerican Foreign Service Association, reported that the U.S. ForeignService officer corps had lost 60 percent of its career ambassadorssince January of that year. And despite congressional outcry, Tillersonrefused to spend funds that had already been allocated for countering Russian and terrorist propaganda, and he even supported furthercuts to his own departments budget (one thing Congress did notallow). Tillersons successor, Mike Pompeo, announced in May that hewould lift the State Departments hiring freeze and bring its swagger back, but as of July, it remained to be seen whether he would fulfill that promise.

NO ALLIES TO LEAN ON

Amid the declining power of Congress and the bureaucracy at home, one important check on presidents foreign policies has been consultation with allies. Following World War II, the United States coordinated closely with its allies on major decisions, often acceding to their domestic needs. In part, such deference was driven by thenecessity to maintain unity in the face of the Soviet threat. Presidentsunderstood that if the most powerful country in the world flexed its muscle without regard to the concerns of others, it would create a backlash. And so less powerful allies were largely able to act as a check on American power.

In the late 1940s, during negotiations around implementation of the Marshall Plan, Truman allowed the United Kingdom to maintain privileged trading access to its colonies and dominions for the sake of avoiding a rift in the transatlantic alliance. In the late 1970s, the United States reassured Western European allies through NATOs dual-track decision, whereby the United States would deploy long-range theater nuclear forces in Europe while pursuing arms control negotiationswith the Soviets. And in the aftermath of Iraqs 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Baker went around the world meeting with every head of state or foreign minister whose country had a seat on the UN Security Council (as well as with those of many countries that ended up contributing troops to the eventual operation), while George H. W. Bush worked the phones to secure passage of a UN resolution authorizing the use of military force if Iraq did not leave Kuwait. As Baker later acknowledged, Bushs decision to stop short of capturing Baghdad as the U.S. military was routing Iraqi forces was partly due to concerns that doing so would break apart the international coalition.

But in the 1990s, the United States increasingly came to believe that as the lone superpower, it had both the ability and the duty to shape the world to its liking. By the end of the decade, U.S. allies felt tossed around, as exemplified by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vdrines bitter reference to the United States as a hyperpower. The UN, too, came to constrain U.S. power less and less, in part thanks to the efforts of congressional Republicans who deeply opposed the institution.

In the run-up to the 1999 war in Kosovo, Clinton bypassed the UN altogether because he knew that China and Russia would veto a resolution, but he still led the U.S. military operation through NATO in order to enhance its legitimacy. The United States willingly ran all target options through a vetting process within the North Atlantic Council, NATOs political decision-making body, and the French, in particular, slowed down a number of American requests.

After George W. Bush came into office, he took unilateralism to newheights. But he did seek minimal allied cover for the invasion of Iraq, and he even attempted to secure a second UN resolution, in partto help British Prime Minister Tony Blair domestically. A first resolutionhad been passed in late 2002 giving Saddam Hussein a final chance tocomply with Iraqs disarmament agreements but not specifically authorizing war against Iraq. And when France and Russia said they would veto a second resolution, Bush declared that he was acting with a coalition of the willing. Going it completely alone was a bridge too far. Still, the invasion is rightly seen as a clear example of the United States ignoring some of its closest allies. Part of the resulting falloutwas the politicization of U.S. alliances, with American supportersofthe war criticizing those countries that stayed out (as when a Republican legislator overseeing the House cafeteria renamed French fries freedom fries).

Obama ran on a platform of repairing the United States relationships, and as president, he brought allies and international institutions more squarely back into the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. But thedamage had already been done. No longer were alliances basic commitments to be upheld regardless of who occupied the Oval Office;increasingly, they were objects of partisan debate. When Obama decided to intervene in Libya through NATO in 2011, with UN SecurityCouncil authorization, Republicans, instead of championing the inclusion of allies, criticized him for leading from behind, as one of his advisers characterized the strategy. And later, when he negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, the support of U.S. allies did little to bringRepublicans on board, showing the declining effect of allies as a domestic consensus builder.

If alliances continue to be viewed in such partisan terms, as the political scientist Daniel Drezner has argued, the stock of allies will rise or fall depending on the partisanship of who is in the White House. This would damage not only the visible, legitimizing role of alliances, whereby the public is more likely to support foreign policy initiatives that are backed by allies or multilateral institutions, but also their quiet, consultative function. During crises, allies can serve as both useful checks and valuable resources. But some future presidents may find themselves dangerously unfettered by allies. Others may want to turn to them, only to find that they are unwilling to pick up the phone.

THE FUTURE OF CHECKS AND BALANCES

U.S. presidents have long had more leeway in foreign policy than in domestic policy, but their control has never been total. Yet since the end of the Cold War, checks and balances that once limited presidentialpower in matters of foreign policy have been eroding. Trumpsunconstrained exercise of executive power did not come out of nowhere: it was made possible by the culmination of long-term trends. As a president who seems distinctly uninterested in the views of others, Trump could hardly have asked for a more suitable system.

Many of the constraints on foreign policy are invisible. Presidents will anticipate pushback from Congress and restrain themselves accordingly. They will worry about generating enough international support and offer concessions to allies in closed-door meetings. The invisibility of these constraints makes them difficult to appreciate until they are needed. What Trump is exposing is that these constraints are already largely unavailable, and they cannot be reconstituted instantaneously.

Can anything be done? The end of the Cold War unleashed the power of the American presidency. It may take the rise of China as a peer competitor for the American people and their leaders to realize that in order to make better foreign policy, the United States needs the wisdom and restraint offered by a Congress and a bureaucracy that have real power and serious expertise, as well as allies and international institutions whose utility is valued. The rising threat that China poses to U.S. interests could lead to a revival of congressional expertise in foreign policy, support for strengthening the United States diplomats, and a realization that allies and international institutions enhance U.S. power in managing the threat.

Short of that, Congress will likely continue to have little knowledge of or interest in foreign policy, the White House will still fail to take full advantage of the talent of the U.S. diplomatic corps, and presidents will go on ignoring the views of even close allies. This is now the unchained, unconstrained presidency. It didnt start with Trump, but it has exploded since he took office, and Americans will be living with its consequences for a long time to come.

This article was published by Foreign Affairs in the September/October 2018 issue.

JAMES GOLDGEIERis Professor of International Relations at American University and a Visiting Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

ELIZABETH N. SAUNDERSis an Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Service and a Core Faculty Member in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.