The President's Role In Foreign Policy

INTRODUCTION
The President of the United States sits at the epicenter of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. Widely regarded at home and abroad as the most powerful individual in the world, the preeminence of the president in the realm of foreign affairs often goes unquestioned. For the president, foreign policy power derives from Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which assigns the general executive power and the roles of commander-in-chief, chief of state, chief executive, chief negotiator, and chief diplomat to the president .Constitutional factors, as well as the unparalleled level of visibility and influence of the president, shape his role in foreign policy by empowering him to lead, but they also create challenges to that leadership . As …show more content…
In theory, the influence of these factors, in the form of both opportunities and constraints, remains consistent for all presidents. In reality, however, the pressure they exert varies from one presidency to the next, as each president inherits a unique set of circumstances, events, and crises that have the potential to trigger different factors. The president’s personal foreign policy preferences and goals often take a backseat to these domestic and systemic influences. Under the right conditions, however, “if existing political constraints and opportunities are well understood by the individual in office, and if these factors are in a position to be manipulated, the president is capable of exercising control beyond that of any other individual in the world.” In this situation, the president may attempt to implement his own grand strategy vision, consisting of a clear articulation of national interests married to a set of operational plans for advancing them. Grand strategies, which are coherent arguments about the U.S. role in the world, are often set out in advance, with actions following in sequence. Other times, strategic narratives are offered as coherent explanations connecting past