A Question Of Balance: The President, The Congress And Foreign Policy
The sensible and informed essays in this volume explicitly refrain from pontificating in favor of presidential or congressional primacy. They argue that the Constitution and the practicality of American democracy require a shared role for the two branches in the making and implementation of foreign policy. This truth may seem obvious, but it needs the kind of careful reiteration to be found here. Individual chapters deal with war powers, intelligence, arms control, diplomacy and trade policy.
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The new president cannot wait until his January 20 inauguration to signal boldly how he will deal with urgent economic problems at home and abroad. He should confront Congress as a tough fiscal conservative on domestic spending and open discussions with German and Japanese leaders on trade, growth, and currency issues.
The main premises and objectives of the Boren and McCurdy bills on reorganization of the US intelligence community are clearly right, but they have certain features inconsistent with those promises (1) the assumption that the NSC "will remain the paramount policy forum for the President", when it is "in some respects an anachronism" (2) the proposed centralization of budget control under the DNI (3) the proposal to remove certain analysis functions from the CIA would result in its becoming more like the 'dirty tricks' organization that its "dubious image" already presents it as being (4) the proposed new Directorate for Estimates and Analysis ignores the historically-proven need for competition, rather than centralization, in this area.
With the end of the Cold War, and of the concerns it involved, it is natural that US attention should turn to the solution of domestic and economic problems. It is exaggeration to read such a shift as "some form of isolationism".
