Grass-Roots Policymaking: Say Good-Bye To the ‘Wise Men’

Many pundits blame President Clinton’s inexperience or indecision for the current crisis in American foreign policy. But the roots of the dilemma lie far deeper. They run to the collapse of America’s postwar policy making system--a collapse that not even the most sage and resolute leadership or the discovery of some new strategic formula could have averted. The problem, and the answer, is that the American people are in the process of reclaiming foreign policy from the "Wise Men" who have so assiduously guarded it for the past 50 years.

Over the last half–century America has undergone a technological and demographic transformation. Increased mobility has forged new centers of culture, fashion, wealth and power. A communications revolution has rewired the nation’s nerve system with computers, faxes and fiber–optic cables. Immigration approaches levels not seen since the turn of the century, and Americans travel and live abroad in numbers scarcely imaginable years ago. Such changes integrate Americans in new ways, with each other as well as with the rest of the world. But they also diversify and divide us as they slowly erode the lingering vestiges of our Mayflower roots.

This globalization of American society has made the idea of national interest more elusive. While America’s politics has always intruded on its foreign policy, today a fresh constellation of domestic forces creates its own global policy. Making sense of American foreign policy requires a fuller understanding of the new domestic politics that now shapes America’s relations abroad. Foremost among these pressures are the regionalization of global policy making, the impact of ethnicity on American foreign policy and the rise of powerful global issue groups

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