Stephen S. Rosenfeld
Essay
Spring
1986
On a long hot day last June and then three straight days in early July, American foreign policy clicked into a new phase whose implications the nation is only beginning to explore. In rapid succession, the House of Representatives, dominated by the Democrats and until then an off-and-on check on the bent of a Republican President and Senate, took four signal votes.
Essay
Special
1982
Foreign policy is not ordinarily conducted in controlled laboratory circumstances, but 1982 gave Ronald Reagan that opportunity to an unusual degree. A self-confessed anti-communist, he had come to the White House insisting on the requirement for a hard line, and in his first year he had capitalized on it by winning congressional support for a five-year defense plan of $1.357 trillion (in 1983 dollars)--in peacetime and in a period of economic crisis, no less. On the eve of his second year, there occurred an event--the declaration of military law in Poland--which lent itself well to validating the premise of Soviet menace and mendacity on which the President's whole anti-communist stance rested. In those conditions of evident domestic support for a world view freshly authenticated by the main enemy, Reagan had an excellent chance to prove that his analysis of the central problem of American foreign policy was sound. With one year of experience under his belt, and two years to go before elections, 1982 seemed destined to be a good year.
Essay
Oct
1975
At the very core of Washington's diplomatic and political consciousness is an issue-the Panama Canal-that is providing a severe and illuminating test of America's post-Vietnam global intentions and of the U.S. government's post-Watergate capacity to compose a responsible foreign policy. The issue centers on the effort, conducted intermittently for the 11 years since the Panamanian "flag riots" of 1964, to negotiate a new treaty replacing the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903. Signed for Panama by a French commission agent at Secretary of State John Hay's home two hours before the arrival of the official commission Panama had sent to negotiate, that agreement granted the United States "in perpetuity the use, occupation and control" of a ten-mile-wide zone to build, run and protect a canal. "We shall have a Treaty," Hay said, "vastly advantageous to the United States, and we must confess, not so advantageous to Panama."
Essay
Jan
1974
No factor is more needful of fresh consideration in both the practice and study of American foreign policy than its domestic underpinnings. For despite the recent example of Vietnam, a war that created bitter domestic conflict which itself played back upon the war, the tendency lingers within the foreign-affairs community to frame policy exclusively in terms of the perceived requirements of the international environment. President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger, of course, hope to receive public support. But their plain inclination is less to submit the shaping and executing of foreign policy to the domestic political process than to make what minimal policy adjustments they must in order to keep themselves in control of the policy. For them, this is a matter of constitutional legitimacy as well as diplomatic necessity and, for the President, political advantage.
