New Directions for US Foreign Policy

New Directions for US Foreign Policy: The Understudied Role of US States in Foreign Policy and Relations
Julie Blase
University of Texas at Austin
International Studies Association
March 1998
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For fifty years the United States operated under a Cold War consensus on foreign policy. The agenda of that time was characterized by bipartisan support, presidential preeminence, and a national interest devoted to anticommunism. The Cold War’s end shredded that agenda, and took the bipartisan consenus with it. Today’s foreign policy agenda is crowded with multiple issues, no single one of which claims dominance. Post–Cold War policy has been marked by recriminations over why US leaders have failed to establish a vision of foreign policy and the national interest upon which the nation can agree.
But while federal lawmakers struggle to redefine the “national interest,” US state lawmakers are acting on their interests and in so doing, institutionalizing foreign relationships directly with other nations. States are constitutionally prohibited from making foreign policy. Yet today, virtually every U.S. state has a domestic office devoted to international trade and investment. The State of Washington has three overseas offices in Asia. The state of California has trade offices in 10 nations and plans five more. Border states are involved in far more than just trade: the six governors of New England have been meeting with five eastern Canadian premiers since 1973, to discuss common problems such as energy and acid rain. 1 State government officials in Texas speak daily with officials in Mexico on issues ranging from criminal justice to the environment.
How did US states become so involved in foreign relations? What effect is such activity having on US foreign policy overall? What kind of research and theory is needed in order to understand the role of states in foreign policy? These are the questions that need to be addressed regarding the role of states in US foreign policy today.
While states have been active in foreign affairs for decades, most international relations and foreign policy theory analyzes the choices and components of sovereign states. Thus scholarship has been slow to recognize the activities of subsovereign governments. But states are important actors in American government; as subsovereigns, states have the authority to create laws and exert force. In recent years states a decentralizing trend has given states more responsibilities and importance. Understanding how this trend may or may not apply to states and foreign affairs is a topic worthy of more study and analysis than currently exists.
This paper examines some of the assumptions and questions about states and foreign policy, reviews the existing literature, and provides an overview of the directions future study should take in order to fully recognize and explain the impact states are having on international relations and foreign policy.
Assumptions
Assumption: During the Cold War, foreign and domestic policy were separate spheres; thus states had no involvement in foreign policy.
A popular phrase during the Cold War claimed that politics stopped at “the water’s edge,” meaning national security concerns demanded bipartisan support, free from domestic political squabbling. But even during the Cold War, foreign policy rested on a domestic basis which is under–acknowledged by most foreign policy and International Relations theorists. Scholars of sectionalism such as V.O. Key, Richard Bensel, and Peter Trubowitz argue that states and regions have routinely influenced American policies and concepts of the national interest. In Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880–1980, Bensel shows how domestic economic policy is the result of political struggle over control and use of regional resources. Building on Bensel’s methods of analyzing congressional voting patterns, Trubowitz shows how sectional economic interests affected lawmakers’ support for “Cold War internationalism” policies, including free trade, defense spending, military alliances and intervention, and presidential prerogative in foreign policy. 2 He finds support for the Cold War consensus policies fluctuated according to the economic needs of geographic regions, with the Northeast “manufacturing belt” showing the least support for such policies. Trubowitz argues the national interest has a geographic dimension; foreign policy is the result of intense domestic struggle to influence regional economic development. He concludes: “American leaders’ autonomy in making foreign policy is contingent upon domestic politics. This fundamental fact is obscured by accounts which point to America’s international position as the critical variable in explaining the scope of authority that political leaders enjoy in defining ‘the’ national interest. What recedes from view are the domestic struggles that structure the possibilities for coherent and consistent foreign policy.” 3
This is not to say the Cold War’s end has not had an impact on US foreign policy. What has abruptly changed since the Berlin Wall came down is the foreign policy agenda. The Cold War agenda was dominated by anticommunism, a single security issue for which military and defense agencies were primarily responsible. The new agenda is crowded with multitudinous issues for which no single area — or level — of government can be responsible: terrorism, human rights, environmental degredation and resource allocation, free trade, immigration, drug control; in short, all issues which had been previously present but subservient to containment. James Rosenau, writing before the Cold War ended, called these types of issues “the direct products of new technologies or of the world’s greater interdependence (which) are distinguished from traditional political issues by virtue of being transnational rather than national or local in scope.” 4
The hierarchy of relations with foreign nations was also obliterated: where once the Soviet Union dominated the list, now China, North Korea, the Middle East, and Latin America vie for importance. Although all issues on the agenda were present during the Cold War, preoccupation with the Soviet Union masked other needs and kept the two policy spheres seemingly separate.
Assumption: The Cold War’s end unleashed a barrage of new actors, particularly US state governments, who are changing how foreign policy is conducted.
The increase of subnational activity in foreign affairs has been both celebrated and denigrated by different scholars. Two examples: Michael Clough sees the role of states and regions in foreign policy as a positive democratization of foreign policy once dominated by East Coast elites. Samuel Huntington blames subnational commercial interests for the “particularization” of US foreign policy and hopes for a new external enemy to reinvigorate a sense of national purpose which will override subnational interests.
Both these authors imply it was the end of the Cold War which allowed US states to become involved in foreign policy. But is the state role new, or just newly noticed? Certainly, changes in the foreign policy agenda, discussed above, make more obvious the involvement of states in domestic issues with foreign dimensions. But even during the Cold War, states were becoming more internationally involved than most International Relations scholarship, focused on the preeminence of sovereign states, acknowledges.
A small group of federalist scholars has examined the involvement of states in international relations. In 1984, Ivo Duchacek edited a special volume of Publius dedicated to the international relations of states in federated systems. In the issue, John Kline argues that during the 1970s, state governments became increasingly aware that growing global interdependence presented both opportunities and threats to state economies. States were forced to compensate, often by seeking to attract foreign investment capital. Also in the special issue, John Kincaid writes that the US recognition of China in 1972 precipitated the governors of US states becoming more and more active in pursuing foreign contacts and opportunities. He argues that before the 1960s, state governors had neither the capacity nor interest for foreign affairs. But “general modernization of state governments and the strengthening of gubernatorial power over the past fifty years” has made diplomats of governors. Also, increased communication between states has enabled state governments to “act together to resolve problems cooperatively without Washington and to represent their common interests jointly.” 5 Organization such as the National Governors’ Association, the Border Governors’ Conference, and the Western Governors’ Association are both cause and effect of the increased professionalization driving interstate linkages which in turn inspire direct foreign relations.
Kline and Kincaid agree that economics was and is the most significant driving force behind states seeking relationships with foreign actors. Earl Fry has also written extensively on states and foreign relations and supports this view: “Many subnational governments in federal systems...perceive that they must be actively engaged in international commerce in order to secure business opportunities and enhance revenues. The competition among these units is now so intense that players that opt not to participate in international activities may find their economic prospects threatened.” 6
These developments raise questions about whether the states are challenging the nation’s sovereignty, augmenting it, or acting as a proxy.
There are no clear answers in the existing literature. John Kline acknowledges that “it was national government encouragement which initially helped stimulate state involvement in such activities,” but he also wonders if “(g)rowing state promotional activity is thus raising some important questions regarding control over economic and political decisionmaking where international and domestic interests increasingly overlap governmental boundaries in the U.S. federal system.” 7
Earl Fry writes that some subnational activities may “infringe” upon federal responsibilities. 8 But James Rosenau theorizes the case is not that subnational actors are knowingly or intentionally challenging national sovereignty, but that the emergence of “transnational” issues such as pollution, drugs, and currency crises have “reduced (the) capability of states and governments to provide satisfactory solutions to the major issues on their political agendas, partly because the new issues are not wholly within their jurisdiction...with the weakening of whole systems, subsystems have acquired a correspondingly greater coherence and effectiveness(.)” 9 Daniel Latouche echoes Rosenau’s theory and writes: “Transnationalism is not the result of a failure or even of an attack on the nation–state, but a consequence of a new equation between state and society.” 10 It is not yet clear what impact states are having on the foreign policy process and outcome. More systematic research is needed to determine how states are influencing foreign affairs and policy, and to determine what role the Cold War’s demise has played in seemingly accelerating the involvement of states in foreign relations.
Assumption: States pursuing their own foreign interests means the national interest is reduced to “economic particularism,” as Samuel Huntington calls it, which fragments the United States. He writes: “Without a sure sense of national identity, Americans have become unable to define their national interests, and as a result subnational commercial interests and transnational and nonnational ethnic interests have come to dominate foreign policy.” 11
The concept of the national interest is notoriously underdefined and subject to change as political need arises. Huntington’s definition is quite specific: “A national interest is a public good of concern to all or most Americans; a vital national interest is one which they are willing to expend blood and treasure to defend...(t)he most striking feature of the search for national interest has been its failure to generate broad support and to which people are willing to commit significant resources.” 12
Yet such an argument overlooks that the sum of subnational interests could equal the national interest. Peter Trubowitz has illustrated that even during the Cold War, a time when there was supposedly a “national interest” which was superior to just the sum of subnational interests, support for national secuirty policies rested on regional support. The national interest was actually the product of regional, subnational domestic political struggle. Trubowitz’ analysis upholds the concept that the national interest is the culmination of regional interests. 13 It also illustrates that the national interest is multifaceted, comprising economic as well as military issues, quality of life as well as security; Trubowitz shows economic gains and losses were deciding factors in the regions’ support of Cold War power policies.
David Clinton affirms that the national interest has in the past been defined as the sum of subnational interests. He quotes Arthur Bentley: “‘We shall never find a group interest of the society as a whole...(T)he society itself is nothing other than the complex of the groups that compose it.’” Clinton also outlines Charles Beard’s argument that any “‘particularities’” which succeeded in “imposing themselves on the political system meant by definition that they were a part of the common good.” 14 Thus it can be argued the states’ international linkages, yet unchallenged by the federal government, have insinuated themselves into a national practice and are thus a component of the common good. What remains to be seen is what impact the international relations of states has on federal foreign policy. There is no arguing that national security is and should be the primary concern of the nation–state. But the Cold War was anomalous in its clarity of threat, which easily translated into a one–word definition of the national interest. The nature of threats facing the United States is radically different now from the Cold War. To continue to focus on a power or military–based concept of the national interest is short–sighted. Today’s threats of terrorism, instability, disease, resource scarcity and information security are decentralized in source and effect, threats whose multiple points of origin offer no military target to contain. These challenges require remedies of cooperation, coordination, empowerment of groups and individuals, and sharing of resources, information, and strategies. It is possible the states are appropriate vehicles for handling these issues and in this way are serving the national interest, even in terms of security. But systematic analysis of state activity in foreign relations is needed in order to determine why states are more active and how their activities impact US federal policy. 15
Questions
Question: When states establish relations with foreign nations, are they involved in foreign policy or foreign relations?
States are developing foreign relations and creating state offices to communicate directly with foreign nations. But whether this should be termed “foreign policy” or “state foriegn policy” or merely “foreign relations” is unclear based on the existing literature. It is difficult enough to find a definition of foreign policy. One of the clearest is Jerel Rosati’s: foreign policy is “the scope of involvement abroad and the collection of goals, strategies, and instruments that are selected by governmental policymakers.” 16 But undoubtedly, this definition is intended to apply to federal policymakers, leaving uncertain how to categorize what the states are doing.
In a 1994 article, Michael Clough welcomes the arrival of “regionally based foreign policy communities” that have developed since the end of the Cold War, but he terms such activities as “global policy” rather than foreign policy. Others have been more direct: James Goldsborough argues that “California is so big, and its problems so immense, that it needs its own foreign policy.” But he adds that foreign policy concerned with economic development is not military policy: “In an era when economics commands foreign relations, this does not mean embassies and armies, but it does mean more trade offices and state agents in foreign countries, its own relations with foreign nations and a governor and legislature willing to represent the state’s interest independently of Washington.” John Barkdull and Ken Hansen write of the trend away from “central control over foreign policy” as states find federal policy “does not address their needs, and so they must act on their own, despite the constitutional preeminence of the federal government in foreign affairs.” Barkdull and Hansen argue that Texas is so involved in foreign affairs “that it makes sense to say that Texas has its own foreign policy.” 17
The federalism–oriented scholars, including Earl Fry and Ivo Duchacek, write primarily of states having “international relations” or “trans–sovereign” relations. Brian Hocking, who has published several volumes on the topic, differentiates between “foreign policy localization,” which refers to states acting on their own international interests, and “national foreign policies,” his term for states seeking to influence foreign policy by pressuring federal actors. 18
The preference of this author is to define foreign policy as US federal policy, and to term state involvement as foreign relations or state policy. This allows a clearer way of tracking the influence of state foreign relations on federal policy, a topic which merits more systematic study than exists.
Question:Aren’t agreements between US states and foreign nations constitutionally prohibited? Doesn’t this prevent states from establishing relations with foreign nations?
Article One of the Constitution of the United States prohibits the states from entering into any “agreement or compact” with foreign powers. 19 But despite this prohibition, US states and even municipal governments are signing non–binding, non–legal agreements with foreign nations. Earl Fry writes that “Congress has had few qualms about states signing international pacts, agreements, and understandings. several hundred such arrangements have been ratified by state governments, mostly with their provincial counterparts in Canada.” 20
The state of Texas has numerous agreements with both state and federal governments in Mexico, ranging from environmental cooperation to criminal justice. State actors in Texas acknowledge there is no force of law behind these agreements and liken them to “memos” of discussions signed by all parties present at a meeting. 21
There is surprisingly little specific comment about such developments in the foreign policy trade journals, other than the general comments of article’s such as Huntington, denouncing supporting state commercial interests over the national interest. The questions that should be asked about these agreements are: how is it that a sovereign nation (Mexico or
Canada being the most frequent examples) would sign a self–enforcing agreement with a subnational actor in another sovereign nation (the United States?) What can explain that? Do the signing of the documents have a significant impact on public policy? Do the documents reflect a capability of the signing agents to effect change or just a ‘wish list’ of actions/problems better solved by federal actors? This fascinating development deserves serious study and theory development.
Question: What impact does state involvement in foreign policy have on US federalism?
In recent years there has been a move to assign certain federal responsibilities to the states. Advocates of devolution say the states should be empowered to handle “local” problems such as welfare and school standards. Whether this sentiment will expand to include “border affairs” or economic development which depends on overseas markets more than the federal government remains to be seen.
Because of the constitutional ban on state involvement on foreign policy, legal scholars are quite interested in how globalization will affect relations between the states and the federal government. While there is no real theoretical framework in law–review literature sufficient to explain the causes and effects of state foreign relations, there are questions raised of which anyone studying subnational actors must be aware. Barry Friedman explores the implications of international trade agreements on state regulatory power in an issue of the Vanderbilt Law Review. David Schmahmann and James Finch discuss “The Unconstitutionality of State and Local Enactments in the United States Restricting Business Ties with Burma (Myanmar),” outlining US Supreme Court decisions on non–federal foreign policy actions. Texas Attorney General Dan Morales’ office has published an overview of how the North American Free Trade Agreement’s environmental laws affect state regulations. 22
Literature Review
Following is a brief review and critique of the existing literature on states and foreign policy. The topic merits far more study and analysis than it has received. The topic exists at a confluence of many fields of study: international relations, foreign policy studies, and domestic political processes. However, no existing literature has yet synthesized the concerns of these three literatures into a cohesive whole which can explain the effects of international system change on the increased involvement of states in foreign affairs and the subsequent impact on US foreign policy.
Sectionalism
(Bensel, Trubowitz): While regionalism is an old story in US politics, institutionalized direct relations between US states and foreign nations is new. The sectionalism approach is dedicated to showing how regional interests coalesce at the federal level via congressional representation. But this literature cannot account for direct communication between states and foreign actors. Regardless of whether the states, in pursuing foreign relationships, are acting autonomously or according to the desires of the federal government, more research is needed to determine how the states evolved to the point of institutionalizing foreign relations. A potential study topic could determine whether states’ methods of influencing foreign policy by pressuring federal actors has changed in favor of direct contact with foreign nations.
States and Foreign Policy Literature
(Duchacek, Fry, Kline, Kincaid): These authors are primarily federalist scholars and approach the issues from the viewpoint of how internationally active states are constitutionally capable of being involved in such activities. Thus there is little to no acknowledgement of international relations concerns such as sovereignty, the national interest, national security, or the effect of the international system on domestic variables. This makes this literature of limited utility in explaining the impact of states’ foreign relations on foreign policy processes, agendas, or outcomes.
Brian Hocking presents an alternative to the Duchacek, et al approach with his book on NCGs —“non–central governments” — and their place in “multilayered diplomacy,” his term for the complex arena of international relations that exists today. Hocking is critical of the existing literature on subnational governments, calling it “unhelpful,” “fragmented,” and “descriptive depicting” which has not “contributed to our ability to make some sense of the general phenomenon in terms of the shifting movements between various levels of decision–making from the supranational to the subnational.” 23 Rather than using Duchacek’s term, “microdiplomacy,” which Hocking claims fragments diplomacy into separate realms, Hocking outlines a complex “web of interactions” which “blends” central governments and NCGs “in various ways at the behest of a range of forces located at differing political levels...The idea, then, of NCGs engaged in ‘new forms’ of diplomacy...is replaced by an attempt to fit them into the changing patterns of world politics.” 24
But Hocking focuses on NCGs in diplomacy only, thereby casting them as subordinate to central governments. Thus he avoids the problem of how the relationship between the states and federal government might be changing, and whether states are acting as agents of the states or autonomously, which needs to be examined more closely.
International Relations
While the subnational actor literature leaves out the traditional concerns of international relations and foreign policy — effects of the international system, sovereignty, security, the national interest — the authors who are concerned with such concepts are not interested in cluttering up their global world–view by including subnational actors in their analysis. Peter Gourevitch explains: “Domestic structure for the ‘I.R.’ person is an independent or intervening variable and sometimes an irrelevant one,” as he refers the reader to the work of Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of Cold War–era international systems analysis. 25 International relations and international political economy literature do identify “states” as the primary actors in world politics — but “states” in international relations literature refers to nation–states and their central governments, not subnational actors. These nation–states are usually treated as unitary actors and the existence, much less political impact, of subnational governmental institutions is not acknowledged. Darel Paul writes:
“This obscurity is unfortunate...for it means international relations and international political economy fail to treat seriously the issue of scale in relations of authority. From the vantage point of the state...the system–level is the ‘macro’ and the sub–state the ‘micro.’ Most attention is paid to ‘macro’ level relations and institutions such as international regimes, international norms, intergovernmental organizations, or global capitalism. Although not nearly as prevalent, ‘micro’ level factors such as transnational corporations, social movements, terrorist groups, even individuals are also given their due. Yet there is also a ‘meso’ level in that vast gulf between state and civil society, populated by subnational governments...a truly multiscalar approach to international relations and international political economy should be advanced, incorporating the meso level as well as the others.” 26
There are some international relations works which seeks to explain the impact of the international system on domestic politics. However, this literature has still not worked its way to the subnational level. In works such as Keohane and Milner’s Internationalization and Domestic Politics, “states” still are nation–states and “domestic institutions” are found at the federal level only. 27
One fairly new research area which holds some promise is James Rosenau’s “turbulence theory,” which he developed to explain the recent rapid changes in world politics. Technology plays a central role in Rosenau’s theory, as it allows individuals to “locate their own interests more clearly in the flow of events...the analytic skills of individuals have increased to a point where they now play a different and significant role in world politics.” 28 His focus includes an array of subnational actors, what he calls “subgroups.” 29
Rosenau’s theories of the effects of technology on central governments and sovereignty, as well as his recognition of the existence of subnational actors within a context of international relations concepts of sovereignty and interest, holds some explanatory promise for the problem posed by states in foreign affairs and may be expanded to account for it more specifically than Rosenau does.
Conclusion
While International Relations and foreign policy studies scholarship has been preoccupied with the affairs of national governments, subnational governments have undeniably become players on the scene of foreign affairs. Systematic research is needed to determine: what impact states are having on US foreign policy towards the nations with which the states are establishing relationships; how states are affecting the foreign policy process in general; and how states evolved to the point of institutionalizing relations with foreign nations. This paper raises just a few points that will hopefully be explained in the near future as study of the role of states in post–Cold War foreign policy is given serious study and theory–building.