630 Chapter 17 | Foreign PolicyCongress
Congress holds three types of influence over foreign policy. The first is the power of
the purse. Since members of Congress write annual budgets for every government
department and agency, one way for members to shape foreign policy is to forbid
expenditures on activities that members want to prevent.
Second, the Senate has the power to approve treaties and confirm the appointments
of senior members of the president’s foreign policy team, including the secretaries of
state and defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and America’s ambassador to
the UN. Although it is rare for senators to reject a treaty or nominee, sometimes they
issue preemptive warnings about what kinds of treaties they will accept (in response,
presidents often avoid asking for a vote on treaties they know will be rejected).
Third, the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war on other nations.
However, the Constitution does not say that this declaration must occur before hostilities
can begin or whether the declaration is necessary at all. In fact, although the United
States has been involved in hundreds of military conflicts since the Founding, there have
been only five U.S. declarations of war: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War
(declared in 1846), the Spanish-American War (in 1898), and both world wars (declared
in 1917 and 1941, respectively). In an attempt to codify war-making powers, in 1973
Congress adopted the War Powers Resolution. This legislation was designed to limit
the president’s war-making powers and to give members of Congress a way to reverse a
president’s decision to deploy American forces. Although the resolution has been in effect
for over 30 years, the question of which branch of the government controls America’s
armed forces remains controversial. (See the How It Works graphic for more details.)
Several groups within Congress participate in making foreign policy. The
Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House and the Foreign Relations Committee in the
Senate are responsible for writing legislation that deals with foreign policy, including
setting the annual budget for agencies that carry out those policies. These committees
also hold hearings in which they pose questions to foreign policy experts from inside and
outside government. While hearings do not necessarily lead to changes in policy, they
can educate members of Congress on foreign policy matters, draw media and public
attention to issues important to the committee, and force presidential nominees to make
commitments about how they will perform in office. For example, during confirmation
hearings in 2018, CIA Director Gina Haspel agreed that CIA operatives would conform
to limitations on the use of torture when interrogating suspects.
The House and Senate each have an Intelligence Committee that oversees covert
operations and the actions of the CIA, the NSA, and similar agencies. Under current
law, the president is supposed to give Congress “timely notification” of covert
intelligence operations (although there is some dispute over what “timely” means).^39
These arrangements help to ensure that someone outside the executive branch knows
about secret operations and can organize congressional opposition if these actions are
deemed illegal, immoral, or unwise.
Of course, members of Congress always have the power to block a president’s
foreign policy initiatives, but doing so requires enacting a law with enough votes to
override a presidential veto, which is often an impossible task. In the debate over
funding for the Iraq War, in 2007 the House and Senate passed a funding resolution
that included a withdrawal time line for U.S. troops, but it was approved by a margin
of only a few votes in each chamber. After President Bush vetoed the resolution, the
two houses passed a new funding resolution without these restrictions. In more recent
cases, such as during the debate over U.S. participation in the NATO operations in
Libya or interventions in Syria, resolutions were offered to cut off funding but did not
pass either house of Congress.Full_18_APT_64431_ch17_614-654.indd 630 16/11/18 11:21 AM