Making Foreign Policy on the New Frontier

Abstract

The test of organization in foreign policy is whether it produces coherence and effectiveness in the nation's undertakings in external affairs. Coherence requires not only co-ordination in planning and operations but also the establish ment of premises and goals by which to set perspectives for judgment. This is a function of political leadership in the better sense of both terms—a function to be discharged only by the President under the American constitutional order. A salient characteristic of the conduct of foreign policy on the New Frontier is the re-emergence of presidential concern and zeal. To an unprecedented degree, these attributes have been made manifest in day-to-day work of the establishments con cerned in foreign policy. Emphasis on the device of task forces and the extraordinary prominence of the White House staff have been accompanying phenomena. The style has been impressive. Public support has come in response, and the prevailing disposition is to give the present administration an A for effort. Both its popularity and its problems have en dured. The grave test of its version of premises and goals has not yet been surmounted. An important point on which to base reservations is a question whether the empirical processes of policy-making are not being overdone, blurring out distinc tions between questions properly to be decided at the presi dential level of authority and those better left to subordinates to settle.