Name: Foreign Policy: Crash Course Government and Politics #50
Uploaded: 2016-09-18T04:26:23.000Z
Duration: 10 min
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Hello. I'm Craig and this is Crash Course Government and Politics and congratulations

you have made it to the final Crash Course Government and Politics video! Whoo!

Today we’re going to look at the mystifying paradox of both the least and most important

Foreign policy is the most important because it has the potential to affect the largest

number of people, especially if you include environmental policy, which we should. Also,

foreign policy includes a lot of elements of economic policy, so that’s important.

But it’s also the least important, first because it tends to have a minimal impact

on how Americans think about their government, unless the U.S. is at war and even then not always so much.

Second, because it is the least democratic government policy. Which might be a good thing.

Foreign policy is the collection of policies that determine America’s relations with other nations & foreign entities.

It includes: - diplomacy - military and security policy

- international human rights policies - economic policies such as trade and international energy policy, and

- environmental policy. My environmental policy is [punches eagle] ...that.

In some ways, foreign policy is the quintessential public good. Everybody benefits from a policy

that makes citizens, and the world, safer, and no individual, except for maybe a Bond-style

supervillain could pull it off by themselves.

Like all government policy, foreign policy has goals. Of course, foreign policy is about

providing security, but American foreign policy also seeks to create prosperity, and works

toward a somewhat idealistic goal of making the world a better place.

Security has many facets, and like most things, it has grown more complex over time. It used

to simply mean being able to repel invaders.

No, not like the Mongols, more like the British.

Now however, in addition to physical security, foreign policy encompasses transportation,

energy, cyber-security, and food security.

So we can see how foreign policy and economic policy are closely related.

And of course, we can’t forget terrorism.

I can’t resist a little history here, especially since this is the last episode of the series.

From the beginning, starting with George Washington, in terms of physical security, the U.S. has

been pretty isolationist, although Canadians and Mexicans would probably disagree.

George Washington urged the U.S. to avoid “foreign entanglements” and we basically

did, right up until World Wars I and II, when threats to the international order were seen

as detrimental to American security, even though there wasn’t much danger of the Germans invading the U.S.

After World War II, the advent of long range bombers and then ICBMs meant that there was a threat to

Americans in America and security policy developed into one of deterrence, which meant building up

enough military strength to discourage potential enemies, pronounced Soviet Union, from attacking us.

Deterrence was expensive, and required a large arsenal of dangerous weapons and a willingness

to fight, which the U.S. did in Korea and Vietnam. We still maintain an enormous nuclear

arsenal, but nowadays, different security threats mean deterrence is less important.

It’s not clear that a gigantic nuclear threat has much effect on terrorists, and since 2001,

America has pursued a global war on terror, that, as we saw in Iraq, includes the doctrine

of preemptive war to forestall potential threats.

Although military force may be the most visible form of U.S. foreign policy, it might not

be the most useful. For one thing, it’s generally seen as a last resort, which I’d

say is a good thing. It also has significant downsides, including costs, both in terms of lives and money.

It’s also politically dangerous because, while Americans are usually on board with

short, decisive and victorious military action, the longer a war drags on, the less support it tends to have.

The main economic goals of foreign policy are to expand opportunities for the U.S.,

promote foreign investment, maintain access to foreign energy supplies, and promote trade

policies that will keep prices low at American big box stores.

What this means in practice is that the U.S. maintains an active role in international

organizations, like the World Trade Organization, that make and uphold free trade rules.

We grant “most favorable nation” status to trading partners that agree to low tariffs,

and most notably we engage in regional trade agreements like NAFTA.

The third goal of foreign policy is to make the world a better place. One way that the

U.S. does this is through international human rights initiatives.

The U.S. is a party to many human rights treaties, but we have a somewhat complicated relationship

with the UN and international lawmaking bodies, so we don’t sign on to all of them.

For example, the U.S. hasn’t signed on to the international criminal court, probably

because we’re afraid that submitting to its jurisdiction would be a loss of our sovereignty.

But in reality international law isn’t a huge part of American foreign policy.

The U.S. also engages in international peace-keeping missions, and international peace certainly

America doesn’t usually commit its soldiers to UN peacekeeping missions, preferring to

make its own coalitions or work through NATO, which by the way is an example of an international

security agreement too. See there’s a lot of overlap here.

Another way the U.S. makes the world a better place is through international environmental policy.

Again, (punches eagle) that’s my environmental policy. Keep eagles away from me.

Environmental policy has a domestic component, as when we set fuel standards or rules for power plant

emissions or dumping toxic chemicals. But since we’re all on one planet with one environment, it’s also part of

foreign policy. Talk to me when you live on Mars. Then maybe you don’t have to worry about this stuff.

On the other hand, the U.S. lags behind other nations in terms of participation in many

global environmental initiatives, which is a bit of a problem considering we’re one

of the world’s biggest polluters and producers of greenhouse gasses.

I can’t imagine these statements are going to lead to any bad comments. At all.

When it comes to the conflict between environmental protection and economic growth, Americans

So, overall, in terms of foreign policy goals, security comes first, economics second and

making the world a better place definitely third, at least in terms of formal foreign policy.

This brings us to the question of how foreign policy is made, and why foreign policy is

the least democratic type of policy the government makes.

Let’s go to the final Thought Bubble for Crash Course Government and Politics. Whoo!

At the top of the foreign policy picture is the President, who the constitution suggests

is the nation’s chief diplomat, having the power to receive foreign ambassadors and negotiate

treaties. The president gets all the face to face meetings with foreign leaders and

has authority to hammer out agreements; remember that when the Constitution was written most

other countries were still ruled by kings, emperors, and sultans, so we needed a single

person to do the negotiating. He also has the advantage of being “the decider” on

crucial issues, which may be good or bad depending on whether or not you like his decisions.

But the president, like John Green, is only one man, so most of the day-to-day work of

foreign policy is relegated to bureaucrats. Like most of the day-to-day work of Crash

Course is relegated to bureaucrats like me, and Stan, and Zulaiha, and Raoul, and Brandon,

and Thought Cafe, oh this isn’t the credits let’s move on.

Diplomatic work is handled mainly by the State Department, but they get a lot of help from

the defense department and the intelligence gathering agencies like the CIA, NSA, and

DHS. After all, you want to have as much information as you can before you sit down at the table

to negotiate. Unless you are negotiating the size and shape of the table. Which has happened.

Congress has a role in foreign policy but it's a limited one, and that’s probably a good thing.