Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 24

MODERN AGE

The Federalists who gathered in Phila-
delphia in 1787 likewise fixed upon the
conditions that make for a favorable peace.
That explains the apparent anomalies of a
Constitution that inhibited foreign adventures
through a division of foreign policy powers
and yet contained no instructions at all regarding the use of those powers except, of course, to
"preserve, protect, and defend the Constitu-
tion of the United States." Were the Framers
naive, absent-minded, or oblivious to the
importance of foreign policy and defense?
Of course not. The impotence of the
Articles of Confederation to unify policies
for trade and defense were what moved
Federalists to convene the convention in the
first place, and the first thirty articles in The
Federalist Papers urged ratification on foreign
policy grounds. Yet when we look at the
Constitution itself, all we find are those few,
familiar clauses in Article I, Section 8, which
grant Congress power to (1) regulate foreign
commerce; (2) define and punish piracy on
the high seas; (3) declare war; and (4) raise
and support armies for no more than two
years at a time, provide for a navy, and call
up state militias in need. Article II, Section
2, is sparer still, merely granting the president
power to (1) serve as commander in chief, (2)
appoint ambassadors, and (3) make treaties
with the advice and consent of the Senate.
That's all. No one is delegated authority to
make or execute foreign policy. No mention
is made of a power to recognize or derec-
ognize foreign regimes, terminate treaties
as opposed to make them, make peace as
opposed to war, declare neutrality in the wars
of others, annex or cede territory, bestow or
deny foreign aid, impose sanctions, regu-
late immigration and the status of aliens,
proclaim Great Rules like Washington's or
Doctrines like Monroe's, or for that matter
prescribe or proscribe any specific diplomatic
behavior at all!
24

FALL 2014

What were the Framers thinking? I believe
they were thinking just what we would expect
them to think if we study the political and
intellectual history of their time and place,
the history they themselves studied, and of
course their own highly articulate arguments.
The only people who may be surprised by
their thinking are those who imagine Amer-
ica's Founders to have been demigods who
personified universal law and meant to design
an instrument to impose on all humanity-
in other words, people who think America's
Founders were akin to the Jacobins.
They were not. As the very first sentence of
Forrest McDonald's great book on the sub-
ject states: "The Framers of the Constitution
were, for the most part, intensely practical
men who were skeptical, even contemptuous,
of abstract schemes of political theory."13 The
Framers were not Neoplatonists, Thomists,
Kantians, Rousseauians, or proto-Straussians.
They were Anglo-Americans steeped in
the common law, Protestant theology, the
English and Scottish Enlightenments, and
classical history. They meant to fashion a
government able to defend the United States
whatever that may require, hence they left its
foreign policy powers vague and elastic. But
they also meant to fashion a government that
did not threaten their own liberty. So they
separated the powers to raise and command
armies, to make and wage war.14
The lessons of history, not least the War
of Independence itself, persuaded Federalists
of the need for a single robust executive to
execute foreign relations and command the
military. Sound philosophy supported that
judgment. John Locke considered executive
prerogative to include "the power of war
and peace, leagues and alliances, and all
the transactions with all persons and com-
munities without the Commonwealth." The
alternative, he warned, must be "disorder
and ruin." The Anglophile Montesquieu
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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