NATO at Fifty: Summits, Sherpas, and the Struggle for Presidential Prerogative

摘要

NATO's fiftieth anniversary summit, held in Washington in April of 1999, was a showcase for the pomp, pageantry and perceived power of the American presidency. As host of the meeting, President Clinton convened over 50 heads of state and government from across the European continent, including some of the world's most senior and distinguished statesmen. As the last American president of the 20th century, Bill Clinton consummated the legacy of Harry Truman by returning to the site of the original signing of the NATO treaty to reaffirm allied cohesion and commitment to joint action for the coming fifty years. And perhaps most importantly, as undisputed leader of the Alliance, the President set the substantive agenda for the summit proceedings and decisively shaped the policy results. However, when one looks behind the curtain of the summit stage and examines the course of presidential preparations for such meetings, a very different picture emerges. Behind the public spectacle of diplomatic events, one finds private struggle, institutional conflict, and a policy-making process often characterized by bureaucratic opposition and partisan agenda. For the reality of the presidency today is that the power of the office is increasingly constrained, not only by the relationship between the Administration and Congress but also by the actions of agencies within the executive branch. And in those cases when congressional objectives and agencies' bureaucratic imperatives converge, the President's range of action, options for decision, and capacity to impose a desired outcome can be substantially limited. This central paradox of presidential power, broadly gauged in precedent and public perception but often narrowly confined in practice, was a key feature of internal deliberations preceding the 1999 NATO summit.