It is customary to think of foreign policy as happening “from the top down,” as an exercise in which a few knowledgeable people at the top of the government formulate a foreign affairs strategy and then successfully market it in the policy process so that it determines the statements and actions of government. Indeed, that is the approach taken in this book, for foreign affairs strategy is primarily an intellectual enterprise undertaken by individuals in the Executive branch who are charged with running the government. But in a democracy, foreign policy also happens “from the bottom up,” as the people express their own ideas of what should be done directly, through interest groups, and ultimately through their elected representatives in Congress. These determinations will rarely be as comprehensive or integrated – as strategic – as those of professionals in the Executive branch, but they may be very strongly articulated and can be backed by all the constitutional powers of Congress.

A successful strategy must therefore consider from the outset what can be sold to the public and on the Hill. As generations of strategists have discovered, it does little good – and may cause much harm – to pursue what may otherwise seem to be rational or even essential objectives if such democratic support is lacking. During the late 1960s, for example, supporters of the Vietnam war complained that the United States could win if only public demonstrations against the war would stop.