On Monday and Wednesday of next week (April 20 and 22), we will do mini-simulations about presidential decisions and foreign policy. You will not have to write a paper, but each of you will prepare for a different role in each mini-simulation.See general description here (click instructions, role & goals, and how-to video).
The first simulation will be a choice between multilateralism and unilateralism. (Take another look at this Wednesday's reading, the National Security Strategy)
Preparing for your role
Before this Wednesday's class, let me know if you have a preferred role in either or both simulations. If more than one student wants the same role in the same simulation, I will choose by lot, using a random-number generator. If you do NOT want a particular role, also let me know. Selection for the remaining roles will be by lot, but nobody will play the same role twice.
Roles:
1. The President — Listens, probes, and ultimately decides which approach will define their administration's foreign policy. The key challenge for this student: synthesizing competing arguments and articulate a coherent doctrine, not just pick a side.
Executive Branch — Core Foreign Policy Principals
2.INSTRUCTOR PLAYS THE National Security Advisor — Frames the debate, manages the discussion, and keeps the conversation anchored to the question of long-term U.S. interests rather than any single crisis. The institutional memory role.
3. Secretary of State — The natural voice for multilateralism: treaties, alliances, international institutions, and diplomacy are the State Department's entire reason for existing. Should make the case that U.S. legitimacy and leverage depend on working through coalitions.
4. Secretary of Defense — More ambivalent than most expect. The Pentagon values reliable allies (burden-sharing, basing rights, interoperability) but also chafes at coalition warfare's constraints. This role should articulate the military's nuanced view rather than defaulting to hawkishness.
5. Director of National Intelligence — Brings the intelligence community's perspective: unilateralism is sometimes necessary when sharing intelligence with allies would compromise sources and methods, but multilateral intelligence-sharing has also been indispensable (Five Eyes, etc.).
6. Secretary of the Treasury — Makes the economic case: dollar hegemony, sanctions coalitions, trade agreements, and the IMF/World Bank system all depend on multilateral legitimacy. Unilateral sanctions are less effective when allies don't participate.
7. U.S. Trade Representative — Focuses on trade architecture specifically: are bilateral deals (a more unilateral approach) or multilateral frameworks like the WTO better for American interests? Connects foreign policy doctrine to economic policy in a way other roles don't.
Executive Branch — Domestic Institutional Voices
8. White House Chief of Staff — The political realist in the room. What will the American public support? What can survive Congress? Unilateralism often polls better domestically; multilateralism is harder to sell when it requires sharing credit or accepting constraints.
9. Attorney General — Addresses the legal architecture: international treaties and multilateral commitments are binding law under the Supremacy Clause; unilateralism can mean acting outside treaty frameworks, which raises constitutional questions the president must weigh.
10. Director of the Office of Management and Budget — Makes the fiscal argument: multilateral burden-sharing reduces the cost of global leadership. Unilateralism means the U.S. pays the full bill. In an era of deficit pressure, this is not a trivial point.
Congressional Voices
11. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair (president's party) — Reminds the president that multilateral treaties require Senate ratification (two-thirds), while executive agreements do not. The choice of doctrine has direct implications for what the president can do without Congress.
12. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member (opposition party) — Likely to argue the opposite of whatever the chair argues, surfacing the partisan dimension of the multilateralism debate that has defined American foreign policy since Wilson.
13. House Armed Services Committee Chair — Focuses on the defense authorization and appropriations implications: multilateral operations require different force structures and funding than unilateral power projection.
Outside Perspectives (advisors invited to the meeting)
14. NATO Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) — The military's multilateralist par excellence. Makes the case that alliance interoperability, Article 5 credibility, and forward basing are irreplaceable assets that only multilateralism can sustain.
15. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations — Argues for the UN system's value while acknowledging its frustrations (Security Council vetoes, etc.). The role that best captures why multilateralism is both necessary and maddening.
16. National Economic Council Director — Brings the domestic economy into the debate: global supply chains, foreign investment, and dollar dominance all depend on the rules-based international order that multilateralism built and sustains.
17. Historian/Senior Scholar (Council on Foreign Relations or similar) — A distinctive role that fits a CMC presidency course especially well: this student draws on the full semester's readings — Washington's Farewell Address, the Monroe Doctrine, TR vs. Wilson, FDR — to contextualize the choice historically. What have past presidents actually chosen, and what were the consequences?
18. American Public Advocate (domestic political advisor) — Represents public opinion and electoral politics. Polls consistently show Americans want burden-sharing but resist international constraints on sovereignty. This role forces the room to confront the gap between elite multilateralist consensus and the public's more ambivalent instincts — one of the central tensions the course explores when asking what it takes to win and keep the presidency. t
