Secretary of State

In Britain, the head of any of the more important government departments. In the United States, the head of the State Department, which deals with foreign policy.

The secretary of state is the administrator of the Department of State and the principal spokesperson for the President on U.S. foreign policy. The secretary serves as a member of the President's “inner cabinet” of advisers and, by law, as a member of the National Security Council. The secretary has the primary responsibility for preparing the budget for foreign affairs programs, including diplomatic missions, foreign aid to developing nations, and contributions to multinational organizations such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The secretary defends foreign affairs programs before subcommittees of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and is the principal spokesperson for the administration before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The President may also assign the secretary to communicate foreign policy to foreign heads of state or to serve as the principal U.S. diplomat at international conferences.

As head of the first department of government established in 1789, the secretary is the first cabinet officer in line to succeed to the Presidency in the event there is no Vice President, Speaker of the House, or president pro tempore of the Senate to assume the office. A Presidential resignation is submitted to the secretary of state.

Though some secretaries are highly influential advisers and policymakers, others have merely administered the State Department. Thomas Jefferson, the first secretary of state, resigned from George Washington's cabinet because his pro-French policies were not adopted. For the first two decades of the 19th century, each secretary of state was an influential shaper of foreign policy, and each became the next President: James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Daniel Webster ran U.S. foreign policy when President John Tyler and the Whig Congress remained stalemated in domestic matters. William Seward wrote a memorandum to Abraham Lincoln in which he offered to run foreign policy, but Lincoln wrote back that as President he would retain final responsibility; Seward's main accomplishment was buying Alaska from Russia. Franklin Roosevelt used Presidential assistants to implement his policies, bypassing his secretary of state, Cordell Hull. President Harry Truman, by contrast, relied heavily on George Marshall, who proposed the Marshall Plan for economic recovery in Western Europe after World War II, and Dean Acheson. Acheson was the architect of the U.S. policies of collective security—making alliances to confront aggressor nations—and containment of communist aggression.

Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated the policy of “brinkmanship,” which involved pushing a situation to the brink by threatening to use the armed forces (including nuclear weapons) to prevent communist regimes from expanding their influence. Dean Rusk served in the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; he was preoccupied with resisting communist aggression in Southeast Asia, and he defended the Johnson administration against charges that it was not willing to negotiate a peace with North Vietnam.

Richard Nixon's secretary of state, William Rogers, was overshadowed by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: his one major initiative, the Rogers Plan for Mideast Peace, went nowhere. Eventually, he was succeeded by Kissinger, who as secretary of state engaged in successful “shuttle diplomacy” between Jerusalem and Cairo to bring about a disengagement of opposing forces in the Sinai Peninsula after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Cyrus Vance, Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, resigned as a matter of honor after Carter ordered a U.S. raid to free diplomats held hostage by Iran; Vance had been kept in the dark about the raid and had not been able to keep his promise to the Senate to brief it in advance of any military action.

Ronald Reagan's first secretary of state, Alexander Haig, suggested to the President that he be the “vicar” of U.S. foreign policy, but Reagan never gave him full responsibility, and Haig was involved in conflicts with Vice President George Bush and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. He offered to resign so many times that eventually Reagan accepted. Secretary George Shultz opposed Reagan's plan to sell arms to Iran and was frozen out of policy-making. But after the Iran-Contra scandal erupted, Shultz became the dominant figure in the Reagan administration because he had the confidence of Congress. George Bush's secretary of state was his close political adviser and campaign manager, James Baker. The two dominated foreign policy in much the way Nixon and Kissinger had done, though Baker failed to convince Iraq to pull out of Kuwait and his Middle East Peace Conference failed to achieve an agreement between Israel and the Arab states.

Madeleine Albright was the first woman to be appointed secretary of state, and Bill Clinton nominated her in part to make history. She was neither a close political adviser nor a national security official he relied upon prior to her appointment. Clinton assigned Albright highly public roles in dealing with Congress, particularly the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, with whom she developed some rapport that was helpful in providing the State Department with funding. Albright had a tendency to substitute bombastic and inflated rhetoric for quiet diplomacy, and often she had little to show for her efforts. Her most constructive work involved the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as the two sides worked to develop a framework peace agreement.

See also Cabinet; Decision making, Presidential; National security adviser; National Security Council

Sources

• Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969).
• James Chace, Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).
• Alexander Haig, Caveat (New York: Macmillan, 1984).
• Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979).
• George Shultz, Turning Point (New York: Macmillan, 1993)

Holding one of the ranking positions in the president's cabinet, the secretary of state is the president's principal foreign policy adviser. In this pivotal role, the secretary undertakes the overall direction, coordination, and supervision of relations between the United States and foreign nations. The position is fourth in line of presidential succession. Like other cabinet members who implement the president's policies, the secretary heads a federal department: the Department of State. As its director, the secretary oversees a vast network of U.S. offices and agencies, conducts negotiations with foreign governments, and often travels in the role of chief U.S. representative abroad. In 1997 President Bill Clinton named Madeleine K. Albright as the first female secretary of state.

The position of secretary of state developed shortly after the founding of the nation in the late eighteenth century. In 1781 Congress created the Department of Foreign Affairs but abolished it and replaced it with the Department of State in 1789. Lawmakers designated the secretary of state as head of the State Department with two principal responsibilities: to assist the president in foreign policy matters and to be the chief representative of the United States abroad. Nomination of the secretary was left to the president, but the appointment was made contingent upon the approval of the U.S. Senate. The first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, served under President George Washington from 1790 to 1793.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. foreign policy apparatus has greatly expanded, and its principal body is the State Department. The United States maintains diplomatic relations with some 180 countries worldwide as well as ties to many international organizations, and most of this diplomatic business flows through the State Department. The secretary is aided by a deputy secretary and five undersecretaries who serve as key advisers in political affairs; economic, business, and agricultural affairs; arms control and international security affairs; management; and global affairs. Additionally, the secretary has general responsibility for the U.S. Information Agency, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Agency for International Development.

The secretary is very important. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president has most of the power to set foreign policy; some of this power is shared by the U.S. Senate, which approves treaties as well as diplomatic and consular appointments. In practical terms the secretary of state generally becomes the architect of U.S. foreign policy by implementing the president's objectives. Not all foreign policy advice is given by the secretary, however. In 1947 the creation of the National Security Council provided the president with an additional advisory board (National Security Act of 1947, 50 U.S.C.A. §§ 401-412 [1982]).

Some secretaries have exerted enormous influence on U.S. policy — largely as a reflection of the president under whom they served. Henry Kissinger, who served as secretary of state from 1973 to 1976 under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, had a leading role in shaping the nation's participation in nuclear arms treaties and in the Vietnam War. By contrast, Secretary of State George Schultz found his influence eclipsed by that of the National Security Council during the Iran-Contra scandal that rocked the presidency of Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s.

See: Ambassadors and Consuls; Arms Control and Disarmament; International Law; State Department.

The head of the United States Department of State and, as leading member of the cabinet, fourth in line of succession to the presidency. The secretary of state is charged with formulating American foreign policy and conducting relations with other nations.

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