Why U.S. Foreign Policy Survives Its Presidents

A composite illustration of President Donald Trump framed by U.S. institutions, allies, and military power, symbolizing how foreign policy extends beyond any single presidency.

By Ahmed Fathi

New York, NY: For much of my life, I assumed power worked the way I had seen it work across large parts of the world. Leaders spoke, institutions followed. Presidents announced, systems complied. Authority was personal before it was procedural.

I grew up in Egypt living in the heart of MENA region which is rife with authoritarian, autocrats, dictators, and absolute monarchs, that assumption felt natural. You learn early to be wary of government action. You learn to distrust official narratives, to read between the lines, to recognize how easily institutions bend when power concentrates in one office. In many political systems, the leader is not just the face of power. He is the system.

That worldview followed me as I moved between Egypt, Europe, and the United States, and later as my travels took me across more than 85 countries. It shaped how I interpreted political authority and how I instinctively evaluated risk, credibility, and intent.

It took time and proximity to understand something that sounds obvious but feels counterintuitive if you did not grow up inside a functioning democracy. In the United States, leaders are powerful, but they are not sovereign. The system pushes back.

That distinction matters today, when public debate increasingly treats American foreign policy as if it were simply an extension of the personality occupying the Oval Office.

The U.S. president wields enormous authority. He commands the military, conducts diplomacy, sets priorities, appoints senior officials, and shapes the tone of American engagement with the world. When a president speaks, markets react. Governments respond. Alliances recalibrate. That power is real.

But intent is not outcome.

Every major foreign policy decision collides with the machinery of American governance. Congress debates and blocks. Courts intervene and delay. Agencies interpret and resist. Career officials shape implementation. Allies react based on their own interests, not Washington’s slogans. The result is often slower, messier, and more constrained than the rhetoric that precedes it.

This is not dysfunction. It is design.

Covering Washington after reporting from political systems where power concentrates in one office forced me to recalibrate how I understand authority. In many countries, if a leader wants a policy executed, it happens. In the United States, policy is negotiated, diluted, reshaped, and sometimes defeated before it ever reaches implementation.

Congress, often dismissed as political theater, is one of the most consequential foreign policy actors. It controls funding, writes sanctions law, approves arms sales, confirms appointments, and conducts oversight. Presidents routinely find their ambitions boxed in by legislators who simply refuse to cooperate. This constraint is structural, not partisan.

Another layer that is often misunderstood is the national security bureaucracy itself. Career diplomats, intelligence officers, defense officials, and civil servants do not vanish when a new president takes office. They stay. They write the briefings, frame the choices, interpret the intelligence, and carry out the work long after campaign slogans fade. Presidents can push back against them and sometimes override them, but they cannot wipe away decades of institutional thinking overnight. That is one of the main reasons U.S. foreign policies tends to look far more consistent in practice than it does on the campaign trail.

The courts add another real-world constraint. Immigration bans, emergency powers, surveillance programs, sanctions decisions, and executive orders routinely land before judges. Those judges often narrow them, delay them, or block them altogether. This happens under presidents of both parties. It is not a textbook theory. It is how the system actually functions.

Then there are the alliances. NATO, the G7, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, intelligence-sharing partnerships, and regional coalitions are not passive audiences to U.S. decisions. They shape what is politically and strategically sustainable. They impose costs on reckless shifts. They constrain behavior through expectations and interdependence. Presidents can criticize allies publicly and threaten withdrawal, but the underlying architecture of these relationships has repeatedly proven more resilient than the politics of the moment.

This layered reality matters when claims arise that U.S. foreign policy reflects the bias or worldview of a single individual. The serious analytical question is not what the president said at a rally or in an interview. It is what the system ultimately produced. Did alliances weaken structurally or endure rhetorical turbulence. Did sanctions collapse or remain intact. Did military commitments evaporate or continue through institutional momentum. Did adversaries gain concrete strategic advantage due to policy, not just noise.

Having lived between political cultures, I instinctively draw comparisons. In many systems I know well, rhetoric becomes reality quickly. In the United States, rhetoric often collides with structure. That collision frustrates presidents, confuses voters, and fuels conspiracy thinking, but it also functions as one of the country’s most important safeguards.

There is, however, an uncomfortable truth. A system does not need to be captured by a foreign power to serve that power’s interests. Dysfunction alone can achieve that. Polarization weakens cohesion. Distrust corrodes institutions. Erratic messaging unsettles allies. Political chaos creates opportunity for adversaries. Russia, China, and others do not need to control the author of the chaos. They only need to exploit the environment the chaos creates.

American foreign policy is imperfect, often inconsistent, and deeply politicized. But it is not the diary of a single man. It is the product of friction between institutions, personalities, laws, alliances, and public pressure.

Years of covering the US and the UN, watching governments up close, and moving between political cultures have taught me that this friction is not weakness. It is one of the last remaining defenses against the concentration of power.

Anyone who claims that U.S. foreign policy can be reduced to one personality is not describing how power actually works. They are projecting a model from political systems where leaders dominate institutions onto a system designed specifically to prevent that.

And that misunderstanding, ironically, is exactly what authoritarian systems want the world to believe.