Back in the late 1970s, I was interviewing Sen. John Culver, an Iowa Democrat, for a book I was writing about the Senate. I asked him if foreign policy issues were handled differently in the Senate than domestic issues. He spoke first about the myriad interest groups that buzz like angry bees around domestic issues, especially those that involve the economy. Then he added, “But of course, in Washington, foreign policy is the big boys’ playpen.” He might have added that in that playpen, there is no bigger boy than the president of the United States.

Congress almost always approaches a foreign policy gun fight with a pocket knife. For one thing, Congress is a specialized institution where only a handful of members of Congress deal on a regular basis with international issues. This limited cast of characters would include the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Foreign Operations subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees of both houses and, to a more limited degree, the two Armed Services Committees. On the Senate side where members have multiple major committee assignments, the attention of even those senators who are foreign policy specialists is often diverted to issues connected to their other committee assignments.