Foreign Policy with a Multi Party Presidential Republic

 In the rules I established earlier, elections across America have single transferable vote for each election and the primaries. 

This creates many interesting consequences for foreign policy.

The president as you'll remember will have had to do a lot more negotiation when coming up with their cabinet and appointments, including 188 ambassadors, by my count, 166 other positions confirmed tied to foreign affairs, and that's not even including the military positions which will be vital for America's military ties to it's allies and the way other countries view the American army, as an occupation force or a liberating army, whichever way the US treats their country. Political balance required by law on several important multi member boards like the Peace Corps also means more parties than just Democrats and Republicans on them of course, if now you need to not split it down half between two, now you might need to give a fifth to five parties. 

Some of the positions will likely be the president's own party, most likely including the secretary of state, but even that can be challenged in the need to appease the Senate majority to get them confirmed. These officers will be more distant from the president's innermost circle and those their party is most familiar with and will have an independent base of support from other parties. 

The president's largest powers that they can use directly (as opposed to using carrots and sticks with money and regulatory exceptions when dealing with states and local governments in most cases rather than directly legislating what they want) are with the military and foreign policy.

The executive also faces more challenges when trying to push through it's actual policies, many of which need either congressional approval like congressional-executive agreements (which is actually what NAFTA and the successor, USMCA, are, not treaties), getting a treaty passed which will take 2/3 of the Senate on board, funding for the project which is much more likely to be amended by a congressional majority which is also likely to be very specific about how it is to be spent with much less presidential autonomy given the president is unlikely to have a majority in either house, and the congress is in a much stronger position to override a presidential veto if the president's own party is unlikely to constitute a third of either house.

Their appointments also face a much higher chance of being impeached and convicted and thus must maintain their own status independent of the president's popularity with the congress. The president themselves must maintain that too and faces the much more real risk of removal in any given congress and their other powers are much reduced like many supportive judiciary appointments going their way. 

The president very often uses their executive order powers to make determinations which allow them to take a given action related to another country, like a recent Hong Kong democracy movement making it so that the executive determines when Hong Kong's independence is threatened, and if they so determine, the sanctions are imposed. A congress that is so strongly multi party now has a lot more power to amend those authorizations, to revoke them, and to order that a determination be made against the will of the president. 

Other presidential powers include military powers, which are dependent on congressional action to allow it, but the war powers authorizations from many years ago have been relied upon to justify many conflicts and use of military force. A veto proof majority is likely to emerge more often for countermanding these, and new authorizations will, not being able to trust a president as often without a congressional majority for their party alone, be more specific and narrow with their authorization. 

Most emergency powers are actually used to justify sanctions. Congress has a fast track to force the issue on the agenda regardless of the will of the speaker or majority leaders. Sanctions are more likely to be imposed when the congress wants them but not necessarily the president wanting them, and sanctions the president wants are more likely to be terminated by congressional action, so other countries know not to put as much of their confidence in the president as the face of America. 

Major agreements normally take years to negotiate, and other countries and the president and the negotiators from other countries know very well to make sure that their agreements are not just able to stand before the congress they currently face but also to face the very real possibility that the balance of power in both houses is completely shifted and potentially over a third of the House and over 20% of the Senators are new with every election every two years and that party leaders are very likely to change in each election as well, several likely having been not reelected in the first place, a large fraction of those leaders who get reelected have their supporters in the caucus or conference shaken up, maybe half of them gone, and the composition of the caucus means new people of different experience are put on committees and are elected to their them. A president is also more likely to be defeated in a bid for a second term and that the president is not likely to be replaced by someone of a completely opposite party, and maybe not even of a different one having been more likely to be defeated in a primary election. That means more knowledge, policy, and intents must be made institutionalized beyond any one person or lobbying any individual person or faction or targeting their primaries.

Foreign interference with elections will also be different most likely. Just because another country might benefit from one candidate being defeated, it doesn't make it that much more likely that they will overall benefit from the change, many more like them probably exist but belong to different parties, and so you need to infiltrate more groups and face greater chances of discovery by amplifying the effort necessary to gain from interference. You also must spread your influence over more constituencies and either dilute your influence with the same amount of resources to spread over more area or use more resources, adding to the risk of detection and penalty and draining more of your own resources, and likely having to keep this cycle going on election after election and even more risk of discovery just to get the policies you want. 

This puts much more power back in the hands of a dynamic congress that better reflects the people of America as a cross section not as a class unto themselves and which is much less stale and keeps staying fresh with the ideas of Americans as the latter changes every year. America pursues policies long term, and giving corrupt benefits to individuals achieves less with higher risk. In an increasingly global world with long term needs, with many more countries having the strength to resist the old tactics of coups and bribery, or at least needs most of their people to benefit from agreements, the old style of a single commander of America to be the go between is an outdated and dangerous model.