Why does US foreign policy outlive its presidents?

I grew up in Egypt, in the heart of the Middle East and North Africa region, an area marked by authoritarianism, autocrats, dictatorships and absolute monarchies. In that context, that way of understanding power seemed natural. From an early age, one learns to distrust government action, to question official narratives, to read between the lines and to recognise how easily institutions bend when power is concentrated in a single office. In many political systems, the leader is not just the face of power: he is the system.

That vision accompanied me as I moved between Egypt, Europe and the United States, and later when my travels took me to more than 85 countries. It shaped the way I interpret political authority and how I assess, almost instinctively, risk, credibility and intent.

It took me time and proximity to understand something that may sound obvious but is counterintuitive to someone who did not grow up in a functional democracy. In the United States, leaders are powerful, but they are not sovereign. The system itself sets limits and offers resistance.

That distinction is key today, when public debate increasingly tends to treat US foreign policy as if it were simply an extension of the personality of the occupant of the Oval Office.

The president of the United States wields enormous authority. He commands the armed forces, conducts diplomacy, sets priorities, appoints senior officials, and sets the tone for American engagement with the world. When a president speaks, markets react, governments respond, and alliances are readjusted. That power is real. But intention does not equal outcome

Every major foreign policy decision collides with the institutional machinery of the US state. Congress debates and blocks. Courts intervene and delay. Agencies interpret and resist. Career officials shape implementation. Allies react according to their own interests, not Washington's slogans. The result is often slower, more complex and more limited than the rhetoric that precedes it. This is not dysfunction. It is design.

Covering Washington after reporting from systems where power is concentrated in a single figure forced me to recalibrate my understanding of authority. In many countries, if a leader wants a policy to be implemented, it is implemented. In the United States, however, policy is negotiated, diluted, reformulated and, at times, thwarted before it is even implemented.

Congress, often dismissed as mere political theatre, is in fact one of the most decisive actors in foreign policy. It controls funding, drafts sanctions laws, approves arms sales, confirms appointments and exercises oversight. Presidents often see their ambitions curtailed by legislators who simply refuse to cooperate. That limitation is structural, not partisan.

Another layer that is often misunderstood is the national security bureaucracy itself. Career diplomats, intelligence officers, defence officials, and civil servants do not disappear when a new president arrives. They remain. They write reports, structure options, interpret intelligence, and sustain the operation long after the campaign slogans fade away. Presidents can confront them or even prevail in certain cases, but they cannot erase decades of institutional culture overnight. That is one reason why US foreign policy is often much more consistent in practice than in electoral rhetoric.

The courts add another concrete constraint. Immigration bans, emergency powers, surveillance programmes, sanctions decisions, and executive orders regularly end up before judges. They often limit, suspend, or block them entirely. This happens under presidents of both parties. It is not an academic theory: it is how the system actually works.

And then there are the alliances. NATO, the G7, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, intelligence-sharing agreements and regional coalitions are not passive audiences for US decisions. They influence what is politically and strategically sustainable. They impose costs on reckless turns. They constrain behaviour through expectations and interdependence. Presidents may criticise their allies in public or threaten to withdraw, but the deep architecture of those relationships has proven, time and again, to be more resilient than the politics of the moment.

This multilevel reality is essential when accusations arise that US 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, but what the system ultimately produced. Were alliances structurally weakened or did they withstand the rhetorical turbulence? Did sanctions collapse or did they hold? Did military commitments evaporate or did they persist thanks to institutional inertia? Did adversaries gain real strategic advantages from the policies, and not just from the media noise?

Having lived among different political cultures, I compare them almost automatically. In many systems I know well, words quickly become reality. In the United States, words often clash with structure. That clash frustrates presidents, confuses voters and fuels conspiracy theories, but it also functions as one of the system's main protective mechanisms.

There is, however, an uncomfortable truth. A system does not need to be captured by a foreign power to serve its interests. Dysfunction alone can achieve this. Polarisation weakens cohesion. Mistrust erodes institutions. Erratic messages unsettle allies. Political chaos creates opportunities for adversaries. Russia, China and others do not need to control the author of the chaos: it is enough for them to exploit the environment that chaos creates.

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

Years of covering the United States and the United Nations, of observing governments closely and moving between different political cultures, have taught me that this friction is not a weakness. It is one of the last defences against the concentration of power.

Those who claim that US foreign policy can be reduced to a single personality are not describing how power actually works. They are projecting their own model of systems where leaders dominate institutions onto a system designed precisely to prevent that. And that confusion, ironically, is exactly what authoritarian systems want the world to believe.