Intro
IN the Federalist NO. 72, Alexander Hamilton noted that the "actual conduct" of America's foreign affairs would be in the hands of "the assistants or deputies of the cheif magistrate," the President. Today, most of the President's "assistantas or deputies" in the field of foriegn affairs are in the State Department. Those presidentail aids in the closely related field of military affairs are located in the Department of Defense.
Foreign affairs have been of prime importance from the nation's very beginning, more than a dozen years before Hamilton penned his comment in the Federalist. Indeed, it is important to remember that the United States would have been hard pressed to win its independence without the aid of its ally, France.
