Scholarship on the American presidency and the making of US foreign policy has overlooked the emergence of a new player in the foreign policy process-the White House chief of staff. We propose that the emergence of the chief of staff in foreign policy is an institutional response to systemic change in the political and foreign policy environment, as well as a function of idiopathic factors that exist within particular presidencies. With the rise of global interdependence and the decline of the imperial presidency since the Vietnam War and Watergate, it has become increasingly difficult, and indeed imprudent, to separate domestic and foreign policy. Rather, the rise of intermestic issues has forced the chief of staff to have a more prominent position in foreign and national security policy.