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In general three federal executive departments are busy with building this client empire:
1. State
2. Treasury
3. Defense
For certain tasks other departments might get involved, but these three runs the institutions runs the bureaucratic structure that does the surveillance, writes the reports on other states, suggests policy instruments to deploy, and does the maintenance.
In the international relations the US busy herself with three things:
1. opposing enemies;
2. taking on new clients;
3. maintain clients;
One would think that interacting with "neutral" states is way more prominent. But apparently not. Basically the fact that like half of all the countries are US clients, and a large chunk is the clients of clients, and then there are the enemies and the clients of the enemies... By now barely any "neutral" countries left, even less to worry about them.
Tho it wasn't like that in 1898 when they started out. But the book doesn't tell us how the US dealt with countries in their sovereign times, like France. Although the mindset, the "clientelist ideology" - how the book calls it - comes natural for all the diplomats, elites, and even to the general populace, it evolved gradually. I suppose it had an opportunist nature until all the policy tools which are available today formed.

picrel
One of the oldest client. Along with Cuba, but Cuba ain't a client no more.