Foreign policy

This article is about international relations. For the left little direct archaeological evidence.
magazine, see Foreign Policy.
The literature from ancient times, the Bible, the Homeric
Foreign aairs redirects here. For other uses, see
poems, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and
Foreign aairs (disambiguation).
many others, show an accumulation of experience in dealing with foreigners. Ancient Chinese and Indian writA country's foreign policy, also called foreign relations ings give much evidence of thought concerned with the
or foreign aairs -policy, consists of self-interest strate- management of relations between peoples in the form of
gies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests diplomatic correspondence between rulers and ocials
and to achieve goals within its international relations mi- of dierent states and within systems of multi-tiered polieu. The approaches are strategically employed to in- litical relations such as the Han dynasty and its suborditeract with other countries. The study of such strate- nate kings, the more powerful of which conducted their
gies is called foreign policy analysis. In recent times, due own limited foreign relations as long as those did not into the deepening level of globalization and transnational terfere with their primary obligations to the central govactivities, the states will also have to interact with non- ernment, treatises by Chanakya and other scholars, and
state actors. The aforementioned interaction is evaluated the preserved text of ancient treaties, as well as frequent
and monitored in attempts to maximize benets of mul- references by known ancient writers to other, even older
tilateral international cooperation. Since the national in- sources which have since been lost or remain in fragmenterests are paramount, foreign policies are designed by tary form only.
the government through high-level decision making processes. National interests accomplishment can occur as
a result of peaceful cooperation with other nations, or 2 Meaning
through exploitation. Usually, creating foreign policy is
the job of the head of government and the foreign minisAccording to Business Dictionary.com, foreign policy is
ter (or equivalent). In some countries the legislature also
plan of action adopted by one nation in regards to its
has considerable eects. Foreign policies of countries
diplomatic dealings with other countries. Foreign policy
have varying rates of change and scopes of intent, which
is established as a systemic way to deal with issues that
can be aected by factors that change the perceived namay arise with other countries. In the modern era, no
tional interests or even aect the stability of the councountry can aord to live in isolation in this age of intertry itself. The foreign policy of one country can have
dependence.
profund and lasting impact on many other countries and
on the course of international relations as a whole, such
as the Monroe Doctrine conicting with the mercantilist
policies of 19th century European countries and the goals 3 Twentieth century
of independence of newly formed Central American and
South American countries.
Global wars were fought three times in the twentieth century. Consequently, international relations became a public concern as well as an important eld of study and
research. After the Second World War and during the
1 History
1960s, many researchers in the U.S. particularly, and
from other countries in common, brought forth a wealth
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle described hu- of research work and theory. This work was done for inmans as social animals. Therefore, friendships and rela- ternational relations and not for foreign policy as such.
tions have existed between humans since the beginning Gradually, various theories began to grow around the inof human interaction. As the organization developed in ternational relations, international systems and internahuman aairs, relations between people also organized. tional politics but the need for a theory of foreign policy,
Foreign policy thus goes back to primitive times. The in- that is the starting point in each sovereign state, continued
ception in human aairs of foreign relations and the need to receive negligible attention. The reason was that the
for foreign policy to deal with them is as old as the orga- states used to keep their foreign policies under ocial senization of human life in groups. Before writing, most crecy and it was not considered appropriate for public, as
of these relations were carried out by word of mouth and it is considered today, to know about these policies. This
1

iron-bound secrecy is an essential part for the framework

of foreign policy formulation.
World War II and its devastation posed a great threat
and challenge for humanity which revealed to everyone
the importance of international relations. Though foreign
policy formulation continued to remain a closely guarded
process at the national level, wider access to governmental records and greater public interest provided more
data from which academic work placed international relations in a structured framework of political science.
Graduate and post-graduate courses developed. Research
was encouraged, and gradually, international relations became an academic discipline in universities throughout
the world.

NEED FOR A GENERAL THEORY OF FOREIGN POLICY

4 Need for a general theory of foreign policy

Main article: International relations theory
McGowan and Shapiro, in their work on comparative
study of foreign policy of dierent countries, felt that the
lack of a basic theory of foreign policy was particularly
disabling, and pointed out the harmful eect of the absence of a general theory of foreign policy on the foreign
policy literature.

The most fundamental question that arises here is: why do

we lack theories of foreign policy? Or why do we need
The subject of whether or not constructive attempts at in- general theory of foreign policy?
volvement by citizens benets the disciplines of the art, The absence of a general theory in this eld leads to some
or whether or not such disciplines as intercultural and in- serious consequences. Without theory:
terpersonal communications and others may play a significant part in the future of international relations could be a
We cannot explain the relationships we discover; we
subject for further study by interested individuals/groups
can make predictions only about the foreign policy
and is encouraged at the educational level.
behavior.
Writers researching foreign policy in the 20th century
were unaware of whether or not agencies who most
closely dealt with foreign policy kept logs of statistical
experience not unlike the actuarial statistics kept by organizations of the insurance industry assessing the risk
and danger involved (e.g. when situation C happened
before, and subject included instances of E and L,
how was it handled and what was the result? When were
peaceful and amicable results leading to better relations
ever obtained through considered action and what was
that action?).
The writers who worked with the foreign policy can be
divided in two groups:

We will have to depend on luck and educative

guesses to come up with worthwhile research hypothesis.
Research will become an ad-hoc or unplanned research, with no justication provided for the selection of casesno system and no consistency.
A eld without theory is hardly an area of disciplined scientic inquiry.
A diplomat will be likely to have a more complex estimate or knowledge of other governments. His or
her estimate, however, will certainly be simplistic
and heavily inuenced by his or her own perceptual
blinders, leading to faulty (or biased) policy judgments.

1. World war writers who treat international politics

and foreign policy as an indierent, single eld of A theoretical framework of foreign policy is needed to
analyze the day-to-day interactions in international relastudy.
tions and to compare individual foreign policies. The focus is primarily on the policies of state actors with dened
territories and jurisdictional boundaries, and less so on
non-state actors, except in the context of how they impact
2. Writers who recognize foreign policy as a source
national government decisions and policies. The formal
rather than the substance of international politics
eld of study of international relations is itself fairly reand bring it under study as a subject.
cent and a specic subset of international relations such as
foreign policy analysis does not receive wide attention as a
eld of scientic study, as opposed to the widespread use
of terms like 'foreign policy' and 'foreign policy expert'
(The second group restricts its work to foreign policy in news media and general discussions about government
making.)
when such experts may have more extensive backgrounds
The works of second group comes closer to the theory of in elds other than foreign policy analysis. Government
foreign policy but there is no attempt to formulate a basic ocials involved in making foreign policy often perceive
theory of foreign policy. Hans Morgenthaus works on risk in giving away information to about their policy makprincipal elements of foreign policy seem to have covered ing processes and do not discuss the subject, as control of
the most ground.[1]
information is itself often a part of foreign policy.

3
The vast record of empirical data and research is given
academic attention to t it into the framework of a general
theory of foreign policy.
The second group of writers has made contributions in its
development in many ways:
Collation of systematic empirical studies with a view
to articulating general pro-positions pertaining to
state behavior.
Analysis of foreign policy making with an emphasis
on the process itself and the determinants that inuence foreign policy.
Development of a scientic approach to and model
for foreign policy analysis such as the rational actor
model, domestic-public model, etc.
Studies undertaken to prepare world order models.

See also
International relations
International relations of the Great Powers (1814
1919)
International relations theory - mostly a list of different schools of thought on IR and some of their
history
List of diplomatic training institutions
Foreign policy of the United States
Foreign relations of the European Union
Common Security and Defence Policy (Europe)
Foreign relations of China
Foreign relations of India
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
United Nations

Notes and references

[1] Morgenthau, Hans J.. Politics among nations; the struggle

for power and peace. 4th ed. New York: Knopf, 1967.
Print.

7 Further reading
Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign
Policy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Steve Smith, Amelia Hadley and Tim Dunne (eds),
Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases, 1st ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
The denition of foreign policy, according to the
Encyclopdia Britannica, here in video: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sifoY5t5S4

8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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