Chapter 14

Foreign Policy

Chapter Outline

Foreign Policy

  1. The term foreign policy refers to the programs and policies that determine America’s relations with other nations and foreign entities. Foreign policy includes diplomacy, military and security policy, international human rights policies, and various forms of economic policy, such as trade policy and international energy policy.

Foreign Policy Goals Are Related

  1. The three main goals of foreign policy are security, prosperity, and the creation of a better world. These goals are closely intertwined.
  2. To many Americans, the chief purpose of the nation’s foreign policy is protection of America’s security. Today, American security policy is concerned not only with the actions of other nations but also with the activities of terrorist groups and other hostile non-state actors.
  3. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the United States believed that its security was based on its geographic isolation. Abandoning isolationism after World War II, the United States developed a new security policy known as deterrence, the development and maintenance of military strength to discourage attack.
  4. The George W. Bush administration shifted from a policy of deterrence to one of preemption. Preemption is often used as another name for preventive war or willingness to strike first to prevent an enemy attack.
  5. America’s international economic policies are intended to expand employment opportunities in the United States, to maintain access to foreign energy supplies at a reasonable cost, to promote foreign investment in the United States, and to lower the prices Americans pay for goods and services.
  6. A third goal of American policy is to make the world a better place for all its inhabitants. The main forms of policy that address this goal are international environmental policy, international human rights policy, and international peacekeeping.

American Foreign Policy Is Shaped by Government and Nongovernment Actors

  1. All foreign policy decisions must be made and implemented in the name of the president.
  2. The key players in foreign policy in the bureaucracy are the secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury; the Joint Chiefs of Staff (especially the chair); and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
  3. Although the Senate traditionally has more foreign policy power than the House, since World War II, the House and the Senate have both been important players in foreign policy.
  4. Many types of interest groups help shape American foreign policy. These groups include economic interest groups, ethnic or national interest groups, and human rights interest groups.
  5. The media has gained influence in recent years and more than ever serves to communicate issues and policies to the American people—and to communicate the public’s opinions back to the president.
  6. Individual or group influence in foreign policy varies from case to case and from situation to situation.
  7. When an important foreign policy decision has to be made under conditions of crisis—where time is of the essence—the influence of the presidency is at its strongest. Within those time constraints, access to the decision is limited almost exclusively to the narrowest definition of the foreign policy establishment. Because there are so many other countries with power and interests on any given issue, there are severe limits on the choices the United States can make.

Tools of American Foreign Policy Include Diplomacy, Force, and Money

  1. Diplomacy is the representation of a government to other foreign governments, and it is the foreign policy instrument to which other instruments must be subordinated.
  2. The United Nations is an instrument whose usefulness to American foreign policy can too easily be underestimated.
  3. The international monetary structure, which consists of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was created to avoid the economic devastation that followed World War I.
  4. After World War II, the United States recognized the importance of collective security and subsequently entered into multilateral collective security treaties and other bilateral treaties.
  5. World War II broke the American cycle of demobilization-remobilization and led to a new policy of military preparedness.