Importance of Foreign Policy

Unarguably, the actions of a state in the international arena result from individual human choices, by its citizenry, its political leaders its diplomats, and bureaucrats, aggregated through the state internal structures.

Accordingly, foreign policies are the strategies governments use to guide their actions in the international arena. In other words, foreign policies spell out the objectives state leaders have resolved to pursue in a given relationship or situation. Generally, international relations (IR) scholars are less interested in specific policies than in the foreign policy process. That is, how policies are arrived at and implemented.

In order to make it a success, states establish various organizational structures and functional relationships to create and carry out foreign policies. Consequently, officials and agencies collect information about a situation through various channels; they hold meetings to discuss the matter; some of them meet privately outside these meetings to decide how to steer the meetings. IR scholars are especially interested in exploring whether certain kinds of policy process lead to certain kinds of decisions, whether certain process produce better outcomes (for the states self-defined interests) than do others.

While comparative foreign policy is the study of foreign policy in various states in order to discover whether similar types of foreign policies that is, comparing across states or across different time periods for a single state. It is a truism to say that such studies have focused on three characteristics that is, size, wealth, and extent of democratic participation in government. Unfortunately, no simple rule has been found to predict a state’s warlike tendencies based on these attributes. States vary greatly among each other and even within a single state over time. For example, both capitalist and communist states have proven capable of naked aggression or peaceful behavior, depending on circumstances.

No doubt, some political scientists have tried to interpret particular states foreign policies in terms of each one’s political culture and history. For example, the Soviet Union (Russia) experienced repeated devastating land invasions over the centuries that is culminating in World War 11, while the United States experienced two centuries of safety behind great oceans. Thus, the military might of the Soviet Union, and its control of buffer states in Eastern Europe, seemed defensive in nature to Soviet leaders but appeared aggressive to U.S. leaders.

It is manifestly clear that foreign policy outcomes result from multiple forces at various levels of analysis. The outcomes depend on individual decision makers, on the type of society and government they are working within, and on the international and global context of their actions. The study of foreign policy process runs counter to realism’s assumption of a unitary state actor. In view of the fact that the study of foreign policy concentrates on forces within the state, its main emphasis is on the individual and domestic levels of analysis.

Furthermore, the foreign policy process is a process of decision making. States take actions because people in governments, decision makers, choose those actions. It is abundantly clear that decision making is a steering process in which adjustments are made as a result of feedback from the outside world. Decisions are carried out by actions taken to change the world, and then information from the world is monitored to evaluate the effects of actions.

Interestingly, foreign policy outcomes result from processes at several levels of analysis. For example, the sudden change in Palestinian leadership after Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004 tested the importance of the individual level, which changed radically, versus larger social structures and conflicts, which did not. Again, Mahmoud Abbas votes in fair-elections in 2005 that elected him president. Abbas opposes violence against Israel and hoped to restart peace talks to establish a Palestinian state. However, legislative elections in 2006 brought to power the violently anti-Israeli party Hamas, halting peace talks and suggesting that the domestic and interstate levels of analysis can trump the individual level.

In addition, a common starting point for studying the decision-making process is the rationale model. In this model, decision-makers set goals evaluate their relative importance; calculate the costs and benefits of each possible course of action then choose the one with the highest benefits and lower costs.

It is true to say that the choice may be complicated by uncertainty about the costs and benefits of various actions. In such cases, decision makers must attach probabilities to each possible outcome of an action. For example, will pressuring a rival state to give ground in peace talks or backfire? Some decision makers are relatively accepting of risk, whereas others are averse to risk. These factors affect the importance that decision makers place on various alternative outcomes that could result from an action.

Significantly, the goals of different individuals concerned in making a decision may diverge, as the goals of different state agencies. For instance, the U.S. Secretary of state may have a different goal than the secretary of defence, just as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) may view a situation differently than the National Security Council does. The rational model of decision making thus is somewhat complicated by uncertainty and the multiple goals of decision makers. The rational model may imply that decision making is simple than actually is the case.

While an alternative to the rational model of decision-making is the organizational process model. In this model, foreign policy decision makers generally skip the labour-intensive process of identifying goals and alternative actions, relying instead for most decisions on standardized responses or standard operating procedures. For instance, the U.S State Department every day receives more than a thousand reports or inquiries from its embassies around the world and sends out more than a thousand instructions or responses to those embassies. Most of those cables are never seen by the top decision makers like the secretary of state or the president; instead, they are handled by low-level decision makers who apply general principles or who simply try to make the most controversial, most standardized decision. These low-level decisions may not even reflect the high-level policies adopted by top leaders, but rather have a life of their own. The organizational process model implies that much of foreign policy results from “management by muddling through”.

Obviously, another alternative to the rational model is the government bargaining or bureaucratic politics model in which foreign policy decisions result from the bargaining process among various government agencies with somewhat divergent interests in the outcome. For example in 1992, the Japanese government had to resolve whether to allow sushi from California to be imported, a weakening of Japan’s traditional ban on importing rice (to maintain self-sufficiency in its staple food). The Japanese Agriculture Ministry, with an interest in the well-being of Japanese farmers, opposed the imports. The Foreign Ministry, with an interest in smooth relations with the United States, wanted to allow the imports. The final decision to allow imported sushi resulted from the tug-of-war between the ministries. No doubt, in the government bargaining model, foreign policy decisions reflect the interests of state agencies.

However, every international event is the result, intended or unintended, of decisions made by individuals. IR does not just happen. Harry S. Truman, 33^rd American President who resolved to drop US Nuclear bombs on two Japanese cities in 1945, had a sign on his desk: “The buck stops here”. As leader of the world’s greatest power, he had nobody to pass the buck to. If he chose to use the bombs as he did, more than 100,000 civilians would die. If he chose not to the war might drag on for months, with tens of thousands of U.S. casualties Truman had to choose. Some people applaud his decision; others condemn it. However, for better or worse, Truman as an individual had to decide, and to take responsibility for the consequences. I think and believe, hence Truman made a statement “Do your duty and history will do you justice”. Similarly, the decisions of individual citizens, although they may not seem important when taken one after the other, create the great forces of world history.

Truly, the study of individual decision-making revolves around question of rationality. To what extent are national leaders or citizens able to make rational decisions in the national interest, if indeed such an interest can be defined and thus to conform to a realist view of IR? Individual rationality is not equivalent to state rationality. States might filter individuals’ irrational decisions so as to arrive at rational choices, or states might distort individually rational decisions and end up with irrational state choices. However, realists tend to assume that both states and individuals are rational and that the goals or interests of states correlate with those of leaders.

Charles Ikedikwa Soeze, fhnr, fcida, fcai, fswca, cpae, chnr, ghnr, ksq, emba, son is a former Assistant Director (Administration) / Head, Academic and Physical Planning (A&PP) of the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun, Delta State, Nigeria. He is a mass communication scholar form first degree to doctoral level and public affairs analyst/ commentator on local, national and international issues. 08036724193 charlessoeze@yahoo.ca

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