When we observe foreign policy tools used by state actors, we should always ask, “what’s the objective?” Instead, we must understand the relationship between these types of tools and objectives.
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In other words, economic, political, and military tools and objectives are intimately bound up in one another-we cannot isolate these factors and expect to have a deep understanding of foreign policy. For example, a nation may use a strong military presence in a region to force foreign nations into opening up trade, but this may come at the cost of political objectives in the long run, such as peace diplomacy. Some tools may further certain objectives but make other objectives more difficult to achieve. Military tools can help achieve certain economic objectives, economic tools can achieve political objectives, and so on. There are both economic, political, and military tools and economic, political, and military objectives, and these types of tools and objectives can interact in a number of complex ways. The distinction between tools and objectives is essential toward understanding how foreign policy works-tools are the strategies, policies, and actions that are used to help realize specific objectives, goals, or outcomes. Central to the definition, of course, is the concept of national interest-foreign policy is not merely a set of unbiased relations between countries, it is directed policy that seeks to benefit the nation through economic, political, and military means.
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Foreign Policyįoreign policy can be defined as a country’s national interest pursued abroad. But before we do, a discussion of foreign policy and its tools and objectives is warranted. Below, we will discuss four prominent international relations theories, three positivist (realism, liberalism, and institutionalism) and one post-positivist (feminist IR theory). International relations theory (theories that govern relations in an international environment) have traditionally been positive (realist, liberal, and regime theory all have positivist foundations), but post-positivist theories (such as constructivist, Marxist, feminist IR theories) have emerged as a significant field of inquiry in the sub-discipline.
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From a policy perspective, however, international relations provides a field from which a number of policy proposals are presented-how nuclear weapons proliferation should be curtailed, how to keep certain rogue actors from obtaining nuclear weapons, or how to limit the threat of nuclear weapons in the international environment. An academic and positivist approach may objectively determine the number of nuclear weapons in the world and which countries possess them. Take, for example, the issue of nuclear weapons. Broadly speaking, public policy are a set of directions for how executive bureaucracy acts in the execution of law, and so defines what “should be” in terms of state action, not what is. Positive statements, in this sense, are contrasted with normative statements: the former are statements that describe what is, whereas the latter are statements that directions for what ought to be (see the normative basis of political theory in Chapter Six for more discussion on this matter).īut from a public policy perspective, international relations is normative in its inquiry, directing policy shapers toward actions that can better the world. The academic study of international relations has been traditionally dominated by positivist inquiry-it seeks a descriptive and objective understanding of our global world and the forces and relations that shape the international context. In American academia especially, international relations is typically considered a sub-discipline of the broader field of political science, and for our purposes here, we will view international relations in this context.
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In academia outside the UK and the US, the study of political science is often exclusively the study of international relations. As a separate discipline, international relations (or what is sometimes called international studies, international affairs, area studies, global affairs, or global studies) is a rich interdisciplinary field of study that draws direct connections to other disciplines such as geography, psychology, demography, history, economics, and feminism, among others. It is a large and comprehensive area of study that in some academic contexts is a separate discipline from political science. International relations is the study of the relations between political entities and the connections between economics, law, and politics in the global environment.