Foreign Policy Fundamentals
This term describes the objectives, strategies, decisions, and actions through which an international actor seeks to protect its interests and influence its external environment.
What is foreign policy?
Broad conditions that governments seek to protect or promote include security, prosperity, and prestige. What are these conditions?
What are interests OR national interests?
Heads of government, cabinets, and foreign ministers have the authority to make foreign-policy decisions. What is the general term for these actors?
Who are decision-makers?
These ancient diplomatic records reveal correspondence among rulers in the ancient Near East.
What are the Amarna Letters?
These two foreign policy tools constitute a state's hard power
What are military and economic power?
This principal instrument of foreign policy involves representation, communication, information gathering, and negotiation.
What is diplomacy?
A foreign-policy objective translates a broad interest into something more specific. If national security is the interest, preventing nuclear proliferation is an example of what?
What is an objective?
Foreign ministries, diplomatic services, and armed forces put foreign-policy decisions into practice. What is the general term for these actors?
Who are implementers?
Venice, Milan, and Florence helped develop this practice of maintaining representatives abroad who continuously observed political conditions and reported developments.
What is resident diplomacy?
This Chinese foreign policy tool was created in 2013 and designed to promote China's interests through strategic investment.
What is The Belt and Road Initiative?
This academic field studies interactions among states, international organisations, and non-state actors rather than a particular actor's external policy.
What is International Relations?
Sanctions, diplomacy, military power, and foreign aid are all examples of tools that governments use to achieve their foreign-policy objectives. What are these tools called?
What are foreign-policy instruments?
Parliaments, courts, and constitutions can limit the foreign-policy decisions that governments are allowed to make. What role do they play in foreign policy?
What are institutional constraints?
This 1648 peace settlement is frequently presented as the birth of the sovereign state system, although the unit cautions that this interpretation oversimplifies a gradual historical transformation.
What is the Peace of Westphalia?
This political doctrine holds that the interests, survival, and security of a nation override all ethical, moral, or legal rules
What is raison d'état?
Borders, trade routes, access to the sea, and natural resources are all central to this analytical perspective on power.
What is geopolitics?
A government increases its defence budget, changes its energy policy, or introduces new migration laws. Although these are domestic decisions, they can also affect relations with other countries, illustrating this concept in foreign policy.
What is the foreign-domestic policy interface?
A country's past wars, alliances, and political traditions can influence how it understands security and the use of power. What is the term for these historically formed ideas and practices?
What is strategic culture?
This 1815 gathering helped establish consultation among European great powers and contributed to the development of the Concert of Europe.
What is the Congress of Vienna?
A government restricts advanced semiconductor exports to limit another state's technological capabilities. This concept describes using economic capabilities and relationships for strategic purposes.
What is geoeconomics?
A foreign minister condemns another state's military action publicly, but no coordinated plan connects the statement to specific objectives.
What element is this statement missing to constitute a broader plan and foreign policy?
What is a strategy? OR What is an action plan?
Through the Marshall Plan, the United States transferred over $13 billion in economic recovery aid to Western Europe in the wake of WWII. Which objective did the United States hope to promote through this action?
What are prestige and international status?
Membership in international organisations can both increase a country's influence and limit its freedom to act alone. According to the Unit 1 notes, Spain's membership in the EU gives it greater collective influence in negotiations in which policy area?
What is trade policy?
The Fourteen Points and the League of Nations reflected this principle, which sought to replace unstable balancing with shared rules and a system for responding collectively to aggression
What is collective security?
In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence agencies orchestrated a coup to depose Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, to secure oil interests and prevent Soviet influence. The coup created deep local resentment, eventually fueling the 1979 Iranian Revolution and establishing a long-term anti-Western regime. This is an example of what element of foreign policy decisions?
What are second-order effects OR unintended consequences?