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General objectives that guide the activities and relationships of one state in its interactions with other states. The development of foreign policy is influenced by domestic considerations, the policies or behaviour of other states, or plans to advance specific geopolitical designs. Leopold von Ranke emphasized the primacy of geography and external threats in shaping foreign policy, but later writers emphasized domestic factors. Diplomacy is the tool of foreign policy, and war, alliances, and international trade may all be manifestations of it.
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Oxford Companion to US Military History:
Foreign Policy
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Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US Military History Companion
In the context of U.S. military history, foreign policy can be defined as “the goals the nation's officials seek to attain abroad, the values that give rise to those objectives, and the means or instruments used to pursue them.” This definition has three essential elements with linkages among them. Moreover, it draws attention to the facts that U.S. foreign policy has historically exhibited change over time in each of these elements, and that their relationships with one another have also varied across different periods.If diplomatic and military historians could reach agreement on the nature of changes in U.S. foreign policy so defined, the task of tracing this history would be relatively simple. But the challenge is difficult, because controversies over U.S. foreign policy goals, values, and instruments abound. Rather than attempting to resolve these controversies, it is more useful to clarify the three major categories within which debate has been conducted. In the first instance, in modifying the goals of foreign policy, the major issue confronting U.S. leaders has been reconciling the advantages