Dimensions of National Interest: I

Abstract

The preceding chapter has surveyed the major relevant general theories which offer promising angles of approach and insights into the nature of national interest. This chapter and the next will survey and develop the less ambitious but likewise inconclusive attempts to separate significant and logically coherent categories, aspects and elements. The distinctions made and the classifications derived from them vary in their theoretical accomplishments but all share one limitation: they fail to provide an effective guide to a generally valid orderly arrangement, classification and evaluation of concrete acts of foreign policy. It is relatively easy to agree about the theoretical relevance of the categories proposed but not about their relative importance and, even less so, about the way to co-ordinate them into one coherent logical system.