The International Environment

Abstract

Foreign policy may be seen either as a state’s policy towards its international environment, or as a part of that international environment — a factor, among others, in the international system. The characteristic which distinguishes foreign policy from domestic policy is that it is intended to affect, and is limited by, factors outside the national political system as well as within it. Students of foreign policy are all agreed in stressing the importance of the international environment in limiting the choice of alternatives available to policy-makers. They are not agreed, however, on how compelling the pressures of external circumstances are — to what extent a nation’s foreign policy is determined by its external position, to what extent still open to choice or to manoeuvre — or on the weight that should be given to external, as opposed to internal, factors in the making of foreign policy.