Foreign Policy-Making

Abstract

It is time for a little recapitulation. Our concern is not with analysis of international relations alone, but with the business of diplomacy. At the core of the business of diplomacy is the exercise by governments of power in the international component of the national life. Diplomats must be capable of contributing both to the shaping and to the carrying out of foreign policy. They must be ‘foreign policy capable’, implying competence on both the advisory and the executive sides of the business. The aim of these lectures is to fashion a framework of thought which will help create this capability. Substance and process are inextricably mixed. We have to think in several dimensions simultaneously. It is necessary to keep a great many things in the front of one’s mind, rather than in the back of it.