The purposes of states: foreign policy Goals and strategies

The international or global system constitutes the environment in which the units of international politics operate. Their goals, aspirations, needs, attitudes, latitude of choice, and actions are significantly influenced by the overall distribution or structure of power in the system, and by its rules, habitual modes of conducting relations between states, and by transnational values (such as self-determination, autonomy, wealth)

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order to explain what conditions make states ( and sometimes other actors) behave as they do, we need first to describe what, typically, they do. Using the state-as actor approach for the time being, our concern will be to explore the components of foreign policy. What is foreign policy? How do we make sense of all the phenomena that transcend national borders-sending a diplomatic note, attending a summit meeting, enunciating doctrine, making an alliance or formulating long range, but vague, objectives such as peace with freedom" or new world order.

They are all aspects of foreign policy: ideas or actions designed by policy makers to solve a problem or promote some changes in the policies, attitudes or actions of another state or states, in non state actors (e.g., terrorist groups), in the international economy, or in the physical environment of the world. But there is a vast difference in scope between sending a single diplomatic note to a friendly state ( a specific action) and defining what a government will seek throughout the world in the long run.

This is a rational view of the world of states: that governments identify their purposes and then organize the means of attaining them. It is a model or characterization of behaviour, not a precise description of all governments at all times. Some governments appear to do little but muddle along; thy have no clear ideas or goals. Some regimes seem to have little purpose except to maintain office for as long as possible. Others take few initiatives abroad: They mostly just respond to the problems that others pose for them.

There are plenty of examples of what appears to be mindless drifting. But even habitual actions may be goal-oriented. For whether they have clearly articulated plans, priorities, and purposes, or they appear to aimlessly drifting, most governments most of the time are trying to maximize certain values or, as we would say, seeking to achieve or defend known purposes.

What purposes do all governments have in common? These of course changed over the years. In their place we have four purposes that are common to all contemporary states: (1) security; (2)autonomy; (3)welfare, broadly conceived; and (4)status and prestige. Not all states place the same priority on those purposes at any given time. Those who make foreign policy may wish in an ideal world to maximize all of them, but in the real world to maximize one may be at the cost of another. We often hear of the competing priorities of guns verses butter.

This is just another way of saying if you want effective armaments for deterrence, you may have to sacrifice some units of welfare- by imposing higher taxes, for example. Or, policy makers may find that their strategy of promoting economic growth through the certain of a regional free trade arrangement actually reduces their political autonomy. The making of foreign policy involves, among other things, deciding what sorts of priorities among these common values one wants to emphasize, and how one is going to pay for them. Let us offer definitions of security, autonomy, welfare, and status or prestige, and list some of the strategies that governments typically employ to achieve or defend those purposes.

Security Probably few concepts employed in the study of international politics have as vague referents as do security or national security. The terms have been used and abused by many governments to justify external aggression and the stifling of internal opposition. Napoleon, and Joseph Stalin, to mention just few, have justified purges; restraints on freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, character assassination, and even mass murder in the term of national security. Most governments that have lunched wars of aggression or significant military interventions abroad have similarly claimed that their policies were designed to defend or preserve national security. (E.g. Israel and its occupation of Palestine, George Bush and Tony Blair and their occupation of Iraq.

One reason we claim that the search for security is universal is that all the states, with only some exception ( Costa Rica and Iceland) maintain military forces. All commit a significant ( 1 to 30 percent) proportion of their total economic output (GNP) for arms dedicated to maintaining internal and external security. These expenses may be used to deter or to cope with crime, rebellion, secession, revolutions and coups d etat. Governments also maintain armed forces to deal with the eventuality that at some time in the future, some other state or a nonstate actor such as a terrorist group will present a threat. The threat can be directed against the lives of citizens or their private activities, against territorial integrity against a countrys way of life, or against the independence of the state or the institutions.

What kinds of threats are likely to evoke a military response? Barry Buzan makes the important distinction between threats and vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities derive largely but no entirely from geographic characteristics. They are potential avenues for military invasion or economic coercion mountain passes, narrow waterways, major transportation corridors, and the like. The Turkish straits create certain vulnerabilities for Turkey. Great powers have had a traditional interest in gaining control over them in order to gain access to the Mediterranean (Russia) or to the Black Sea ( Great Britain or France in the nineteenth century). As a flat land with no natural barriers, Poland has traditionally been vulnerable to invasion from the east and the west. Turkey and Poland have deployed military forced in such a manner as to reduce their vulnerabilities.

Until the twentieth century, Great Britain enjoyed relative safety low vulnerability to direct attack because of the channel separating it from the continent. Yet it maintained a large navy to provide protection for shipping, because it was vulnerable to a cut-off supplies needed to sustain an industrial economy. During the same time, North Americans were literally invulnerable to attack from any quarter, and thus maintained only small armed forces. Threats are those more immediate capabilities in the hands of adversaries that may be used to exploit vulnerabilities. Throughout the Cold War, we heard of the Soviet threat, not so much in terms of the Soviet intentions to attack, but in the interference that if the Soviets had immense military capabilities, they might at any time be tempted to exploit vulnerabilities.

Soviet citizens were sent the same message regarding NATOs military strength : The Soviet leadership did not have to produce incontrovertible proof of the imperialists intention to attack to create sense of vulnerability and fear. Threats may take the form of a demand or claim to territory, armed incursions into a neighbour, or control over strategic territorial assets. This is the claim against the physical base of state, or actions in violation of sovereignty. If the state is weak, it is also vulnerable to domestic rebellion and secession, in which case the threat to the state is primarily internal. But because outside powers frequently become involved in the domestic politics of their neighbours ( particularly where ideological or ethnic contents are going on), internal turmoil can escalate into the threat of external intervention.

The armed intervention of the United States in Grenada in 1983 and in the Nicaragua ( via the Contras ) during the 1980s demonstrates the linkage. The threat here is not much to the state or its physical basis as it is to a particular regime. The beleaguered regime will obviously claim that national security is being threatened even though it is its tenure in power that is at stake. Threats may also be directed against ideas and ideologies. The Soviet threat throughout the Cold War was often portrayed as an assault on traditional Western liberal values, or to the American way of life, Finally, a threat, or taking advantage of certain vulnerabilities, may be defined in terms of the deprivation of economic assets or national wealth. Certain states or regimes may be vulnerable to blockade, sanctions, or the cut-off of critical energy supplies; or ( for a weak economy) to subversive efforts by multinational corporations, or to the drastic declines

in the world price of its major export commodity. The reader can no doubt list other kinds of vulnerabilities and threats. We also have to mention new kinds of threats. Traditionally, governments have chosen to go to war to protect certain values, however they are defined. A vulnerability that is exploited or even challenged by an adversarys military forces has usually been sufficient cause for responding with force. But in the nuclear era, the most overwhelming threat may be war itself. In a condition of nuclear war, all the values territory, population, regime, ideologies, and economies can be destroyed in matter of days or even hours. For those who possess nuclear weapons, then, the main task of the national security policy is less to cope with a specific, identifiable threat than it is to prevent war.

In addition to military threats, many argue today that whole societies face threats that migrate easily across state frontiers. These constitute threats not against the security of the state or regime, or to a states territorial integrity, but rather to the society at large. These would include massive refugee movements ( a fear commonly held in the Western Europe after the Soviet Union collapse), the spread of AIDS, various forms of transborder pollution, and the international narcotics trade. If these are indeed threats, we would have to broaden significantly the notion national security. The classical means of coping with vulnerabilities and threats by manipulating the size, quality, and deployment of armed forcesare of course irrelevant to these kinds of threats. Governments can enhance their security by decreasing vulnerabilities and/perceived or diminishing the perceived threat from one or more adversaries.

How this is done involves a mixture of military deployments ( reducing vulnerabilities) and particular policies toward other states (reducing threats). Autonomy Autonomy is the ability to formulate and carry out domestic and external policies in terms of a governments own priorities whatever those might be. It is the capacity to withstand the influence, coercion, or rule by others. You and I are autonomous to the extent that we can define our own interests, goals and actions. Autonomy does not preclude obligations and various forms of self- limitation, provided they are undertaken voluntarily. Any treaty, for example, implies obligations and thus limits complete freedom of choice. But so long as a government is not coerced into signing a treaty against its will, it is acting autonomously.

The doctrine of sovereignty provides the legal basis for autonomy. But it does not prevent coercion or reduce the constraints that operate through various forms of dependency or asymmetrical vulnerabilities. One of the charges made by developing countries although they have formal sovereignty, they enjoy little autonomy: The international economic system is structured in such a manner that they have little latitude of choice. Weak, dependant states are subject to the whims of the international marketplace or to the various forms of economic pressure the industrial countries can apply. If a developing country wishes to obtain a loan from the World Bank, for example it may have to adopt austerity policies (e.g., reduction of state subsidies, curtailment of social services, increased taxes, and higher interest rates) that can lead to popular discontent and the electoral defeat (or coup) of the government.

The conditionality of the loans seriously erodes the capacity of recipients to fashion their domestic economic policies in terms of their own political and economic priorities. Rather than lose autonomy, some governments have refused loans or, having received, have reneged on the austerity measures that in some cases led to severe social privation. But virtually all states in our independent world are faced with the problem of erosion of autonomy. In order to secure or maximise other purposes such as security, welfare, and status, they are compelled to limit their freedom of choice and action. As we have seen, alliance commitments involve obligations, as we do declarations of neutrality. Yet, to the extent that these undertakings are entered into voluntarily, autonomy has to be reduced. There is, at least theoretically, still the choice available of withdrawing from the alliance, or changing from neutrality to a coalition strategy, or refusing a loan from the World Bank.

Autonomy can be maintained, or its erosion reduced, by building up military scientific, and economic strength, or by reducing reliance upon external sources, particularly where that reliance is asymmetrical. Strategies of economic diversificationlocating new markets for exports and obtaining multiple sources of needed imports also enhance autonomy increasing the latitude of choice and reducing the price of sudden unavailability of markets and supplies. The long-range trend in the global system, however, is in the direction of autonomy erosion. The costs of unilateral actions, whether military or economic appear to be increasing. But most important, it appears that other values and particularly welfare cannot be maximised or achieved except by voluntarily relinquishing complete freedom of action.

Welfare In the twentieth century, it has become an article of public faith and a widespread expectation that in addition to security, governments main tasks are to provide their citizens with social services and promote economic growth and efficiency; these tasks generally enhance or sustain public welfare. This is a relatively new idea. In ancient times and even in Europe until the late eighteenth century, the good state was most commonly defined in terms of its capacity to provide justice and public order. There were no well-developed idea that the state also had an obligation to deliver a variety of services, ranging from fire protection to pensions for the elderly. Today, we have the concept of welfare state, which goes far beyond the idea that the government must provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.

It also means that the state has a direct responsibility for maximising economic growth, for minimising unemployment, and for providing a variety of services that enhance the quality of life and the economic and personal opportunities of all citizens. Most of us take for granted that through our taxes, governments will provide free or cheap education at least through the secondary level, housing for those who cannot otherwise afford it, minimal health services, fire protection, unemployment insurance, disaster relief, and many other things. The range of publicly funded services varies from society to society. In liberal democracies, governments often get elected or defeated on the basis of their in delivering a broad range of services, and in their capacity to manage and strengthen the national economy. Welfare has typically been identified by various indicators of economic growth. While this may seem obvious, it is definitely a cultural artifact.

In other civilisations, and in some regions of the contemporary world, welfare ( aside from the basic economic needs) is defined in terms of criteria such as religious piety, moral character, family cohesion, and leading a life of virtue. In the industrial countries today, moreover, there is evidence of change in our conceptions of welfare. It is no longer defined solely in terms of economic growth, but to it are added considerations of environmental standards. According to contemporary jargon, governments should seek to maximise sustainable development rather than just to amass more wealth for their citizens. Exactly how a governments will try to maximise wealth is a matter of choice. Just as in the search for security, there are options and strategies. In commercial relations, however, because there are so many commodities, products, and services involved, governments may pursue mixed strategies, promoting free trade in agricultural commodities, for example, while vigorously subsidizing and protecting the technology sector.

Many of the economic conflicts in the world today arise from countries different approaches to wealth maximisation, for to gain an advantage in economic production and trade often comes at the expense of the position of another economy. Is The UAE a welfare state? What are the indicators? (Group discussion) Status and Prestige From ancient times, political units have not been concerned only with providing for security and welfare, and protecting or enhancing autonomy. Another value that seems to , permeate all political associations, whether tribes, citystates, states, or empires, is status or prestige. There is no precise meaning to these terms as applied to the relations between states, but let us simply use them in a common sense way: Political associations seek to generate deference, respect, and sometimes awe among others. How have they done this? Many foreign policies reflect or incorporate these values.

Traditionally prestige and status were earned primarily through military prowess and might. The modern counterparts are the great military parades in Moscow, Paris, and elsewhere during national or revolutionary day festivities. Displays of military strength in this fashion have little purpose than to demonstrate to those at home and abroad that the country is mighty and prepared to meet challenges from others. Today, it is not just the display , but what is being displayed. One, though certainly not the only, motivations for developing nuclear weapons is to achieve the status of a nuclear power. The French in the 1950s and the 1960s developed their nuclear weapons as much for reasons of prestige as for any serious deterrent effect. As General de Gaulle made it clear on numerous occasions, France could never retain the status of a great power its traditional status going back at least to the seventeenth century without nuclear weapons.

The explicit or implicit hierarchy of states. International leadership can rarely be sustained solely by the symbols and use of force. Athens was the greatest power of the Hellenic world of the fifth century B.C. by virtue of its domestic political practices and its citizens leadership in the arts and letters; thus Athens was the center of the Hellenic culture. France or more distinctly Paris played a similar role in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. All of Europes aristocrats and royal families took their fashion and artistic cues from developments in the French capital, French was spoken by all educated people from Moscow to London and from Stockholm to Naples, and France provided the leading figures of literature and the arts in general. In our age, leadership in science and technology has largely replaced the arts and letters as an important basis of national status and prestige. This is just one of the reasons why the new new protectionism "has become so important in the policies of many states.

For many developing countries, visible symbols of industrialization are important sources of status and prestige. Sports have also become a major indicator of national status and prestige. It is for this reason, among others, that they have become highly subsidized and organized by governments. The reader can no doubt identify other sources of international prestige and status. We can conclude by suggesting that the search for these values is universal , but governments spend greatly varying amounts of national resources for their promotion. Under Communist leadership, the Soviet Union appeared to have inexhaustible funds for self-promotion through propaganda, weapons displays, well-publicized space programs, funding of athletes and artists and their tours abroad, and other means. The North American and the British governments devote substantially fewer resources, allowing private activities of a world-class character to speak for themselves. But compared to many smaller countries their expenditure of public funds for statusrelated activities remains comparatively large.

Lionel Messi 2011-2012

Other Purposes and Goals All states seek security, welfare, and prestige, arranging them in different sets of priorities depending upon a variety of external circumstances and domestic pressures. But beyond these universals, there are substantial differences in the ambitions, aspirations, and interests of the government. They range from the immediate and concrete ( expanding territory) to the abstract and long term (creating a new world order). The following list is only suggestive of the great variety of things states seek.

Protection of Ethnic, Ideological, or Religious Colleagues When politics are conceived as a hardhearted game of power, we assume that there is little role for sentiment. This is not the case. Governments, representing broad public attitudes, frequently offer aid, support, or protection to ethnic kin or to populations with similar political, social, and religious beliefs who are reputedly suffering at the hands of a foreign government.

Ethnic affinities are particularly strong. If ethnic kin in a neighbouring state are believed to be persecuted or oppressed, a government will often seek to protect or relieve them. That is the basis of the Arab support of the Palestinian cause, Pakistans periodic involvement on behalf of the Muslims in Indias Kashmir state. Not infrequently, the feeling of sentiment are so strong that a government will intervene militarily on behalf of the oppressed, or will seek to annex the territory containing them. Many of the wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have arisen from these sympathy issues. Where countries have been divided, then the foreign policy objective becomes national unification. For this and other reasons, the Vietnamese and Koreans among others, have gone to war.

Sympathies need to be limited to ethnic kin. For ideological and human rights reasons many governments and private bodies have provided moral, financial, and in a few cases, armed support for the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Throughout the period of de-colonization, the socialist countries and a few Western countries (e.g. Sweden) provided moral and material support for a variety of national liberation movements in the Third World. The Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China made anti-imperialism a main theme of their foreign policies and devoted considerable resources for the purpose.

More recently the cause of protecting human rights has become a part of some governments foreign policies. Although there is a little consistency in the policies Western countries have been less concerned about human rights abuses among their friends and allies than among their Communist adversaries, for example there is a presumption that how governments treat their citizens can become a matter of legitimate concern and assistance from other governments.

Dreams of World Reorganization Some governments and their leaders have had ambitions stretching far beyond the immediate security, welfare, prestige, or sympathy concerns of their state. We are referring here to the great dreams of global empire, the efforts to reorganize the world or vast regions of it along new power, territorial, or ideological lines. These aspirations, when sought through military conquest, subversion, and revolutionary activity, have caused the great wars of the state system, because the dreams were fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of that system; namely sovereignty, independence, autonomy and non-interference in internal affairs. Examples: Napoleon ( French-centred European empire), Hitler wanted to create a new order for Europe. Soviet Union and world socialist system. America and the New Middle East. Etc.

 Concluding

Reminders:

The foregoing discussion has listed several universal values, purposes that all states pursue or protect. How they do so remains a matter of choice. Governments have different priorities, and even among those priorities there are many elements of choice and political debate. How, for example should a nuclear weapons owing state deploy them to maximize deterrent effect? Should a government build up its nuclear arsenal to maximize deterrence, or would welfare values (e.g., lower taxes and more private consumption) be assisted by a strategy of arms-control and disarmament negotiations? Should a medium sized power have nuclear weapons at all? Should a small state maintain an army of three or four divisions, and how should they be deployed?

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answers depend on the kinds of threats and vulnerabilities, real and potential, that a country faces, and on the weight of other government priorities. A particularly interesting example of the playing out among competing priorities is now offered by NATO countries. If the Cold War is over, then how much national wealth should be devoted to the military. In the United States, there are strong demand for dramatic decrease in military spending .

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some Americans, perhaps less to cope with immediate threats or vulnerabilities than to maximize American status and prestige (to remain No. 1), insist that the country should remain armed at a high level. Choices are thus made not only in terms of priorities but also in the selection of means (policies and actions) to give them effect. To demonstrate the connection between values or purpose and policies , we can outline, as an illustration, the salient points of Colonel Kaddafi's foreign policies for Libya.

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table below lists various Libya values and the policies that have been used to maximize defend, or achieve them. Under the Policies/Action column, the incompatibility of values is noted parentheses. This indicates where the commitment to one policy benefits (plus sign) or is incompatible with (minus sign) another value. Some actions contribute to more than one value. Libyas termination of air base agreement with the United States and Great Britain shortly after Kaddafi overthrew the traditional monarchy in 1969 significantly reduced Libyas military vulnerability. Those air bases could have been used as staging depots for American or British intervention against the Libyan government.

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move also substantially increased Libyas autonomy, but because Libya lost the revenues from the base leases, there was a net decrease in welfare value. From the perspective of a radical nationalist, however, the security and autonomy gains were well worth the loss of revenue. The students can make a similar list for the foreign policy priorities and actions of his or her country.

Purposes and Actions in Libyan Foreign Policy Value/Purpose Policies/Actions Security 1. Terminate U.S. and British air base agreement

Autonomy

Welfare Prestige/status

(+autonomy) 2. Diversify weapons sources (+autonomy 3. Build up armed forces (- welfare) 1. Nationalize foreign-owned oil companies (+welfare) 2. Terminate U.S. and British air base agreements (- welfare,+ prestige) 3. Establish diplomatic relations with socialist states (security, + prestige) 1. Nationalize foreign-owned oil companies (+autonomy) 2. Invade Chad, gain control over resources of contested Aouzou strip 1. Frequent military displays 2. Anti-imperialist rhetoric

Value/Purpose
Other purposes 1.Support ethnic/ideological kin

Policies/Actions

1.Contribute troops to 1973 Egypt-Israel war 2. Host, arm, train liberation" units for PLO radical faction 3. Acts against Zionist" and imperialist" targets 1. Constitutional mergers with Tunisia and Syria (autonomy) 2. Attempted coup against reactionary" regimes in Egypt and Sudan 3. Diplomatic and financial support for Muslim groups in Philippines 4. Financial support for Pakistans nuclear energy program (-welfare) 5. Intervene militarily on behalf of pro-Muslim faction in Chad civil war (- welfare)

2. Promote Arab/Muslim Unity

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2.

Questions: In your country, which of the four common goals take priority? What sort of debate are there about the appropriate priorities? In what ways does your government seek to enhance its international reputation, status, and prestige?