Foreign policy encompasses all a nation’s efforts to influence other countries in order to protect or advance its interests, values, and aspirations. In addition to diplomacy, foreign policy involves economic relations—negotiating trade agreements, promoting exports, and addressing economic issues with other countries—security and defense, including military alliances, arms control, and peacekeeping operations, and global issues such as climate change, pandemics, and terrorism.
While all foreign policy has this common goal, leaders approach it with different strategies. For example, one debate concerns how extensively a country should involve itself in foreign affairs: should it engage the world in a broad effort to promote its values (engagement) or pull up the drawbridge and shield itself from the outside world (isolationism)?
A second question centers on the role of American primacy in the new age of global politics. Americanists, like Charles Krauthammer, argue that an unprecedentedly dominant United States must be free to act unconstrained by international agreements and institutions that might limit its options. Globalists, on the other hand, argue that America cannot afford to do everything on its own and that fostering an international order in which more people are free and prosperous is in America’s profound self-interest. And, they add, cooperation with others helps extend the life of American primacy by spreading the costs of action across a wider range of actors and making it harder for other nations to develop cultural and political tactics that could sap its power over time.