Implementing Foreign Policy: Issues and Strategies
THE BASIC PROBLEM The most important fact about international relations is that the United States is the only global power. Unlike China, Iran or Russia, the United States has to deal with foreign affairs everywhere in the world. At the same time. Although possessing huge resources, these resources are not unlimited. The American president has to make two sets of related “economic” decisions – how to allocate foreign policy resources among many possible combinations of objectives, and the mix of resources in pursuing each objective. The temptation is to rely solely on America’s powerful military. But even this simple strategy has limitations, as experienced by failure in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan. The military success in invading Iraq was followed by the bungling of the "morning after" occupation that resulted in Iran dominating Iraqi politics and many officers of the ...