HISTORY

FOREIGN POLICY
A country's foreign policy, also called foreign
relations or foreign affairs policy, consists of
self-interest strategies chosen by the state to
safeguard its national interests and to
achieve goals within its international
relations milieu.
Since the national interests are paramount, governments
design their foreign policies through high-level decision-
making processes. Goals may be accomplished by
peaceful cooperation with other nations, or through
exploitation. Usually, creating foreign policy is the job of
the head of government and the foreign minister (or
equivalent). Modern states employ hundreds, thousands,
or more professional diplomats in their diplomatic service.
The ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle described humans as
social animals, and friendships
and relations have existed between humans as
long as humans have existed. As organization
developed in human affairs, relations between
people also became organized. Foreign policy
thus goes back to primitive times.
Before writing, most of these relations were
carried out by word of mouth and left little direct
archaeological evidence.
 Miracle of
Good Cesar to
fish and
samaritan Cesar
bread

BIBLE

Leviticus 25:23 New International Version (NIV)

23 “‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my
land as foreigners and strangers.
Thucydides

Athenian historian and general. His History of the

Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war
between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC.
Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific
history" by those who accept his claims to have applied
strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and
analysis of cause and effect, without reference to
intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to
his work.
Thucydides
Ancient Chinese

writings give much evidence of thought concerned with

the management of relations between peoples in the form
of diplomatic correspondence between rulers and officials
of different states and within systems of multi-tiered
political relations such as the Han dynasty and its
subordinate kings, the more powerful of which conducted
their own limited foreign relations as long as those did not
interfere with their obligations to the central government.
International relations of the Great Powers
(1814–1919)
The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t]
meaning "friendship, understanding, agreement")
describes the informal understanding between the
Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and Great
Britain. It built upon the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894,
the Entente Cordiale of 1904 between Paris and London,
and the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. It formed a
powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The Triple Entente, unlike the
Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance itself, was
not an alliance of mutual defense.
WWW II
Winston Churchill once famously declared that “history will
be kind to me for I intend to write it”. He clearly believed in
the ability of a single individual to shape his/her
environment, but this question continues to be at the heart
of the large debate in social sciences between determinism
and voluntarism
As prime minister (1940–45) during most of World War II, Winston
Churchill rallied the British people and led the country from the brink of
defeat to victory. He shaped Allied strategy in the war, and in the war's
later stages he alerted the West to the expansionist threat of the Soviet
Union.
As the character of this “total war” came into clearer
view, Churchill adopted two goals: defeat the Germans, and avoid
unnecessary carnage. His grand strategy was to weaken Germany by
attacking its more vulnerable periphery, opening up new fronts in
distant theaters
20th Century
Global wars were fought two times in the twentieth century.

Consequently, international relations became a public

concern as well as an important field of study and

research. After the Second World War and during the

1960s, many researchers in the U.S. particularly, and from

other countries in common, brought forth a wealth of

research work and theory. This work was done for

international relations and not for foreign policy as such.

Writers who worked with foreign policy can be
divided into two groups:

• World war writers who treat international

politics and foreign policy as an indifferent,
single field of study
• Writers who treat foreign policy as a source
rather than the substance of international
politics and bring it under study as a subject