Author Question: The geography and natural resources of a state may have a significant influence on its foreign ... (Read 140 times)

xroflmao · **on:** Sep 3, 2018

The geography and natural resources of a state may have a significant influence on its foreign policy-making. Think about the geographical characteristics of Switzerland, a small country surrounded by mountains, and Russia, which is expansive and resource-rich. How might these characteristics affect the way these two countries interact with the rest of the world?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

There are numerous constraints on the foreign-policy-making process. What are they? Which are the most important? Give an example of when they adversely affected foreign policy.

What will be an ideal response?

apple · **Reply #1 on:** Sep 3, 2018

Answer to Question 1

Some of the most important influences on a state's foreign policy behavior stem from
its location visvis other states in the international system, and the geostrategic
advantages that this conveys. The presence of natural frontiers, for example, may
profoundly guide policy makers' choices. Consider the United States, which was
secure throughout most of its early history because vast oceans separated it from
potential threats in Europe and Asia. The advantage of having oceans as barriers to
foreign intervention, combined with the absence of militarily powerful neighbors,
permitted the United States to develop into an industrial giant and to safely practice an
isolationist foreign policy for more than 150 years. Consider also mountainous
Switzerland, whose easily defended topography has made neutrality a viable foreign
policy option.

Answer to Question 2

It is important to recognize that no single category of causation can fully explain foreign
policy decisions; rather, a number of influences converge to codetermine the decisions
that produce foreign policy outputs.. To get to the essence of how international
decision making takes place, we must go beyond a single-factor explanation and think
in terms of multiple causes. For that, it is useful to identify the various clusters of
variables that affect the choices all types of transnational actors make when they
formulate a foreign policy. We can construct a framework of the determinants of
decision making in the foreign-policy-making process by reference to three major
sets of causal variables at the individual, internal, and global levels of analyses