The Paradigm Debate in International Relations and Its Implications for Foreign Policy Making: Toward a Redefinition of the "National Interest"

Abstract

ERHAPS no concept in the international relations field has received more thorough criticism and nonetheless managed to persist than the concept of national interest. Despite its being discarded in many scholarly circles as a meaningless and useless analytical construct, even its most fervent detractors will recognize that the term has great currency not only among practitioners of international politics but also among the public at large both in the U.S. and elsewhere. One needs only to perform a cursory content analysis of speeches made by members of the foreign policy establishment and commentaries in the mass media to substantiate this observation. While it might be argued that the term national interest is utilized by decision-makers merely as a handy catch-phrase to facilitate their posthoc legitimization and rationalization of foreign policy decisions taken, and by the public merely as an equally handy catch-phrase to avoid having to come to grips with the confusing world of foreign affairs, such an argument would seem to grossly understate the extent to which the term and everything it represents actually informs both the former's calculations in the decision-making process and the latter's reactions to the decisions that are produced. Hence, the author would maintain that the concept is not passe but deserves continuing examination. This paper, then, is not meant to be still another attempt at making a critique of and discrediting the concept. Rather than a wrecking operation, the paper is intended to provide a reformulation of the concept, especially in light of changing conditions in the international system which have occasioned a large paradigm debate in the international relations field. This debate, the author would argue, has important implications for foreign policy making insofar as different definitions of the national interest tend to be arrived at depending upon which paradigm (or image of the world) one adopts. The author will attempt to relate the paradigm debate to U.S. foreign policy making and to offer some prescriptions for change in the formulation of American foreign policy based on this analysis.