Theories of US Foreign Policy: An Overview

Abstract

This article reviews major theoretical perspectives to US foreign policy as well as on how these theoretical perspectives explain foreign policy decision making and conducting of the US. First, the paper will discuss the process of making foreign policy to sustain US core values and interests which are determined by five major categories of sources (i) the external environment, (ii) the societal environment of the nation, (iii) the governmental setting, (iv) the roles of foreign policymakers, and (v) the individual personalities of foreign policy-making elites (Wittkopf et al 2008, p. 15). Then, the paper will examine the defensive and offensive realism, liberalism, marxism, neoclassical realism, constructivism which can be based on to understand US foreign policy behaviour. It will be concluded that no single theory has the capacity to describe, explain and predict US foreign policy behaviour. A mixture of such theoretical approaches seems to be necessary to obtain a comprehensive picture of US foreign policy.