This research note investigates a foreign policy model which is based upon the notion that both conflictual and cooperative aspects of the foreign behavior of contemporary polities can be fruitfully explored through a mechanism involving expectations about the behavior of other actors. These expectations are incorporated adaptively into current behavior patterns. This adaptive‐expectation model of behavior is formulated in a manner similar to Richardson action‐reaction models, and yields complemental information to that which can be gleaned from the latter specification. The model is developed, tested and supported for two contemporary nation pairs, US?USSR and Israel?Egypt, utilizing event data to measure the primary behavior components, conflict and cooperation. Examination of this model suggested the existence of cyclical components in the foreign policy behavior of nations which had heretofore gone unreported in the literature. The substantive impact of such cycles is shown to be considerable, and sev...