Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy.In the context of U.S. military history, foreign policy can be defined as “the goals the nation's officials seek to attain abroad, the values that give rise to those objectives, and the means or instruments used to pursue them.” This definition has three essential elements with linkages among them. Moreover, it draws attention to the facts that U.S. foreign policy has historically exhibited change over time in each of these elements, and that their relationships with one another have also varied across different periods.
If diplomatic and military historians could reach agreement on the nature of changes in U.S. foreign policy so defined, the task of tracing this history would be relatively simple. But the challenge is difficult, because controversies over U.S. foreign policy goals, values, and instruments abound. Rather than attempting to resolve these controversies, it is more useful to clarify the three major categories within...
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