Critically assess the US foreign policy-making process. What are its Essay

Critically assess the US foreign policy-making process. What are its main strengths and weaknesses - Essay Example The United States sets interaction among its organizations, corporations and individual citizens and into other nations through the implementation of its foreign policy. The United States does not live by its own economy alone but its level of achievement in the world depends on its interaction with its surrounding environment. It is known that the United States performs its functions not just for its people but to its surrounding nations and all other countries in which it has tied up interaction with. For instance, its healthy interaction with China is another important part that it needs to take into account. China is said to be an emerging economy in Asia and it is becoming extraordinary when it comes to its capacity to influence the world economy. With this, the United States has to essentially perform the best possible option in order to maintain its healthy interaction with Chinese government. On the other hand, the United States’ interaction with oil producing countrie s is another important strategy in which its economy will be able to survive in times of financial challenges. Thus, it is important to consider healthy foreign policy that will protect its national interests in times when there is a need so. ... The international distribution of power according to realists is one of the reasons why the United States adopts foreign policy, but another approach is giving more emphasis on the political institutions of a country in the domestic setting (Trubowitz, 2004). As can be observed, power is the bottom line which is one of those that influence the United States foreign policy making. There are different motivated individuals and groups competing against each other in order to achieve flow of power and symbolism in the government and society. And this eventually affects the entire foreign policy making process of the United States (Rosati and Scott, 2010). Competition at some point is healthy. Then one of the strengths in the United States’ foreign policy-making process is the ability to come up with the best procedure because it is necessary to substantiate all the needed concerns for the purpose of ensuring national interests. However, because of this competition there is also a need to properly define the best intention of stakeholders and other competing organizations in as thorough as possible. This is a disadvantage point because the unlikely intention may have greater chance to prevail in the process and will eventually affect the entire foreign policy-making process. As a result, the output may not entirely be for the national interest alone but for the benefits of the few. This creates a considerable issue because of the inclusion of power and generally politics. For instance, private groups have the capacity to check the state’s initiatives and this is due to the weakness of the US political system at some point (Krasner, 1977). Secure global system is one of the primary expectations in instituting foreign policy (Hill, 2002). This is highly