Political Science - What common features of small states Foreign Essay

Political Science - What common features of small states Foreign Policy distinguish it the most from Great powers Foreign Policy - Essay Example Foreign policy has deeper connotations with stated and un-stated objectives that a country to tries to fulfil through political, economic, military, and diplomatic means. Dean Rusk quoted by Seabury, interprets foreign policy as a â€Å"galaxy of complicated factors.† Hoffman quoted by Seabury too sees the current picture of international relations as â€Å"the crisis of complexity†. He feels that in the past century the sheer dimension of international equilibrium has multiplied. States have added significantly to these dimensions with different manifestations of foreign policy under varying set of conditions. Foreign policy is a dependant variable conditioned by internal power configurations of the state (Wagner). As such foreign policies of small Asian, African, and Latin American states have foreign policies have changed with changes in the domestic power structures. Smaller states are more vulnerable to domestic and international changes as they show greater tenden cy to change foreign policy. Scholars have studied the changes in foreign policies of nations and dichotomised the international behaviour of great and small nations. Reiter, for example, infers how a small and a great power learn from their experiences of war to chalk to out their foreign policies. East for example cites Roseau’s observation that the size of a nation plays a great role in creation of its foreign policy. Small states never have permanent and extended interests in international arena as big powers. Other than studying foreign policy on the basis of ‘greatness’ and ‘smallness’ foreign policies have been studied in contrast to authoritarian regimes, traditional or modern societies or in stages of economic development (Pfaltzgraff,1974).