The goal of foreign policy is to advance American values and interests in a way that advances the interests of people worldwide. This is done by promoting democracy, preventing war, supporting human rights, and advancing trade. It requires a great deal of cooperation from nations around the world and their citizens.

Foreign policy encompasses a wide range of activities from negotiating treaties to conducting intelligence gathering to making official statements and envoy visits. Diplomacy has long been a vital role, and many of the world’s most successful leaders have been both diplomats and military commanders (George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower are examples). However, the nature of foreign policy is changing. More issues today, like terrorism and climate change, don’t neatly fit into the categories of friendly or enemy countries.

One of the most important challenges of modern foreign policy is that it takes place within a vast network of international associations. There is no central world-level authority dictating how the world’s nations should interact, so there are a multitude of voluntary groups with overlapping rules and varying degrees of enforcement power.

These associations have been vital to the world’s stability, and they are often necessary for international cooperation. But they also make the job of coordinating global affairs much more difficult. This is why the United States should not be a country of isolationists, and why we should support our diplomats and other personnel both at home and abroad who work tirelessly to advance our foreign policy goals.