Should governments have a foreign policy?

World Atlas by Illia Panasenko

Should governments have a foreign policy? 
Tuesday – November 25, 2025

It seems that many governments around the world, but especially those in the Imperial Core, have this tradition of adopting a foreign policy and for certain governments it's often the case that their foreign policy trumps their domestic policy. Why is this? Well, to be frank most of these governments have historically had a colonial policy and to be fair, it's rather difficult to maintain an empire without a certain policy governing that empire and in more recent times those colonial remnants that still exist around the world have compelled these governments to continue to have a certain policy towards the world. Do notice that yes, it is often the case that the more influential and large a country is, the more likely it is that the country in question has a foreign policy. The United States is perhaps the best example, but you have other countries as well such as the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Red China, etc. These countries have different reasons for having adopted a foreign policy and I am not going to delve into any great details about that. But I would have thought that for a democratic government in particular that a domestic policy should be more important, but this is often not the case. In the example of the United States you'll often find presidents and their administrations being far more focused on the world, indeed to uphold what is essentially an American Empire. Of course, the concept of an American Empire does clash with historical Americana if you will, but when I refer to an American Empire it's not always clear what I mean, so allow me to clarify. By an American Empire I mean one and sometimes two things: in a sense America has always been an Empire, at least since the Louisiana purchase, but America did break free from an Empire, the British Empire, and that's perhaps why in particular the concept of an American Empire clashes so much with America and the story, the narrative of America, which leads me two my second reason why America is an empire; really after WWII America did take a mandate that it didn't previously possess and while America in a lot of ways was born out of resistance to imperialism, it's clear that much of the British Empire was if not taken over at least taken up by America in both a progressive mission to "civilize" and a imperialist mission to extract, and it is this second American Empire if you will that I'm referring to here. Yes, it is also true that America didn't use to have a foreign policy other than staying out of foreign entanglements, but history is of course more nuanced and complicated than that. After all, who bombarded the Barbary states? At any rate, it is understandable that a country and a government such as the United States should have come to adopt a certain outlook at the world, and I am not saying that the United States should just turn inward and isolate itself from the rest of the world, although a certain vain of that sort does seem to exist in the American folk consciousness and tradition as I just mentioned. But this post isn't going to focus specifically on America, but I would surely be remiss if I didn't mention America. Take the United Kingdom and France again, two countries that used to govern vast colonial Empires up until around the mid 20th century, and I've so far gathered that most of their foreign policy has been an attempt to uphold whatever still exists of those old colonial empires, and perhaps this has been the case more so with France, especially in the Sahel region of Africa. There is also this certain Blarian and proto-Churchillian tendency in the United Kingdom as well to uphold some kind of vague notion of so-called "international law" and "human rights" around the world, and perhaps the episodes in Bosnia and later Sierra Leone etc are examples of this, but overall it seems quite stretch for both France and the United Kingdom to emphasize a foreign policy to this extent. Then we have China, red China to be clear, and they have a fairly different reason behind their foreign policy, that really revolves around their own imperial ambitions, but you see, Beijing is somewhat less explicitly imperial in their ambitions; so far Beijing seeks mostly to gain influence I gather.

    Look, I believe that most governments should have some kind of foreign policy, but what I am trying to get at here is just how much of a government focus and energy should be directed at the world as opposed to the country itself, and this argument seems important more so for democracies where the people are supposedly in charge, which isn't really the case but that's a topic for another time. I believe that if a government claims to look after it's people, the people whom they supposedly represent, they should adopt a domestic policy and if they adopt a foreign policy that policy should mostly be narrow and diplomatic in ambition and indeed, it is also the case that there may be many states that aren't and shouldn't be of diplomatic interest, something that the sad spectacle that is the United Nations clearly showcase. I also resent the term "isolationism", because it implies, to me at least, that you seek to turn away completely from the world, and this isn't true and even if it was true, it would quite frankly not be possible or even desirable to completely turn away from the world, but most proponents of the liberal and humanist world order would label people with more realist and parochial sensibilities "isolationist", when they may only be non-interventionists for instance. See, there are many ways in which a government can interact with the rest of the world and it doesn't always have to involve war and violence, and if favoring this more diplomatic and yes cautious style makes you a isolationist, then so be it, but when I conjure up an image in my head of an isolationist government/state I think of feudal Japan/Pre-Meiji restoration Japan; yes that was a state that is a real contender for that word, isolationist. But even so, in the past it was quite frankly not as important or practical to have a policy regarding the world. These assumptions are all symptoms of our times, and yes the paramount assumption made by the proponents of the humanist axiom is that they can and should use their influence to push other countries towards more openness and trade and in the end liberalism, which really is a form of modern colonialism.

    In the end, yes a government in modern times probably need and should adopt a certain foreign policy, but I don't believe any government that at least claims to represent its people should put more emphasis and focus on the rest of the world, and yes I believe any government that claims to speak on behalf of its peoples should disarm.

Reginald Drax – November 25, 2025.