A country’s foreign policy is the long-term management of a state’s interactions with other countries and international organizations. It involves balancing and advancing the nation’s security, economic interests, and values in an interconnected world. Foreign policy encompasses a range of tools, from military intervention to trade agreements to aiding less-powerful nations. It also includes a state’s cultural and political influence abroad.
The first objective must be to safeguard liberty, security, and prosperity at home. To do so, America must promote a world order that upholds democracy and free markets around the globe. This requires the United States to lead as well as listen, and to give as much as to take.
America’s relative position of power gives it an opportunity to advance its interests in a way that avoids the destabilizing arms races and competition that marred previous eras. But this will only work if others see that American power is deployed not just in America’s own interest but in theirs. In the case of China, that will mean proving that the United States is not going soft on Beijing or, worse, appeasing it.