The Role of Business in Foreign Policy

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Recommended: Foreign policy of the us prior to the 1900s

Throughout the course of American history, business-related interests have played a predominant role in influencing foreign policy. Foreign policy determines how America conducts its relations with other countries. It is designed to further certain goals such as security and trade. More importantly foreign policy seeks to ensure America’s security and defense and its ability to protect America’s national interests around the world. National interests that shape foreign policy covers a wide range of political, economic, military, ideological, and humanitarian fields. This is the stand the United States has taken in the last decades in regards to foreign policy. While the US government conducts its foreign policy, the public is kept purposefully unaware of the motives behind some major decisions it takes and most of the operations related to foreign policy. Even though the US foreign policy is set to protect its well being and to spread democracy, I think the US foreign policy is not only influenced by business but is controlled by those with these business-related interests as well. In this essay I will argue the magnitude of the influence of business on foreign policy in the United Sates government.

For most of America's history, foreign policy has reflected an obsession with open markets for American business. Democracy and capitalism are associated with open markets, and the US has made the spread of democracy and capitalism across the world a priority. The US has been anticipating the Arab Spring; the fall of the tyrants in the Middle East opens unexploited markets. This opens new markets that have been controlled by dictators like Muammar Qaddafi who expressed their hatred to the US and anything associated to it. The spread ...

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...we come to notice that beneath a multitude of causes influencing the flow of history, lays a valid and strong economic one.

Works Cited

Ells, Mark Van. 1998. "No Blood For Oil: Protesting the Persian Gulf War". Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict

Garten E. Jeffrey. 1997. " Business and Foreign Policy".

Office of Foreign Affairs

Jacobs, R. Lawrence . 2005. " Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy?" Vol. 99, No. 1. American Political Science Review.

Mandelbaum, Michael. 2010. The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era. New York: PublicAffairs books.

Sean , M. Lynn-Jones. 1998. "Why the United States Should Spread Democracy." Discussion Paper 98-07, Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University

Shaw, F. Eugene. 1979. ‘Agenda-setting and mass communication theory’, 25, 2 , p.101. Gazette

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