Inconsistencies in American foreign policy: an examination

Abstract

Recent American external activities directed towards Libya and Iran have brought to light the inconsistent nature of American foreign policy. This paper is essentially an investigation of these inconsistencies, attempting to illuminate through a multivariate time series analysis whether there are any overriding influences which can be used to explain such policy reversal and vacillation. The example of Israel was taken as a case study in foreign policy inconsistency, to underline the truly inconsistent nature of U.S. foreign policy while underlining the conventional explanations for such inconsistencies.

The theoretical perspective considered that the policy influences fall into three essential categories, domestic (economic, political and public), external and idiosyncratic. The analysis followed the same format accounting for and operationalising each categorisation within the the model. To accurately facilitate the analysis an autoregressive model was used, taking a U.S. - World interaction data variable as the dependent variable throughout. A variety of economic, public, political and external variables were used as the input data.

This analysis is a preliminary analysis offering suggestions and direction for future research.