FOREIGN POLICY AND THE ENTHRONMENT OF
INTERNATIONAL PEACE
The disposition of any country in international affairs is
based on her foreign policy. The world today is faced with so much treats that if necessary precaution is not taken man himself will be the one that will bring about the end of the world through the production of weapons of mass destruction. Wars and conflict between two or more nations and economic sanctions etc could lead to distortion of global peace and extinction of man from the face of the earth. The activities of man are no doubt revealing a lot of man’s intentions, what he is and what he has created. Jacob Bronowski summarize it thus:
Every animals leaves a trace of what
it was, but man alone leaves a trace
what he created1.
What Bronowski was trying to say is that man has of his own volition either created positively or negatively things that could henanced progress of the world or destroyed it, when is actions are positive it help to bring peace, but when they are negative it brings confusion to the world. In the words of Billy Clinton, one time American president, he said “that war is not a friend to anybody, but an enemy to all, and peace is the food that the world needs to grow”2.
The problem in the world today is not because man has choose to fight one another, but because man has refused to tolerates his neighbours because of selfish interest. In the world today, people put their interest first before that of their
country. The world as it where would have been a better place to live in if our value judgement is altruistic. The interest of every country is the foreign policy of that country, while it is true that the foreign policy of any nation is the reflection of her domestic policy, it is equally true that the formation of a country’s foreign policy is the articulation of her national interest. The national interest of a country takes care of her citizens and how she conducts her affairs in the
international community. The interest of every nation is how to promote peace and security in the country and the world in general.