Foreign: Discussion 3 Essay Example

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once remarked that “history will be kind for me for I intend to write it”. Churchill was perhaps one of the believers that a strong individual influence could shape the foreign policy of a nation as big and influential as the United Kingdom during the period before 1945. In the study of International Relations, particularly the facet of foreign policy, there is a constituency that believes that the role of the individual strong leader is perhaps one of the “most micro of all explanatory levels” (Hudson, 2007, pg.22). Realists particularly believers that state act as “unitary” entities propose the argument that the individual can only play a little role in the formation of foreign policy due the nature of state’s operations. The unitary actor assumption is laden with oversights on the role of personal belief of the individual decision makers. The individual is thus an important element in the formation of foreign policy.
There is also the school of thought that reasons that the individual plays a very influential role in the shaping of a nation’s foreign policy agenda. The perceptions of the individual leader on the the facets of life such as beliefs, religion, place of family and ethnicity become paramount in the decision making process. Individual leaders passionate on issue would be most comfortable making decisions that generate passions from them. For example, the Third Republic in Germany’s foreign policy under Adolf Hitler implemented the foreign policy that declared the German people the ultimate race in the human world. Hitler’s republic also had issue with the United Kingdom as well as the Treaty of Versailles and the Jewish people. Subsequently, Hitler’s foreign policy that culminated to the Second World War was a resulting effect of Hitler’s personal beliefs. Hitler’s charisma and personal opinions had led the whole world as known in 1936 to a war.
Psychologists reason that the human brain has myriad reactions that have some biases. In some cases, the human brain is subject to heuristic shortcuts that necessitate making judgments when faced with limited data. While making these decisions can be important in some cases, they could also lead to inaccurate generalizations, incomplete recalling of events, and the problem of poor estimations. Moreover, the human brain has the problem of building complex when faced with difficult situations or hard problems, overlooking information that is contradictory, and to emphasize casual relationships over probability. Foreign policy decision makers are subject to these flaws. In most cases, they are elderly people, overconfident, unaware of trends, and also abhorrence of ambiguity. The charisma of the individual over the advisors, their fear, and share of the same values and understanding of the terrain would make important choices that affect how an individual resigns over the other in the final world.
In conclusion, in this essay we have discussed on how the leader can shape the foreign policy of a country. Evidence from the German case illustrates how Hitler’s personal influence played a significant role in shaping the foreign policy of German Republic just before the Second World War. In addition, to individual will, aspects of life such as personality, charisma, friendship, and commitment to the course may influence a leader to take one case over the other.