Approaches to Foreign Policy: Introduction

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to explain isolationism and engagement, idealism and realism, and unilateralism and multilateralism.
Students will be able to identify these approaches to foreign policy in real-life examples and apply them in foreign-policy scenarios.

Length

One 45-minute period

Grade Level

High School

(5 Minutes) Watch: How Do Governments Approach Foreign Policy? (3:35 video) and fill out Part 1 of the guided reading handout.
(10 Minutes) Read in Groups: Divide the class into three groups, and have each group read and fill out the guided reading handout for ONE of the following:
- Group 1: Isolationism Versus Engagement
- Group 2: Idealism Versus Realism
- Group 3: Unilateralism Versus Multilateralism
(15 Minutes) Jigsaw: Rearrange the students into groups of six students, two from each of the groups in the previous steps. Let students take turns explaining the foreign policy approach they read about in step 2.
(15 Minutes) What Would You Do Activity: Project the What Would You Do Activities and complete them as a class, asking students to make arguments in keeping with the foreign policy approaches they have learned about.

Watch How Did the United States Approach the Tiananmen Square Crackdown? (7:15 video) and complete Part 5 of the guided reading handout.
Ask students to select a foreign policy topic currently in the news and write a paragraph identifying the approaches that the United States is using to address that topic

Assign (or have students choose) a national political party platform. (The American Presidency Project has party platforms available going back to 1840.) Ask students to annotate the party platform, identifying the foreign policy approach or approaches the platform espouses.

alliance: an official partnership between two or more parties based on cooperation in pursuit of a common goal, generally involving security or defense.
drone: an unmanned, remotely piloted vehicle generally used for reconnaissance and combat. Also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
emissions: refers to the amount of greenhouse gases an entity, such as a country or company, produces.
governance: the tasks and activities of governing, or running, a country.
multilateral: undertaken among three or more entities, usually countries. The term frequently describes organizations such as the United Nations (UN).
norm: commonly accepted standard of behavior. Because international law is not always binding, international relations is highly influenced by norms.
pandemic: disease outbreak that has reached at least several countries, affecting a large group of people.
Paris Agreement: a nearly universal international agreement reached in 2015 that requires signatories to offer concrete emissions reductions pledges, establishes rules to monitor their performance against those pledges, and sets up a process to review and increase the ambition of the pledges over time. The Paris Agreement’s goal is to limit global warming by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial temperatures.