The art of foreign policy ‘muddling through’ in the US

EACH time President Joe Biden makes an important foreign policy move, like last week’s announcement that the US was increasing its military presence in the Philippines and gaining access to four more sites there, or the recent decision to send Ukraine a battalion of 31 M1 Abrams tanks, the tendency among pundits is to deconstruct the president’s action and try to discover the “logic” or “meaning” behind it.

The conventional wisdom is that this kind of decision was a direct result of efforts to promote a “grand strategy” and that it reflects the president’s foreign policy “doctrine” and that therefore it “makes sense”.

This approach to analysing foreign policy decisions applies to them an “intelligent design” model.