Amid the changes in global politics, including interstate conflicts, coups, shifting alliances, new administrations, ambitions toward multipolarity, and the testing of international law, it has become apparent that states will always act in their own national interests, even at the expense of other states. Post-pandemic, numerous events have continued to confute the democratic peace theory and substantiate the view that realism always shapes a country’s foreign policy through soft or hard power. While much of these developments in global politics threaten global peace and security and compel states to act in the best way that shields them from the geopolitical shocks that come with these changes, it becomes crucial to review and scrutinize the notion, practice, and understanding of foreign policy which can be defined as an activity of the state with which it fulfills its aims and interests within the international arena (Petrič, 2013). Although this definition depicts an uncomplicated scene, its practice has evinced how complex foreign policy can be through a series of current events. This can be attributed to the determinants of foreign policy, which often encompass diverse conditions, interests, and decisions at the state level, which may, unwittingly, yield unfavorable outcomes in the international arena. Different authors have conceptualized foreign policy in several ways, as follows.
Mathebula et al. (Mon,) studied this question.