V.J. Chalupa

On Post-Modern Politics

CHAPTER 12

FOREIGN POLICY

Basic Concepts

Foreign policy is the sum of actions of a state which arrange its relationship to other states. In foreign policy, the state acts as a subject of volition and reason rationally implementing its supreme (primary) objective to achieve betterment of the situation of its population and is guided by the rules of purposive thinking, especially by the principle of economy.

This includes, as the precondition to any other action of the state, the preservation of sovereignty over its subjects, respectively citizens: to protect them from becoming subjects of duty of another state, to come under the rule of a foreign legal system, of a foreign sovereignty. Translated into relationship to other states it means that the indispensable derived purpose of each state is to maintain its independence vis-a-vis other states.

Joined to this goal is the state's purpose of promoting the interests of its object of care even outside of its own territory.  A necessary means to attain these twin purposes is to limit the sovereignty of other states. Such a limitation can be defensive or offensive. A defensive limitation of the sovereignty of other states is achieved, if and when it prevents them from expanding their sovereignty on (parts of) the territory or population of the defending state. It is offensive if it includes infringing upon sovereignty of another state over (parts of) that state's territory or population.

As long as means needed for the betterment of the situation of its population (goods, natural resources, territory, population) are under the sovereignty of another state, a state endeavors to obtain them in one of two possible ways: by exchange or by coercion.

The condition for an exchange (trade) are mutually complementary interests. In this case an exchange takes place, i.e., the parties trade one good for the other, and both realize a gain.

Coercion takes place when one subject (i.e., state) needs a good under the sovereignty of another state to whom it cannot offer anything useful in exchange. In this case, the acquiring state must coerce the possessing state to give up the good in question, by causing the latter a harm exceeding the harm caused by giving up the good. The acquiring state must also take into consideration the cost of coercion -- if they do not exceed the gain derived from obtaining the desired object. It is the task of diplomacy to obtain the object by a threat of coercion rather than its execution. The means of diplomacy are secret negotiations, quiet diplomacy, public declarations, diplomatic notes expressing concern, official protests, threatening actions (naval maneuvers, concentration of military forces on the target's borders, mobilization, various degrees of readiness of long range delivery vehicles of arms of mass destruction).

Coercion can be indirect or direct. The indirect way consists in denying to the resisting state means it needs; the direct form consist in application of violence -- attack on persons or goods of the resisting state. Indirect coercion consists in preventing the resisting state from obtaining needed goods by commerce (boycott, blockade, sanctions) or psychological pressure on its population; often both methods are combined. Direct coercion takes form of terrorism or war. (Examples of direct coercion were World War I and II, example of indirect coercion was the Cold War.)

Coercion results in a decrease of the affected state's sovereignty in one of two forms: as to extent or as to content.

A state's sovereignty is decreased as to its content if the state is forced to abstain from actions which would be in the interest of its object of care, or if it is forced to act in a way in which it would not act if its sovereignty were not limited. Such a limitation of sovereignty can be a commitment not to enter into agreements with other states directed against the interest of the coercing state, to limit its armed forces or the type of their equipment, to abstain from supporting domestic opposition of the coercing state. It can also be the opposite: the affected state can be forced to enter into alliances or international groupings even if it is not in its interest, or to participate in another state's military actions, to undertake economic measures which are against its interest or to grant on its territory to the coercing state the permission or the exclusive right to conduct certain types of economic activities (f.i., exploration, mining, port privileges). The highest form of the loss of sovereignty is when the affected state must change its system, constitution or legal order according to the will of another state or a group of other states. 

A state's sovereignty is decreased as to its extent if the state is forced to transfer the sovereignty over a part of its territory to another state. The most frequent reasons are: the transfer of a territory is done to enable a part of the affected state's population (for instance, an ethnic or religious minority) to join a state where it possesses majority, or to cede an area representing its military advantage over another state. Other forms of such limitation of sovereignty are the ceding or leasing of military bases to another state or extraterritorial privileges ("concessions") of an economic nature.

A relatively new form of limiting a state's sovereignty consists of enforcing the implementation of international treaties or a transfer a part of a state's sovereignty to international organizations dominated or decisively influenced by a state or states whose policy harms the interests of the affected state.

The outcome of foreign policy depends directly on the power relationship between the states. The power of a state consists of its domestic strength and of its foreign relations. Of the two, domestic strength is more important; it determines the scope of actions in the field of foreign relations.

Elements of Power -- Domestic Strength

Domestic strength of the state is the result of material as well as spiritual factors. Among the material factors, the most important ones are numerical strength, wealth and military potential. Among the spiritual factors are unity and spirit of sacrifice (willingness to fight) of the population.

Material Factors

Numerical strength of the population is the basis of the economic and military strength of a state. Its importance is growing in the time when military components of power are becoming secondary vis-á-vis democratic principles which attach to numbers more relevance than to other factors. There is a numerical limit below which states cannot preserve their real (as opposed to formal) independence, because the size of their population is not sufficient to bear the costs of maintenance of modern military equipment: the cost of modern intercontinental missiles, airplane carriers, modern aircraft are such that the national product of numerically weak states is unable to cover them. Similarly, interplanetary exploration and its utilization exceeds their possibilities. Small states can participate in similar projects only at the price of giving up a portion of their sovereignty.

Military occupation of numerically strong states and the perpetuation of control over them exceeds even the possibilities of modern means of social control, exhausts the economy of the occupying state. If the occupying state incorporates the occupied state's more numerous population, the numerically stronger population will gradually absorb the occupants and wrestle control of the normgiving power from the hands of the conquerors. This does not apply to short-term economic exploitation; only to long-term exploitation which must be maintained through military means.

The population is the mainstay of the state and the state is the guarantor of the security of its population. The state provides such a measure of security, as the strength of its population permits. A total war makes this relationship even more obvious. The struggle of the states is conducted until complete exhaustion, physical annihilation and destruction of one of the contenders. Victory belongs to the more numerous and more tenacious party. In this type of conflict, the size of the population has a twofold role: to blunt (or execute) the first sudden onslaught, and to overcome numerical losses. (13) This function of population strength does not apply in a war fought by arms of mass destruction: nuclear weapons are capable of annihilating equally both large and small populations.

In a confrontation with other states, military or not, chances of a state depend on the pressure coefficient. A pressure coefficient is the relation of the total population of one state compared to the sum total of the populations of all its neighboring states (because conflicts of interest arise mostly among neighboring states, with a concurrent tendency to escalate into military confrontation). In the measure in which the population of neighboring states exceeds the population of one state, the higher is the pressure coefficient and the more insecure is its international situation. Numerical weakness of a state attracts the appetites of stronger neighbors and encourages them to form alliances whose purpose is to acquire parts of the territory of their weak common neighbor or to dismember it completely (example: repeated divisions of Poland among its German and Russian neighbors, division of Czechoslovakia by its neighbors by and after the Munich agreement). The pressure coefficient is a reliable indicator of the international situation. Where it reaches the highest numbers, the danger of armed conflicts is the greatest; the weakness of small and middle sized states is a permanent source of unrest. (14) The instability in the areas of high pressure coefficients is one of the reasons why the great powers conclude agreements about their "spheres of interest" which include the responsibility for  keeping conflicts among their clients to the minimum.

Certain features of nature (oceans, mountains, rivers) form geographically circumscribed units which place some states in a position conducive to attempts to organize this area to its advantage and under its leadership (geopolitics). Geopolitical influences are seldom dominant in the short term, but  geopolitical factors are permanent and do prevail in the long run. They determine the character of the great powers as maritime or continental, with the U.S.A. the prominent case of the former, and Russia the prominent case of the latter. A maritime power usually aims at controlling the opposite shores of the surrounding oceans, a continental power aims at domination over the continental mass surrounding it. Typical examples of geopolitical units are the North American plain and the North European plain from the Rhine to the Urals, the Danube basin, the Indian peninsula -- they all exhibit tendencies to be organized by one state. 

Another geopolitical element is the fact that two (or more states) neighboring with a third state have common interests harmful to the state located between them. The result are treaties between the neighbors of a state countered by its treaties with the neighbors of its own neighbors.

The above components of material power of a state determine two other elements: military might and economic might. Military might confers on its possessor short term advantages, economic power is stronger in the long run. If military power does not bring about complete defeat of an economically strong state, economic power will ultimately prevail. Since the Thirty Years war in Europe, there has not been one conflict in which military power prevailed against economic power. The cycle of great empires follows basically a pattern. First, an economically powerful state enlarges its sphere of interest so that it becomes vulnerable. This necessitates military protection; the state must build a strong army. The army uses up means which could be devoted to economic growth, and weakens it in the relationship of upstart states not burdened by such wide interests -- and responsibilities. The relative loss of economic strength increases the threat to the superpower's worldwide interests and generates a vicious circle: to protect them it must increase its military power which further undermines it economic strength until new rivals overtake it economically and are victorious in the next military conflict which follows. (Per Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Empires, Random House, New York, N.Y. -- This pattern appeared also in the Cold War except that in lieu of a war the contest took place in the form of an arms race.)

This does not mean that military readiness and the population's willingness to fight can be underestimated. Small states like Switzerland and Israel owe their independence to the fact that they can, in case of need, enlist practically their entire population to increase promptly their military power. 

Economic power depends not only on the size of the population, but also on its composition, especially the numerical relationship between old and young generations. As a general rule, it can be said that a society with a diminishing number of members of the younger (productive) generations tends to decline economically and militarily. In the short run, population decline produces rising costs of social programs (pensions, social security, health care, medical needs). The needs of those who have become unproductive or were forced out of the process of production (for any reason, mostly because of age) must be born by the productive strata. If the numerical relationship between the unproductive (old) generations and the productive generations reaches a certain level, the standard of living of the productive generations is under such pressure that it discourages reproduction, so that the presently active generation when aged will overburden their numerically smaller offspring, and the process repeats itself. The long term effects are still more serious; the economy has to adjust repeatedly to the declining purchasing power of the population, fixed investments (buildings, infrastructure, industrial capacity) exceed the needs of a declining population thus obviating the need for inventiveness, initiative and productivity.

Spiritual Factors

The population's unity and spirit of sacrifice can be cultivated by the state by means negative and positive.  The negative measures are immediate: the use of the state force against centrifugal movements. They are effective only if such movements are completely liquidated; if they are only suppressed, they will emerge again exactly at the time of international crises when the state is weakened, and they can contribute even to its destruction. The most serious threat to the unity of a state's society are groups that are parts of political, national or religious movements governing a neighboring state, work for the latter's interests and receive support from it. It is impossible to liquidate such movements without weakening the power of the state which keeps them alive.

Positive measures aimed at strengthening the unity and spirit of sacrifice of a population are slower and more indirect because they try to influence the culture and prevailing values of society to make them acceptable and accepted by all its parts. This requires the formulation of an idea, a mission of the state which will be so attractive that all subjects of the state will incorporate it into their purpose of happiness to an extent outweighing other objectives which compete with it within the material solidarity of the primary objective. In a state divided ethnically and socially, but unified in matters of religion, such a unifying idea can be the service to the common faith; in a state divided religiously and socially, the unifying mission can be nationalism; in a state divided religiously, ethnically and socially, such a uniting idea has to consist of service for all of humanity to which each component of society subordinates its particular interests.

State's positive and negative measures aiming at the improvement of the spiritual components of its strength can be combined to be mutually supportive.

Elements of Power -- Foreign Relations

The international status of a state depends not on its absolute power, but on the relation of its strength to other states.  States whose interests coincide with those of a state, are considered as friendly, those with contrary interest as unfriendly; those whose interest do not affect the state are considered as neutral. Therefore a state seeks to improve its power stature also by seeking and strengthening friendly states and weakening the unfriendly states and their allies. In addition, it acts to transform unfriendly states into either neutral states or friendly states.

Measures which are apt to limit the sovereignty of a state, i.e., actions aimed at unfriendly states, may be nonviolent (indirect struggle) and violent (direct clash).

Nonviolent Means -- Indirect Struggle

In nature, indirect struggle for survival means that its living environment denies to an organism elements it needs for the development of its potentialities into actualities: light, soil, air, water, food. This indirect struggle can be and often is as deadly as direct clash between organisms. The same applies to struggle between states. The main instrument of an indirect struggle between states is economic power; its forms range from mild ones (introducing import duties, denying access to markets by limiting mutual imports and exports, currency manipulations, denial of loans) to grave ones: interrupting access to sources of raw materials and products including a blockade and culminating in an internationally organized general economic boycott. A peculiar form of economic contest is the arms race; the antagonists strive to build an army which could either secure a military victory or exhaust the opponent economically.

The contest of ideas is another form of the indirect struggle if it intensifies into a propaganda war. Its purpose is to weaken the spiritual elements of the opponent: break up the unity of its population and undermine its willingness to defend its state. A decisive victory in this war is reached when one state replaces its own will (value system) with an opponent's will (value system). This struggle of ideas takes place not only as part of a preparation for a direct clash (when its success can be decisive: the undermining of the will to fight of the opponent's population is tantamount to victory -- USA loss in Vietnam), but continues after the termination of the clash, because the loser (or its population) will tenaciously endeavor to reverse the outcome of the lost conflict, until or unless its culture does not internalize the values of the victorious contender.

In every state, there are movements or organizations which disagree with the government.  If the state is an unfriendly state, the acting state uses economic means and propaganda to support the opposition because of the probability that its influence or victory will realign the interests of both states in favor of the state from which the opposition received support.

A state does not have to limit itself to supporting an existing opposition; it can endeavor to create it, i.e., to destabilize an unfriendly state. This can be done by personal relationships, but mostly by activities of secret services. Efforts to destabilize an unfriendly state can be combined with economic pressure which affects the standard of living of the unfriendly state's population, and thus creates dissatisfaction to be exploited by the burgeoning opposition. This development can be hastened and intensified also by the propaganda war which connects the economic difficulties with the existing government and its enmity to the acting state. Creating of difficulties for an unfriendly government is not necessarily limited to indirect measures; it can be combined with direct measures such as terrorism and insurgency.

Violent Means

Overt Warfare

The classical form of a violent clash between mutually unfriendly states is war, an attempt to impose a state's will upon another state by actual or foreseeable military occupation of a part or the whole of its territory. War is a clash of military forces of two or several states for the purpose of forcing a state (or several states) against its (their) will to comply with demands of another state or states. The means towards achieving this goal is to weaken the military forces of the adversary so that the victorious party can impose its will on the loser. An aggressive war aims at imposing new demands on another state; a defensive war aims at preventing the aggressor to achieve its aim. A defensive war can in time change into an offensive one, and vice versa.

In a war, the state has the choice of one of two strategies: an overwhelming attack  ("blitzkrieg") or attrition.  The overwhelming attack's purpose is to win victory before its target can mobilize its own resources; it is therefore favored by states which are militarily strong, but weaker economically and/or in other regards. The purpose of the strategy of attrition is to prolong the war, by denying the enemy a decision in order to increase one's own strength and by constant pressure to exploit enemy's weaknesses until its defeat. This is a strategy of economically strong states, and experience proves that it is a winning strategy. It is at the same time a long term strategy because it includes the destruction and exhaustion of the enemy's economic and production potential and disruption of its communications with lasting effects on its economic and military potential for eventual revenge. Overwhelming attacks usually engage only military forces; attrition strategy engages entire populations of both sides. 

Except for nuclear arms, the outcome of war is decided by land units of the army (infantry); its other elements have only a supportive role, no matter how important or impressive. The two basic tactics in territorial war are breakthrough and encirclement. The breakthrough is the penetration of the enemy's formations all the way to its rear echelons, interruption of its communications, encirclement of isolated parts of its army and their destruction. Encirclement is the penetration or bypassing of enemy's forces on their wings, interruption of its communications with the rear; the two arms of the attacking army join in a pincer movement and destroy the captive army. Encirclement can be effective especially in a situation created by the adversary's breakthrough whose success stretched its supply roads and communications so that it can be cut off from its bases by a pincer movement against its wings.

The complexity of modern armed conflicts involves not only armies, but the entire population of the warring states during the preparation and the course of the conflict: obligatory military service, arms production, support elements; an armed conflict becomes a total war. In aggressive states, this transformation takes place before the war; attacked states usually mobilize their resources only during the war. If the enemies expect a war to break out, they prepare the means needed for the defeat of the adversary in advance -- these preparations lead to an arms race which can discourage the aggressor or exhaust one of the contenders so that it submits to the demands of the stronger state without war. (In this way, Czechoslovakia was defeated in 1938 and the USSR in the Eighties.)

The involvement of civilian population into a war includes (voluntary, but often also involuntary) support of irregular armed groups fighting the possessor of sovereignty over a certain territory -- guerillas. In conjunction with a total war, guerilla groups are a part of the resistance against the enemy's government or the occupying power and as such it is, together with sabotage and passive resistance, an element of military operations of allied powers who provide them with supplies and sometimes even leaders of guerilla units.This method was used during World War II on the eastern front by the Soviets and by the western allies in France especially before the invasion. Such cooperation is a part of the war effort and also of foreign policy because at the time of the collapse of the occupation, the control of liberated territory passes to armed, i.e., guerilla groups, and their political preferences are important for future development of international relations. 

In a war started to annex a portion of another state's territory the parties at war may anticipate and prejudge the final outcome by destroying the population of the enemy -- the war becomes a war of extermination (lately also called "ethnic cleansing"): each state eliminates on the contested territory minorities belonging to the nationality or religion of the enemy, or simply destroys the enemy's population to weaken it in the final phase of the war or even in a possible future conflict. This development led to the conclusion of international treaties regulating the conduct of war with regard to civilian population and prisoners of war, and an extermination war violates such treaties knowingly and intentionally.

The development of military technology is such that war is usually damaging to both parties, the victor as well as the loser, and possibly also to third states not directly involved in the conflict. It remains an alternative to other choices if one side is willing to suffer such damage in the hope of forcing the enemy to forego the acquisition of its desired objective, offensive or defensive. War still is the ultima ratio regum.

Covert Warfare

The awareness of the damage threatening both sides of a war is such that new violent means of struggle were sought and found, means which would skirt open warfare. Such means of covert warfare are, in the order of intensity, terrorism, insurgency (guerilla warfare), revolt, civil war and infiltration.

Terrorism is destruction of the targeted state's important economic objects or members of its population even though they are not involved in any actions against the terrorists. In its simpler form, it derives from the recognition that the effects of a terrorist act exceed disproportionaly its cost. Repeated terrorist acts weaken the targeted population's resolve to deny to the terrorists their demands, and as means of blackmail they are often successful. Blackmail also protects members of the terrorist groups, for instance, by demands to spare or free apprehended terrorists in exchange for sparing or freeing important victims of kidnapping. Because of its elusiveness, even a small terrorist group can inflict serious damage to states incomparatively more powerful. While support of terrorist organizations by a state is an effective means of exerting pressure on an enemy state, it remains unofficial; support of terrorism is always limited to secret services and there is no connection between the terrorists and official representatives of the supporting state. Deniability gives to the state supporting terrorism the flexibility to withdraw it at any time when the cost or danger of support appears to exceed its gains. It also deprives the targeted state of an internationally recognized reason to declare war and, moreover, the potential damage of a war, even if victorious, is much higher than the damage caused by terrorist acts.

This might be a fallacy if terrorism is not aimed at occasional victims, no matter how important, but is part of a continuous campaign of destroying the state's and the society's structure, if it is directed systematically against all kinds and levels of local organs of the state and against politically and socially leading personalities, combined with the use of gruesome forms of violence. Simultaneously, terrorists attack the material structure of the state: communications, sources of energy and supplies of food for the population.  In South Vietnam, repeated public torture and executions of representatives of the government (village chairmen and elders, teachers, policemen) and of opinion leaders (doctors, lawyers) by the opposition intimidated the population to such an extent that the sovereignty of the state was held up only during the day by presence of the army while at night, the terrorists took over. This campaign was a successful prelude to the escalation to guerilla warfare and subsequently civil war.

Terrorism can damage and destabilize a state, but not replace it or destroy its sovereignty; it can obtain concessions in individual cases, but is not aimed at acquiring the power to formulate the will of the state. To enter politics, it must  be upgraded to an insurrection in the form of destroying the state's power locally or guerilla warfare, with visible leaders and a publicized political program. If an unfriendly state aims at weakening its opponent,  support of guerillas opens possibilities to influence political processes in the targeted state. It is far more expensive; terrorists need mainly counterfeited documents, small arms and bombs, insurgency needs systematic deliveries of arms, and arms of a more sophisticated type: anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, communication equipment, transport, often bases and camps on their sponsor's territory and specialized military training by the sponsor's army, security forces or secret services. As the support of the insurgents grows, so does their dependence on the supporting state; its unofficial representatives (secret agents) co-determine the strategy, tactics, targets and political demands of the insurgents.

The aim of insurgency is to upgrade the conflict into a civil war. Civil war is a conflict between armed members of two or more groups of the population or between armed members of the opposition with the armed forces of the state. Revolutionary theory has defined two main strategies of achieving victory. One of them is to concentrate on usurping power in the capital of the country and its main centers. To achieve it, the revolution must obtain sufficient preponderance of power in these targets, and having seized them, it spreads its power to the rest of the country. This preponderance of power was based on factory workers and rebelling units of the army in St.Petersburg, and it led to the communist dictatorship; a similar preponderance in Prague was based on students joined by the capital's population; it led to the overthrow of the communist dictatorship. This strategy is similar to the military strategy of penetrating the opponent's center. The other strategy is similar to encirclement: it consist of gaining control over the countryside and a gradual isolation of the state's power in economic and political centers which then are lost to the government one after another until the entire country is under the rebels' control except the capital which ultimately falls. This is the method used by communists in China. It is prolonged and more difficult, the areas of control change, the government is in control as long as its armed forces are present; they lose it as soon as they have to evacuate the territory because they are needed elsewhere. and the initiative of deciding the pressure points is in the hands of the revolutionaries.

The sponsor state escalates its support to the revolutionaries because failure at this stage would mean the loss of all advantages it has gained until then by its previous support. Its intervention takes the form of infiltration of its regular armed units which pretend to be volunteers and fight on the side of the revolutionaries. They are not acknowledged by the sponsoring state as parts of its own military, but are in reality trained, maintained and commanded by it and have their bases on the intervening state's territory. The infiltration can either function as a provocation which will  create a pretext for open military intervention by its regular armed forces, or to help the rebels in setting up a rival government.

At this phase of the struggle, the revolutionary political organization must secure permanent control of a part of the state's territory in which its will replaces the will of the state, and transform it into an impenetrable basis from which the revolution can inflict further damage to the state in order to gain concessions. Under no circumstances will the revolutionary political organization exchange its rule over this power base for the state's concessions, but use it for further enlargement of its power until it absorbs or destroys the target state or replaces it in the conquered territory. It is constrained to do so because of the involvement with its sponsor state without whose assistance it could not survive. To bolster this process, the sponsoring state might recognize representatives of the revolution as the legitimate government of the territory under their control -- or as the legitimate government of the entire targeted state.

As such situation develops, the threatened state seeks also assistance abroad. If it is granted, the state becomes materially dependent on it and its sovereignty is diminished, because such assistance is granted in the interest of the helping state. This dependency may force the targeted state to undertake steps which are harmful to its interests, but profitable for the helping state. Such steps can be an escalation of the civil war or its settlement; in the last resort, the conditions of the outcome are negotiated between the sponsors of each side and the contesting parties have no other option but to accept them. In this way, the Vietnam war, originally begun as a conflict between the South Vietnamese government and a North Vietnam sponsored terrorist campaign, was settled by arrangements between the Soviet Union and the United States.

During the application of these violent means of foreign policy, no restraints imposed on conducting a war are observed. Public executions and torture of enemies, expulsion of communities, genocide, are committed by both sides as retaliation,  preventive measures or deterrent. A government which fights or expects an outbreak of terrorism or of civil strife might condone or initiate murders of actual or suspected leaders and sympathizers of the opposition and destruction of communities or groups considered as supporters of a dangerous violent-prone opposition as the only method to subdue terrorist conspirations or guerilla organizations. If successful, after the danger has passed and a normal situation has been reinstated, the perpetrators of such human rights violations are identified, arrested, condemned and punished.

Since the end of World War II, a classical war occurred only exceptionally. Conclusions gained from the experience with the various forms of covert warfare are that, in an open clash of armed irregular groups with regular armed forces, the military is usually victorious; on the other hand, no way has been found for regular military forces to be victorious against terrorism, insurgency or a guerilla war, especially if such groups are supported by a neighboring state or have bases on its territory which a regular army is not permitted to invade. (15)

In view of the interconnection of interests and relations between states, every utilization of violent means harbors the danger of the escalation of a conflict  resulting in war. Therefore, the international community observes the principle to deny legitimacy to advantages obtained by violent means, and by applying the methods of indirect, nonviolent measures it tries to pressure the victorious aggressive state to renounce its gains.

If it is a government of a friendly state, the acting state supports it against domestic opposition by "foreign aid." Foreign aid includes economic means (loans, grants, free trade) and ideological propaganda which includes cultural exchanges, scholarships and opportunities to publish. In addition, aid takes the form of military aid in funds and equipment, training of police practices and systems up to sending own personnel ("advisors") to aid the friendly government against domestic and foreign enemies. In all these actions, the aiding government may pursue also its specific interests, especially business opportunities and financial advantages.

On a foreign policy plane, a state may support its allies by concluding a treaty of mutual assistance and even placing its own troops on their territory to act as a "trip wire" against military action of enemies: any such action would involve immediately its own army and thus represent an act of war. An ultimate act of protection of friendly governments is formation of alliances or international organizations which guarantee to their members military assistance not only against foreign enemies, but also against attempts to subvert them or their form of government through covert warfare methods described above. In preparation for violent methods of foreign policy, such treaties often include provision for a joint military command structure, joint military exercises, standardization of armaments, facilities and stocks of war material.