Describing State Policy on Geopolitical Issues

Foreign Policy, Defence & Geopolitics analysis vocabulary

To evaluate a state’s policy on a geopolitical issue, ask what its interests are, list what it has done, and then ask how those actions affect its interests.

Origin

This is a simple analytical framework developed by Pranay Kotasthane for the A Framework a Week series, designed to cut through the fog of diplomatic rhetoric and media commentary to get at the substance of a state’s position.

What it says

The framework is a three-step protocol for describing any state’s policy on any geopolitical issue:

1. What are the state’s interests? Identify strengths, weaknesses, risks and opportunities. To avoid a superficial rational-actor model, also consider the stances of a few important interest groups within the state.

2. What actions has the state taken? List the concrete steps — diplomatic, economic, military, legal — that the state has actually undertaken on the issue.

3. How do the actions affect the interests? Have some actions exposed weaknesses even as they opened new opportunities? Have there been unintended consequences or fallouts?

This third step is where most analysis fails. It is easy to list interests and actions; the hard part is tracing the causal and counterfactual links between them.

Applied

Apply the framework to India’s position on Israel-Palestine:

• Interests: Stable energy supplies from the Gulf; strong defence and technology ties with Israel; domestic political considerations; diaspora welfare.
• Actions: Strategic partnership with Israel; consistent support for Palestinian statehood at the UN; calibrated abstentions on critical votes; bilateral visits to both capitals.
• Effects: The balancing act has preserved both relationships but prevented India from playing a decisive mediating role. The approach is tactically sound but strategically constrained.

Similarly for China’s actions in Afghanistan: without running the three-step protocol, analysis descends into either demonisation or apologia.

When it falls short

The framework assumes that states have identifiable interests and that actions are observable. In highly opaque regimes, or where decision-making is concentrated in a single leader’s hands, both assumptions weaken. It also does not prescribe what the policy should be — it only helps describe what it is.

Related frameworks

• Hypocrisy in International Relations — why the gap between stated preferences and revealed actions is often rational, not shameful.
• Ingredients of a New World Order — how power and legitimacy shape what states can achieve with their policies.

Further reading

• Kotasthane, Pranay. A Framework a Week: Describing a State’s Policy on a Geopolitical Issue. Anticipating the Unintended, 2020.

Originally explored in A Framework a Week: Describing a State’s Policy on a Geopolitical Issue on Anticipating the Unintended.