What should be the basis of foreign policy?

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The subject-line says everything. To add clarification, there are many debates in the purposes and policies to be undertaken in foreign policy.

Realists believe that foreign policy should be dictated by the strict national interest of a nation, and that the central concerns are things like the balance of power, such that stability between the power-levels of nations is arrived at. The point of a realist foreign policy is to conserve strength, avoid attack, and avoid dominance by a foreign power.

Neoconservatives believe that foreign policy should be dictated by the need to spread democratic values both as a moral concern and as a way to stabilize the world. To this end, they believe in national efforts to invade nations to spread democracy/human rights and to spread democracy/human rights by other needs as necessary, and are willing to accept unilateral efforts to this moral end.

Internationalist Idealists believe that foreign policy should be driven by international bodies/international agreements motivated by laws, notions of justice/fairness, and who seek to maintain order using multilateral diplomacy, world opinion, and economic policy.

Isolationists believe that foreign policies should be avoided. This may be driven by national interest, or it may be driven by moral concerns. Instead, a nation should simply avoid the entire entangling mess and be neutral, and set trade policies by internal factors, not external ones.

Obvious the issue is more complicated than what I've put forward, and I didn't even bother to break things down into normative and positive views on the matter. However, I did want to solicit feedback. What are forum poster thoughts?

I'm a non-interventionist. I think we should try to have free trade, but not get involved in foreign problems.

And these neocons and interventionists wonder why Al-Qaeda wants to blow us up.

"They hate us for our freedom." Ridiculous.

Because we are supporters of Israel they hate us for that very reason any nation that supports Israel Al-Qaeda hates period. If China started to support Israel then Al-Qaeda would never be brave enough to attack China because China would just whipe them all out like ants.

The European nations have pretty much stopped massacring each other, and are seeing the advantages of mutual cooperation. It isn't perfect yet, but at least they aren't sending their young men off to die in trenches.

The USA is fairly fortunate in not having a neighbor that could pose a credible threat.

The world is much more inter-dependent than previously. Without China, the Bush tax cuts would have been much more immediately disastrous. And, without China, we wouldn't be able to buy so many things at Walmart. Very few of us would be able to afford a personal computer.

I'd be an International Idealist. I support democracy, of course, but do not think that the West has the right to overthrow governments in order to get it there. That far too easily leads to things like the overthrow of Salvador Allende's government in Chile. I'm also highly cynical about current international economic policy. I think that the IMF and WTO are currently tending to hurt developing countries and that they are violating these countries' soveriegnty. In essence they are forcing neoliberalism on these countries. That is something for the country itself to decide, not the Western world that would benefit from such policies.

i think too amny people focus on the foreign when their own countriesd are running ragged.

with the state of international beurocracy being what it is today that would mean most western countries, probably more but i know less about those countries.