ABSTRACT
Foreign policy has become more focused on issues of health. The traditional concerns of foreign policy such as national security, military, and economic power continue to drive and shape how countries engage internationally, but has become a more prominent component of this engagement. In the study of international relations, states are considered to be the primary actors in the international system. While different international relations theories view state motivations in different ways, all theories assume each state has a set of interests they wish to pursue through external engagement. For most of modern history, international engagement between states only rarely dealt with issues of health. During the rise of the nation-state and growth in international transit and commerce in the 18th to 19th centuries, the preeminent focus of attention for states’ foreign policies were traditional security and economic issues, reflecting to a large degree the realist conceptualization of states’ interests.
