If nations had and looked after clearly defined interests, the world would be a simpler place than it is. Within any given nation at any given time there are multiple competing perceptions of national interest. Policy may oscillate among those perceptions depending on who's in power at any given moment, or there may be an effort to balance those perceptions, or the multiple parties involved may independently and simultaneously pursue their own perceptions of interest.
It all gets very sloppy, and very unpredictable.
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