Environmental Scanning and Foreign Policy Strategies: Middle Powers of the International System

Basically, the fundamental changes in the main rules of the international system have put the changing and floating nature of phenomena as a requirement and necessity in policy making for international strategists and theorists. The unpredictability of systemic phenomena, the occurrence of strong fundamental impulses in complex systems, the strong influence of system elements more than seemingly secondary rules of systemic processes and flows have led to the ineffectiveness of the control process over the complex international system. On the other hand, the evolutionary characteristic of the international system has imposed the rules of behavior of complex systems on international phenomena, which, although it is very difficult to control especially with regard to the principles governing classical systems, but their management is not difficult if proper attention is paid to the processes of systemic phenomena. Here this question is raised that, “what is the most important tool to help the strategies of the players, especially the middle players of the power hierarchy in the complex international situation?”. The research hypothesis is that, “environmental scanning is a very important tool for understanding the flow of events and trends in the complex international system”. The findings of the research using a descriptive-analytic approach and a qualitative method show that environmental scanning imposes flexibility on the strategies of actors, especially the middle actors of the power hierarchy.