The only obvious answer to this question is no. There are several reasons for this, but the underlying and fundamental reason is that no one knows who is making the policy. It can be argued that the president plays a critical role, but he is totally at the mercy of the information he gets from sources that are poorly coordinated, understood and regulated. Congress plays a role, but as a group they are buffoons which is a really fun word that is over-used except when referring to Congress. Note that any individual Congressman is no more likely to be a buffoon than I am (which doesn't improve their image much); but the system corrupts them (see either China's Weaponized Economy or World War C for a discussion of this and the following discussion on intelligence).
Another problem which affects all of these groups is that they think only with immediate or short term intelligence and any policy decision which doesn't take into account long term survival is "optimistically" base. Indeed history shows that very minor changes and even changes wrought by individuals have far reaching consequences. In the broadest sense, everything that we are today is the result of a snap decision made by a chauffeur in Serbia in the 1930's. If that isn't random, than butterfly wings don't cause hurricanes.
Yet another problem is that these groups are hamstrung by convention. We are forced into positions based on politics rather than pure logic and necessarily so given the effect of human emotion on events. However, this is problematic. Profiling is a necessary tool in sorting through groups and we are constantly profiled by advertisers, internet service providers, our governments and each other. However in this country we have to limit how profiling is used in the interest of parity. This is not necessarily a bad idea, but it defies logic in some situations and is such a vague concept that it hampers action in favor of "hair splitting". At some point logic gives way to political correctness. A green man holds up a liquor store. In the round up of suspects, 10 are green, 90 are not. Do you let the 90 go or is that profiling? It's a ridiculous example but if all 10 greenies are suspects because the only information you have is that they are green where does this leave you?
Conventions only apply to our public faces. In private, as individuals and governments we profile consciouly or not. The cosmetics industry would be in trouble if we did not. Our government and its agencies are the same way. This means under our "fair system" we are two faced and we can never know which face is making the decision and trust is out of the question in such a scenario.
Despite the absurdity, these are some of the limitations on our foreign policy makers and we cannot trust ourselves nor can we trust our shadow governments. There are some limited solutions to this, but those will wait for another day, although the framework can be found in CWE). In the end we have to decide how to work with an imperfect decision making process and this makes fundamentals like short term and long term planning for all the major decisions advisable.
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