This paper is a critique of Ottoman foreign policy as we know it. From Daniel Goffman to Gabor Agoston, Nuri Yurdusev, and Ussama Makdisi, the field’s practitioners afford us an interpretive lens to look at the various pragmatic, performative, and operative aspects of Ottoman diplomacy. But the extant studies typically approach the Ottoman foreign affairs as coefficient of regional politics and produce somewhat binary representations of it, eventually reducing the field to little more than an intellectual endeavor wherein the debates continue over whether the Ottoman polity was sultanic or consultative, unilateral or interdependent, conventional or unconventional, and ecumenical or pragmatic. By proposing foreign affairs as an area that is underrated and yet important, relevant, and worth systemic attention, I apply process-tracing, interpretive, script theory, and comparative modeling to contemporary, international, and imperial archival sources with focus on the dynamics of Ottoman affairs from 1789 to 1902. It is my contention that the Ottoman state edifice developed over time a range of holistic, heuristic, and experiential visions. For analytical purposes, I classify these visions into three schools as the Mahmudian, Mejidian, and Hamidian traditions. My presentation will define what these traditions are, how they mean in context, and why they failed -- all with a view to conceptualizing the implications of these traditions in the late and post Ottoman empire.