Algeria’s foreign policy, world renowned prior to the Black Decade, has undergone interesting evolutions since Bouteflika’s coming to power in 1999. Continuities and shifts are ideologically grounded and geostrategically sophisticated. Algeria emerged from the international approbation of the 1990s with the return of a “prodigal son” who had served as newly independent Algeria’s youngest and longest serving foreign minister, driven to help Algeria recapture its international standing. Mischaracterizations of Algeria’s foreign policy persist, plagued with fallacies. Among these are the beliefs that 1) Algeria was a close Soviet ally, 2) Algeria obeys a non-interventionist principle, 3) Algeria never sends troops beyond its borders, 4) Algeria was internationally absent iduring the civil war, 5) Algeria displayed solidarity toward Muslim communities in the Balkans in the 1990s, 6) Algeria supported Qaddafi., 7) Algeria supports political Islam, and 8) Algeria is opposed to the Saudi-Emirati-led military intervention in Yemen. None of these simplistic notions are accurate, and all mask complex realities. Yet, they still influence international affairs observers interested in Algeria’s growing regional importance. These persistent beliefs also make it difficult to assess Algiers' response to new challenges and to advocate how best to engage Algeria. In order to minimize such perceptional noise and promote a more analytically rigorous understanding of Algeria’s foreign-policy calculus and modi operandi, my presentation re-examines the last two decades through Algiers’ eyes. For each period in world affairs, in response to every major crisis—whether local, regional or global—Algeria’s foreign policy continued to operate within certain ideological principles but also attempting to obey concrete geostrategic imperatives. Some constraints—or “pillars”—have been constant throughout. Others have undergone drastic transformations. Most notably, Algeria’s relations with the Russian Federation have evolved from one built on a degree of security cooperation and strategic alignment to a multi-dimensional relationship with significant economic and geostrategic consequences, for both Europe and MENA. By locating Algiers within an international environment that itself has been changing in a profound manner since 1999, I will help outline criteria, exceptions and trends useful to assess Algerian foreign policy in the past, present and future. Relying upon both the historical record and extant literature, supplemented by extensive original fieldwork conducted in Algeria, the presentation will succinctly revisit a series of episodes and crises. Light will be shed on Algerian policymakers’ universal rules—or, in some particular cases, the lack thereof.