affairs of state vs foreign affairs

affairs of state

foreign affairs

noun
  • A government office or department charged with handling relations with other countries. 

  • Policy of a government in dealing with other countries or with activities overseas. 

  • Matters or news occurring abroad. 

  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see foreign, affairs. 

How often have the words affairs of state and foreign affairs occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )