MODULE 2

National power

Power is a key component of National International

Politics. Basically International Politics is the process

of struggle for power among Nations in which each

nation seeks to secure its desired goals and objectives

of National interests. Because of the absence of

sovereign or of a fully powerful centralized

international machinery making authoritative

allocation of values among the nations and because of

the sovereign status of each nation-state, the securing

of national interest by each state is always done by

the use of its national power

NATIONAL MEANING AND DEFINITIONS OF POWER

• National power is the capacity or ability of a nation with the

use of which it can get its will obeyed by other nation. It

involves the capacity to use force or threat of the use of

force over other nations. With the use of National Power a

nation is able to control the behaviour of other nations in

accordance with one’s own will.

• Acc to Hartman, “National Power denotes the ability of a

nation to fulfill national goals. It tells us as to how much

powerful or weak a particular nation is in securing its

national goals.”

• Acc to Padelford and Lincon, “National power is that

combination of power and capacity of a state which the

state uses for fulfilling its national interests and goals.”

NATURE OF NATIONAL POWER

• 1. Power is different from Force and Influence

• 2. National Power is both Means as well as an End

• 3. National power is an ability to secure National Interests

• 4. It is dynamic in nature

• 5. National Power varies Nation to nation

• 6. There are several elements of National Power

• 7. There is different between the Actual power and Potential

power of a Nation.

• 8. National Power is backed by Sanctions

• 9. National Power depends on its Use.

• 10. It is not Material Power

• 11. Integrated nature of National power

KINDS OF FORM OF KINDS NATIONAL POWER

• 1. Military Power

• 2. Economic Power
• 3. Psychological power

• National power is combination of Military

Power, Economic power and Psychological

power.

METHOD OF EXERCISING NATIONAL POWER

• 1. Persuasion

• 2. Reward

• 3. Punishment

• 4. Manipulation

• 5. Force

• 6. Manipulation

• 7. Dominance

ELEMENTS OF NATIONAL POWER

• 1. GEOGRAPHY

• Size

• Maps

• Location

• Climate

• Boundaries

• Topography •

2. NATURAL RESOURCES

• Minerals
• Petroleum products

• Coal, Iron, Copper, lead, Gold, Sulpher, zinc etc.

• Green resources (valuable tree, etc)

• Environment

3. Population

4. Economic Development

• Crude oil

• Uranium

• 5.Technology

• 6. Military Preparedness

• 7. National Character

• 8. Quality and type of the Government

• 9. Leadership

• 10.Efficiency of Bureaucracy

• 11. Diplomacy

• 12. Ideology

• 13. Education

• 14. Foreign Support and Dependency

• 15. Intelligence network

LIMITATIONS ON NATIONAL POWER

• International Law and Treaties

• Balance of Power

• International Morality

• International Public Opinion

• International Organisations

• Collective Security

• Disarmament and arm and control

THEORY OF BALANCE OF POWER

The balance of power is one of the oldest and most enduring concepts of international
relations. In a world of powerful and threatening states, it is often the only dependable
strategy. It is surprising, therefore, that since the end of the Cold War, the dynamics of
power balancing have been all but absent: the great powers have not formed
counterbalancing coalitions to guard against U.S. predominance and are unlikely to
anytime soon. This book, which brings together leading international security experts to
assess the current status of balance-of-power theory, confirms the peculiarity of today's
international system. The authors do not settle the debate about why this is so-whether
the cause is nuclear weapons, economic interdependence, democratic peace, or the
relatively benign character of U.S. hegemony. Jack Levy argues that balance-of-power
theory emerged to explain European dynamics but never claimed universal validity.
Robert Ross argues that China is pursuing an indirect form of balancing through internal
mobilization but may never be in a position to build a true anti-U.S. coalition. The states
are pursuing an array of security strategies, including "soft balancing," in today's unipolar
world. But the logic and stability of this new situation remain unclear.
“Balance of power theory grew out of many centuries of multipolarity and a few decades of
bipolarity. Today the world is characterized by unprecedented unipolarity. Balance of power
theory, therefore, cannot provide guidance for the world we are in.”

In responding to this statement, the essay will first discuss the logical fallacy inherent in its
argument: though the balance of power theory (BOP) emerged concurrent to certain types
of power configuration in world politics—multipolarity and bipolarity in this case—it does not
follow that it was these types of configuration per se that gave rise to the theory itself.
Multipolarity and bipolarity can and should be considered, themselves, as manifestations of
the underlying logic of the international system, which the BOP theory also embodies. This
logic of relative positionality of states in an anarchic system, as this essay will argue, has
not fundamentally changed since the emergence of BOP theory. This leads to the second
empirical problem with the statement. On the one hand, a de facto unipolarity characterized
by American hegemony has been around for much longer than the end of the Cold War. On
the other hand, the current economic and political status of China places it in a pseudo-
superpower position vis-à-vis the United States. Both of these mean that the degree of
unipolarity that we observe today relative to the bipolarity of the Cold War is, if any, weak.
Therefore, much of BOP’s relevance in the bipolar world will continue to be in today’s
international system.

The BOP Theory: Core Assumptions and the (ir)Relevance of Polarity

We should first understand the logic that gave rise to the BOP theory. Two assumptions are
of central relevance. First, the international system is considered to be anarchic, with no
system-wide authority being formally enforced on its agents (Waltz 1979, 88). Because of
this “self-help” nature of the system, states do not have a world government to resort to in a
situation of danger, but they can only try to increase their capabilities relative to one another
through either internal efforts of self-strengthening, or external efforts of alignment and
realignment with other states (Waltz 1979, 118). Second, states are the principle actors in
the international system, as they “set the terms of the intercourse” (Waltz 1979, 96),
monopolize the “legitimate use of force” (Waltz 1979, 104) within their territories, and
generally conduct foreign policy in a “single voice” (Waltz 1959, 178-179). Hence states are
also considered to be unitary actors in the international system. This latter assumption is
important because if non-state or transnational actors are powerful enough to challenge
state actors, power configuration in the world may no longer be considered in terms of
polarity but, instead, in terms of the number of layers of policy “networks” This essay bases
its argument on these two core assumptions about the international system as well because
they have been widely accepted not only in realism and neorealism but also in neoliberal
institutionalism (Keohane 1984, etc.) and, to some degree, in constructivism (Wendt 1999,
etc.) as well. Thus, they are not derivative from exclusively realist or neorealist beliefs such
as relative power maximization.

With this in mind, the essay will now discuss why polarity is neither sufficient nor necessary
to explain the balance of power. The question of sufficiency can be answered with respect
to why balance of power does not always occur even in a multipolar or bipolar world, and
that of necessity with respect to why balance of power can still occur even with unipolarity.
According to Waltz, balance of power occurs when, given “two coalitions” formed in the
international system, secondary states, if free to choose, will side with the weaker, so as to
avoid being threatened by the stronger side (Waltz 1979, 127). This condition has led some
to question the validity of BOP in a unipolar world, since two or more states need to coexist
in the system in order for the theory to hold (Waltz 1979, 118).

However, as this essay mentions, once we accept the two core assumptions (that of
anarchy and that of states being principle actors), this condition is not necessary for BOP to
be relevant. The balance of power, as Waltz suggests, is a “result” – an outcome variable
that reflects the causal effect of the explanatory variables which are, in his theory, anarchy
and distribution of power in the international system. This tension within Waltz’s own
argument has indeed invited criticism that his version of the BOP theory is essentially
attempting to explain one dependent variable (the occurrence of balance of power) with
another (polarity) (Lebow, 27). To sidestep this potential loophole, therefore, we need to
assess the relevance of BOP by examining whether the same structural constraints that
engender balancing in the multipolar or bipolar systems are also present in a unipolar world.

If the balance of power could not be directly deduced from system polarity, what then would
predict its occurrence? To answer this question will require us to go back to the two core
assumptions and see what explanatory variables can be derived from these assumptions
that will have some observable implications with regard to balancing. The likelihood of
balance of power is, therefore, a function of these variables which, as this essay will show,
boil down to 1) intention, notably the intention or the perceived intention of the major powers
in the system, 2) preference of the states, particularly that between absolute and relative
gains, and 3) contingency, often related to the availability of new information in a given
situation, which may exogenously change the first two variables. Most importantly, none of
the three is conditional upon a certain type of polarity to be effectual.

Three Explanatory Variables for Predicting Balancing: Intention, Preference,

Contingency

The intention, or the perceived intention of a major power, determines whether balancing
will be preferred by secondary states over other options such as bandwagoning. We can
think of this in terms both why smaller states sometimes succumb to the sphere of the
strongest power in the system and why they sometimes stay away from it, or challenge it by
joining the second biggest power if there were one. In his analysis of the conditions for
cooperation under the security dilemma, Robert Jervis shows that when there is pervasive
offensive advantage and indistinguishability between offense and defense (the “worst case”
scenario), security dilemma between states can be so acute that it can virtually squeeze out
the “fluidity” necessary for any balance of power to occur (Jervis 1978, 186-189). By
incurring incorrect “inferences”, offensive advantage and offense-defense
indistinguishability ultimately serve to alter the perceived intention of the adversary as being
aggressive or non-aggressive (Jervis 1978, 201). This will then dictate the smaller states’
decision to whether balance the move. If, however, the major power is perceived to have
not only a non-aggressive intention, but also a benign intention of providing certain public
goods, smaller states may choose to free ride on these benefits while submitting to the
major power’s sphere of influence in return; an outcome of so-called “hegemonic stability”
may then ensue (Keohane 1984, 12). Thus along the dimension of perceived intention,
balance of power occurs when states have reservations about the major power or the
hegemon’s intention but not to the extent that a precipitation to war is so imminent as to
render balancing infeasible.

Second, balance of power is closely related to the states’ preference for relative versus
absolute gains. From an offensive realist point of view, John Mearsheimer contends that
states concerned with balance of power must think in terms of relative rather than absolute
gain – that is, their military advantage over others regardless of how much capability they
each have. The underlying logic here is at once intuitive—given a self-help system and self-
interested states, “the greater military advantage one state has…the more secure it is”
(Mearsheimer 1994-95, 11-12)—and problematic since the auxiliary assumption that every
state would then always prefer to have maximum military power in the system
(Mearsheimer 1994-95, 12) is practically meaningless. Similarly, Joseph Grieco points out
that with the ever present possibility of war in an anarchic system, states may not cooperate
even with their allies because survival is guaranteed only with a “proportionate advantage”
(Grieco in Baldwin ed., 127-130). The concern for relative gain predicts that states will
prefer balance of power over collective security because the latter requires that states trust
one another enough to completely forgo relative gain through unilateral disarmament, which
is inherently at odds with the idea of having a positional advantage for self-defense
(Mearsheimer 1994-95, 36).

Meanwhile, the neoliberal institutionalist cooperation theory essentially presumes the

pursuit of absolute gain over relative gain for states to achieve cooperation (Keohane 1984,
68). On a broader scale, therefore, the pursuit of relative gain would undercut international
cooperation in general, in both high and low politics. It is safe to say that in practice, states
are concerned with both relative and absolute gains to different degrees under different
circumstances. Scholars like Duncan Snidal and Robert Axelrod have rigorously
demonstrated the complexity of situations in which these two competing interests
dynamically interact and change over time (see for example Snidal in Baldwin ed. and
Axelrod 1984, Chapter 2). In general, though, a prevalent preference for relative gains and,
more specifically, military positionality among states increases the likelihood of balancing
relative to collective security. If states tend to favor absolute gains instead, we are more
likely to see phenomena such as deep international institutions and pluralist security
communities.

But even if there existed a malign hegemon that other states wanted to balance against,
and the states all pursued relative gains, balance of power would still be conditional. That is,
even with the aforementioned systemic constraints, balance of power is not a given without
knowing the specific contingency factors unique to each situation. One additional implication
of an anarchic system is pervasive uncertainty resulting from the scarcity of information,
since all states have an incentive to misrepresent in order to further their positionality in
event of war (Fearon 1998, 274). This explains why, perhaps in a paradoxical way,
historically even in periods of multipolarity and bipolarity characterized by intense suspicion
and tension, balancing did not happen as often as BOP would predict. The crux is the
unexpected availability of new information which leads to a change in the course of action
by altering preexisting beliefs and preferences. The European states’ collective decision to
buttress the rising challenger Prussia in the 1800s despite the latter’s clear expansionist
tendency shows that neither intention nor preference can be taken as a given, but both are
subject to circumstantial construction (Goddard, 119).

In times of crisis, this constructing effect may be especially strong. Such characterized the
interwar period and resulted in a significant lag in the European states’ learning which may
have otherwise incurred greater balance against the revisionist Germany (Jervis 1978, 184).
Still caught up in a spirit of collective security from the first war, these states were too “hot-
headed” to switch to the phlegmatic behavior of balancing (Weisiger, lecture). This,
however, had less to do with their perception of Germany or their pursuit of relative/absolute
gains than with the transformational effect of the trauma of World War I. In short, the more
rapid and unpredictable is the flux of information in a given situation, the less likely that the
balance of power contingent on existing beliefs and preferences will occur as predicted.

The Fall of USSR, the Rise of China, and Empirical Implications for the BOP Theory

Having shown that BOP has less to do with polarity than with intention of aggression,
preference for relative gains, and circumstantial factors in an anarchic world, this essay will
now show why our current system, characterized by American hegemony, is not so much
different from the preceding ones. Doing so will not only address the necessity question
mentioned earlier, but also show that even if we accept the premise that BOP is less
applicable to unipolarity than to multipolarity and bipolarity, this hardly affects BOP’s
relevance to today’s world.

Though BOP gained much leverage during the Cold War, which is considered a textbook
case of bipolarity, a closer look at Waltz’s discussion of American dominance at the time
reveals what really resembles a picture of American hegemony rather than bipolarity (Waltz
1979, 146-160). Most important, however, is the fact that concurrent to this widening gap
between the U.S. and the USSR, a corresponding increase in the balance of power against
the U.S. did not occur. Rather, we saw the opposite happen where Soviet satellite states
started drifting away one after another. This greatly undermines BOP’s explanatory power
even for bipolarity. Richard Lebow’s succinct summary of the years leading to the Soviet
collapse illustrates that not only did the USSR productivity remain vastly inferior to that of
the U.S., but also that its military (nuclear) capabilities never reached the level as to be a
real challenger to the U.S. Hence, the actual period of strict bipolarity during the Cold War is
much shorter than is conventionally believed (Lebow, 28-31). It is debatable as to what
extent the Soviet “anomaly” was primarily the result of perception, preference, or
contingency (such as that discussed in Risse, 26), but major discordances between the
balance of power and polarity lend further support to this essay’s argument that BOP is not
determined by polarity itself, but by variables inherent in the international system, which
may or may not lead to a concurrence of balance of power and certain types of polarity.

The demarcation between the bipolar Cold War system and the unipolar post-Cold War
system is, therefore, fuzzy at best. This has been further complicated by China’s rise in the
most recent decades. To put things in perspective: at the peak of the Cold War, the U.S.
enjoyed a GDP of $5,200 billion (USD)—about twice of that of the USSR ($2,700 billion). As
of last year, it was $16,000—also about twice of that of China’s ($8,200 billion).If we were to
measure superpower status by nuclear capability (which many scholars use to pinpoint the
start of Cold War), the picture is even more ambiguous, with as many as nine states
currently having nuclear weapons, including North Korea.

Rather than questioning American hegemony today, which this paper does not intend to do,
these facts simply serve to remind us of the continuity rather than discreteness of the recent
stages of polarity. Because of this, the supposed unipolarity as of present has little bearing
on the validity of the BOP theory in explaining state behavior. Hans Morgenthau reaffirms
the balance of power as a “perennial element” in human history, regardless of the
“contemporary conditions” that the international system operates under (Morgenthau, 9-10).
The essence of the BOP theory cannot be reduced to the occurrence of balance of power.
With the logic of anarchy and principality of state actors largely unchanged, we can,
therefore, imagine a situation of balancing against the U.S. even in a unipolar system—if
the U.S. is no longer perceived as a benign hegemon and if states are more concerned with
their military disadvantage as a result, especially when a combination of situational factors
and diplomatic efforts further facilitates such a change in perception and preference.
COLLECTIVE SECURITY

Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement, political, regional, or global, in which
each state in the system accepts that the security of one is the concern of all, and therefore commits to a
collective response to threats to, and breaches to peace. Collective security is more ambitious than
systems of alliance security or collective defense in that it seeks to encompass the totality of states within
a region or indeed globally, and to address a wide range of possible threats. While collective security is
an idea with a long history, its implementation in practice has proved problematic. Several prerequisites
have to be met for it to have a chance of working.

The 1945 United Nations Charter, although containing stronger provisions for decision-making and
collective military action than those of the League of Nations Covenant, does not represent a complete
system of collective security, but rather a balance between collective action on the one hand and
continued operation of the states system (including the continued special roles of great powers) on the
other.

Cited examples of the limitations of collective security include the Falklands War.
When Argentina invaded the islands, which are overseas territories of the United Kingdom, many UN
members stayed out of the issue, as it did not directly concern them. There was also a controversy about
the United States' role in that conflict, due to their obligations as an Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal
Assistance (the "Rio Pact") member. However, many politicians who view the system as having faults
also believe it remains a useful tool for keeping international peace.

The role of the UN and collective security in general is evolving, given the rise of internal state conflicts.
Since the end of WWII, there have been 111 military conflicts worldwide, but only 9 of these have
involved two or more states going to war with one another. The remainder have either been internal civil
wars or civil wars where other nations intervened in some manner. This means that collective security
may have to evolve towards providing a means to ensure stability and a fair international resolution to
those internal conflicts. Whether this will involve more powerful peacekeeping forces, or a larger role for
the UN diplomatically, will likely be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Collective security can be understood as a security arrangement in which all states cooperate collectively
to provide security for all by the actions of all against any states within the groups which might challenge
the existing order by using force. This contrasts with self-help strategies of engaging in war for purely
immediate national interest. While collective security is possible, several prerequisites have to be met for
it to work.

Sovereign nations eager to maintain the status quo, willingly cooperate, accepting a degree of
vulnerability and in some cases of minor nations, also accede to the interests of the chief contributing
nations organising the collective security. Collective Security is achieved by setting up an international
cooperative organisation, under the auspices of international law and this gives rise to a form of
international collective governance, albeit limited in scope and effectiveness. The collective security
organisation then becomes an arena for diplomacy, balance of power and exercise of soft power. The use
of hard power by states, unless legitimised by the Collective Security organisation, is considered
illegitimate, reprehensible and needing remediation of some kind. The collective security organisation not
only gives cheaper security, but also may be the only practicable means of security for smaller nations
against more powerful threatening neighbours without the need of joining the camp of the nations
balancing their neighbours.

The concept of "collective security" forwarded by men such as Michael Joseph Savage, Martin
Wight, Immanuel Kant, and Woodrow Wilson, are deemed to apply interests in security in a broad
manner, to "avoid grouping powers into opposing camps, and refusing to draw dividing lines that would
leave anyone out." The term "collective security" has also been cited as a principle of the United Nations,
and the League of Nations before that. By employing a system of collective security, the UN hopes to
dissuade any member state from acting in a manner likely to threaten peace, thereby avoiding any
conflict.

Collective security selectively incorporates the concept of both balance of power and global government.
Thus it is important to know and distinguish these two concepts. Balance of power between states opts
for decentralization of power. States are separate actors who do not subordinate their autonomy or
sovereignty to a central. Thus, "singly or in combinations reflecting the coincidence of interests, States
seek to influence the pattern of power distribution and to determine their own places within that
pattern." The expectation of order and peace comes from the belief that competing powers will somehow
balance and thereby cancel each other out to produce “deterrence through equilibration.”

On the flip side, the concept of global government is about centralization. Global government is a
centralized institutional system that possesses the power use of force like a well established sovereign
nation state. This concept strips states of their "standing as centers of power and policy, where issues of
war and peace are concerned," and superimposing on them "an institution possessed of the authority and
capability to maintain, by unchallengeable force so far as may be necessary, the order and stability of a
global community." Collective security selectively incorporates both of this concepts which can broil down
to a phrase: "order without government."