Politics Among Nations: Political Power

Hans Morgenthau

POLITICAL POWER AS A MEANS TO A NATION'S END:

International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aim, power is the immediate aim. Regardless of goal, they will need power if they want to make a difference using international politics. It does not follow that every action a nation performs with respect to another is undertaken with a consideration of power. Not all nations at all times are to the same extent involved in international politics.

THE NATURE OF POLITICAL POWER: FOUR DISTINCTIONS:

Power is one's control over the minds and actions of others. Political power refers to the mutual relations of control among the holders of public authority and between the latter and the people at large. Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. The extent political power alters behavior is dependent on three sources: the expectation of benefits, the fear of disadvantages, and the respect or love for men or institutions. It can be exerted through orders, threats, the authority or charisma of those in office, or any combination. Distinctions must be made between power and influence; power and force; usable and unusable power, and legitimate and illegitimate power.

One who advises a president on U.S. foreign policy can influence the president's decision-making, but has no power over him while a president can impose his will on the latter through the authority of his office, the promise of benefits and the threat of disadvantages.

When violence becomes an actuality, it signifies the abdication of political power in favor of military power. In international politics, armed power as a threat or a potentiality is the most important matieral factor making for the power of a nation: it substitutes psychological relationships with physical ones where the stronger always prevails.

Only a nation acting irrationally would use its nuclear power.

Legitimate power as distinguished against illegitimate power. Power exercised with moral or legal authorities must be distinguished against naked power. Legitimate power likely more effective than illegitimate power. There has been a tendency to reduce political power to the actual application of force or at least to equate it with successful threats of force with persuasion. Whatever the material objects of foreign policy, such as the acquisition of sources of raw materials, control of sea lanes, or territorial changes, they will always entail the control of the actions of others through influence over their minds. War about altering the opponent's mind to yield to the will of the victor.

There is a distinction between economic undertakings done for their own sake and a state deliberately seeking to control the economic choices of another nation. In the latter case, policy is to be measured against how it serves the larger power objectives of the controlling state.

THE DEPRECIATION OF POLITICAL POWER:

The struggle for power is universal and nothing liberals or Marxists can say will change that. Drive for power more than an institution hoisted upon man: it is an elemental bio-physical drive through which society is created: drives to live, propogate, and dominate. Domestic and international politics are both struggles for power modified only by the different conditions under which the struggle takes place.

TWO ROOTS OF THE DEPRECIATION OF POLITICAL POWER:

The philosophy of international relations which dominated the nineteenth century and holds considerable sway today and the particular political and intellectual circumstances which have determined the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world have depreciated the role power plays in international politcs. The rise of the middle class meant the end of an autocratic and aristocratic system of government and the naked use of force entailed by both in foreign policy: indirect economic ties now compelled nations to arbitrate, or so was thought. The United States, given it unqiue anti-colonial tradition, its isolation from the power centers of the world, and the humanitarian pacifism and anti-imperialism of its politcal creed signaled, to Americans anyway, a break from the ways of the past.

THE SCIENCE OF PEACE: CONTEMPORARY UTOPIANISM:

Scientific utopianism offers an alternative to the perennial wisodom of the rationalist approach. It starts with the aumption that the world is thoroughly accesible to science and reason that it contains in itself all the elements necessary for harmonious cooperation of all mankind. Law must apply the precepts of free trade and harmonious interests to thoe areas where they do not apply spontaneously. Since all men are rational, sooner or later they must meet on the assumption that all can be solved through a forumla acceptable to all. The benefits of commerce and peace being so obvious, conflict is merely the product of ignorance and error. Political history becomes a succession of scientific problems capable of scientific solutions, but most unreasonably handled by an ignorant and impassioned humanity. Conflicts are not political problems to be solved temporarily, but technical ones for which reason will find one correct solution.

What they want is simple, rational, mechanical, what they have to deal with is complicated, irrational, and incalcuable. So they rely on abolishing war as the object of ending conflict. But war are caused by all kinds of things that have their roots in the human heart. It is also rooted in the human heart the desire to try to reform a complex world, meaning this stuff will stay around.


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