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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Showing posts with label Political Power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Political Power. Show all posts
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Politics Among Nations: The Science of International Politics
Hans Morgenthau
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:
Morgenthau wants to detect and understand the forces that determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions.
International politics, for Morgenthau, must be defined distinctly from recent history and current events, international law, and political reform. With the shifting emphases and changing perspectives, an observer can only gain an objective standard of evaluation of the present through the correlation of recent events with a more distant past and the perennial qualities of human nature underlying both.
LIMITATIONS TO UNDERSTANDING:
The most formidable difficulty facing a theoretical inquiry into the nature and ways of international politics is the ambiguity of the material with which the observer has to deal. The events he must understand are unique occurrences. They happened one way and will never occur again. They are also similar manifestations of social forces that are products of human nature in action: under similar conditions they will manifest themselves in a similar manner.
Dealing with different political situations, we should ask ourselves: how does a situation differ from a preceding one and how is it similar? If one wants to understand international politics, gras the meaning of contemporary events, and foresee the future, he must be able to perform the dual intellectual trask implicit in distinguishing between the similarities and differences in two political situations. Thr complexities of international affairs make simple solutions and trustworthy prophecies impossible: knowledge of the forces that determine politics among nations and of the ways which their politcal relations would unfold, reveals the ambiguity of the facts of international politics. In every political situation contradictory tendencies are at play. All we can do make educated guesses on why one tendency might prevail over another.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE:
The United States is impacted by international politics in a way it had never been before. Promotion of the American national interest remains the primary aim of foreign policy, the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust, aka the preservation of peace, is the prime concern of all nations. In a world whose moving force is the aspiration of sovreign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices: the self-regulatory mechanism of social forces manifested in the struggle for power on the international scene: aka, the balance of power. The other is the normative limitations on that struggle as shown in international institutions.
UNDERSTANDING INTERNATIONAL POLITICS:
Morgenthau wants to detect and understand the forces that determine political relations among nations and to comprehend the ways in which those forces act upon each other and upon international political relations and institutions.
International politics, for Morgenthau, must be defined distinctly from recent history and current events, international law, and political reform. With the shifting emphases and changing perspectives, an observer can only gain an objective standard of evaluation of the present through the correlation of recent events with a more distant past and the perennial qualities of human nature underlying both.
LIMITATIONS TO UNDERSTANDING:
The most formidable difficulty facing a theoretical inquiry into the nature and ways of international politics is the ambiguity of the material with which the observer has to deal. The events he must understand are unique occurrences. They happened one way and will never occur again. They are also similar manifestations of social forces that are products of human nature in action: under similar conditions they will manifest themselves in a similar manner.
Dealing with different political situations, we should ask ourselves: how does a situation differ from a preceding one and how is it similar? If one wants to understand international politics, gras the meaning of contemporary events, and foresee the future, he must be able to perform the dual intellectual trask implicit in distinguishing between the similarities and differences in two political situations. Thr complexities of international affairs make simple solutions and trustworthy prophecies impossible: knowledge of the forces that determine politics among nations and of the ways which their politcal relations would unfold, reveals the ambiguity of the facts of international politics. In every political situation contradictory tendencies are at play. All we can do make educated guesses on why one tendency might prevail over another.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM OF INTERNATIONAL PEACE:
The United States is impacted by international politics in a way it had never been before. Promotion of the American national interest remains the primary aim of foreign policy, the avoidance of a nuclear holocaust, aka the preservation of peace, is the prime concern of all nations. In a world whose moving force is the aspiration of sovreign nations for power, peace can be maintained only by two devices: the self-regulatory mechanism of social forces manifested in the struggle for power on the international scene: aka, the balance of power. The other is the normative limitations on that struggle as shown in international institutions.
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