My own interest in this topic is partially piqued by personal experiences I have gathered in discussing and observing power on both sides of the Atlantic over the past few decades. When I went to graduate school in the US, I was immediately mightily in awe of the impressive power infrastructure (including the research infrastructure) the country had built up after World War II, virtually from scratch, to deal with its sudden new (shared) top position in the international system. But I was much less impressed with the realities of everyday US life in the Upper West side of Manhattan in the mid-80s. I vividly remember spending many hours late at night at Columbia University's Harriman Institute on the 11th floor of the SIPA building watching my mandatory (but quite enjoyable) weekly 20 hours of Soviet television (courtesy of Jonathan Sanders, a delectably eccentric and unusual professor). As I sat there, my mind often wandered from the Soviet propaganda on the screen (Служу Советскому Союзу and Сельский Час were my absolute favorites - NOT) to treacherous Morningside Park right next door. I dreaded my solitary late-night walks back to International House on Riverside and 123rd and just could not fathom how a country with such enormous international power could tolerate such profound fissures in its own socio-economic fabric. Same country. Same concept of 'power'. And yet two entirely different faces of power - enormous outwards strength, but frightening internal weakness. .
I felt that sentiment even more acutely a few years later when I found myself pursuing my PhD at RAND in breathtakingly beautiful Santa Monica, in those days better known as the 'People's Republic of Santa Monica'. Every day when I drove to or from RAND on my little Honda Elite-80 scooter I regularly found myself sandwiched between homeless (often just mentally ill) 'bag-ladies' with all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart on the sidewalk to my right and Rolls Royces that zoomed by on my left on Wilshire Boulevard. Those internal weaknesses just flabbergasted me. But there was no doubting the external international power of the United States. And that international power in those days was clearly measured primarily in military (both conventional and nuclear) and to some extent economic terms (this was harder, as we were not quite sure what to make of the Soviet economy). Power was very much on the minds of the American strategic community and we discussed it regularly. Especially as the Soviet empire started disintegrating, the overwhelmingly dominant view was that this form of 'hard power' - US power - had emerged victorious. And then afterwards that this new 'unipolar moment' had to be used to apply that very same form of US power to shaping a new world order.
I felt that sentiment even more acutely a few years later when I found myself pursuing my PhD at RAND in breathtakingly beautiful Santa Monica, in those days better known as the 'People's Republic of Santa Monica'. Every day when I drove to or from RAND on my little Honda Elite-80 scooter I regularly found myself sandwiched between homeless (often just mentally ill) 'bag-ladies' with all their worldly possessions in a shopping cart on the sidewalk to my right and Rolls Royces that zoomed by on my left on Wilshire Boulevard. Those internal weaknesses just flabbergasted me. But there was no doubting the external international power of the United States. And that international power in those days was clearly measured primarily in military (both conventional and nuclear) and to some extent economic terms (this was harder, as we were not quite sure what to make of the Soviet economy). Power was very much on the minds of the American strategic community and we discussed it regularly. Especially as the Soviet empire started disintegrating, the overwhelmingly dominant view was that this form of 'hard power' - US power - had emerged victorious. And then afterwards that this new 'unipolar moment' had to be used to apply that very same form of US power to shaping a new world order.
Throughout my career, I have always been struck by how dismissive most US analysts and policymakers have always been about European 'power'. The Europeans, so went the standard story in those days, just didn't get it. They had never been willing to pull 'their weight', to 'share the burden' within NATO. They let the Americans do all the heavy lifting on the Central Front (on EUROPEAN territory no less) and seemed callously ungrateful for the sacrifices the US had made for Europe during and immediately after WWII. Europeans just seemed structurally unable to get their act together and had to be forced kicking and screaming out of their freeriding impulses.
It is true that my own (mandatory) military service in the Belgian Army had not really left me in awe of European (or at least Belgian) military prowess. But when I looked at all the public data we had (such as the figures in IISS' Military Balance), it always seemed to me that Europeans were still making a more than respectable effort - especially against a presumed threat that was certainly not felt in the same way in Europe as it was in the US. So as a European (even a post-patriotic one), American attitudes towards European 'power' often felt (excessively - and counterproductively!) condescending. God knows there are certainly plenty of complexes (of both the minority AND superiority variety) on EITHER side of the Atlantic to give any psychiatrist a field day. But just even the fully dispassionate analyst in me felt there was something missing in this uni-(or oligo-)dimensional treatment of 'power'.
I left the Stiftung after three years profoundly impressed by the subdued yet astoundingly successful German 'grand strategy' that the country had pursued assiduously for over a half a century - ever since the dreadful 'Stunde Null' . By never throwing around their 'latent' (but very real) power, they were able to fashion a peaceful Europe much as they wanted it and after their own (federal) image. They managed to surround themselves with friendly neighbors all around (no mean feat after such a disastrous 20th century- both for themselves and for their neighbors) and were the true engineers behind European integration (in a delicate pasodoble with the French). And they succeeded NOT by behaving like a 'big' power, but rather by behaving like a small power, and sometimes even an anti-power. But I can think of no other middle-power that can claim to have been as successful in achieving its foreign and security policy objectives since WWII as the Bundesrepublik. And what was more, every night when I drove home in the evening on the wonderful Autobahn from Ebenhausen to Laim (in Munich) first through the beautiful and affluent Bavarian countryside and then through some more 'lower middle class' but still very comfortable neighborhoods in Munich proper, I could not help but being struck by the societal contrast with Santa Monica in the supposedly much more powerful US. So even though Germany did not have the tool 'power' on its mind - certainly not in the way I had 'learned' it in the US - it had obtained remarkable internal and external successes in the form of a reunited Germany in a friendly and stable environment. This in turn allowed the German Mittelstand to keep strengthening its niches in the international division of labor and build Germany into the world's number one exporter. And all of this allowed German citizens to pursue their individual goals in ways that they had not been able to for centuries. So what did all of us tell us about the nature of power? Was this the world's anti-power (and on many occasions it did seem so), or did Germany just use other forms of power to achieve its goals?
While in Germany, John Roper (now Baron Roper), the founder of the Institute for Security Studies of the then still Western European Union had whetted my appetite to come and work for the Institute in Paris. So from Germany, I moved to France, where I spent another glorious 3 years working as a 'eurocrat/researcher'. The Institute was (and remains) a fairly small outfit whose researchers received (in those days - and thanks to Lord Roper) security clearances for both the WEU, the EU and NATO. The (eye-opening - in a Wizard-of-Oz way) reality of the diplomatic game threw a totally different perspective on the exercise of power in Europe. The highly ritualized, formalistic games that were played in and between the different international organizations bore absolutely no resemblance to the grand strategizing that (some) people at RAND engaged in and even less to the abstract treatises on power that I knew from the political science literature. In one of my papers then I called this 'mutually assured debilitation (MAD)'. This was the way I saw the decisionmaking setup of the then WEU (and the so-called second pillar of the EU in general) in which everything seemed to me to be optimized in order to virtually ensure the impossibility of the exercise of European military power, even in its own neighborhood.
Yet at the same time, I was also responsible at the Institute for relations with the then DG1A (essentially External Affairs) at the Commission of the European Union. And here I encountered once again an entirely different form of 'power' - and one that left an indelible impact on my views on power. Because of my 'Soviet' background, I was the default person to be sent to various meetings and conferences in Central and Eastern Europe to 'spread the good word' (my expression J) about European integration and cooperation. And I often ended up at those meetings with a colleague of mine from DG1A whose name I will not mention to save him any potential embarrassment. He was quite a bit older and far more experienced than me, with an impressive career first in his own country and then within the EU. Representing the Commission in this part of the world, his words carried the entire weight of European construction. After all, these countries were either in the midst of accession negotiations or were hoping to start them at some point in the future and so they were quite apprehensive. But in these meetings, he would essentially tell our counterparts in no uncertain terms that their legal systems, their economic systems, their political systems just were woefully inadequate and that they were far from ready. (The Commission essentially conveyed the same message in its repeated 'official opinions' known under their French name 'avis', albeit in much more polite wording). But so my EU-colleague essentially told them that they had to shape up, or else... Here was the European Commission, with absolutely no military muscle and minimal competency in issues of foreign and security policy. No 'hard' power whatsoever (I always made sure my own story on West-European military integration and what it might mean to them was - accurately and - blissfully short). But so here we were, doing this European dog and pony show in a part of the world where so much blood had been spilled historically. Where age-old vendettas still lingered just under the surface. In countries that had just thrown of the yoke of the Soviet empire. And yet - here was pure unadulterated raw European power. Administered quite matter-of-factly. With no reference whatsoever to any American 'big brother'. And looking back now - spectacularly successfully, as these countries DID (then) change most of what we the EU told them to change. I have since often told this story to American friends and colleagues who are so disparaging about European power projection. About Europeans not 'getting' power. Almost having 'bowed out of the race'. And yet when a window opened, the heads of state of the EU, this amorphous, bureaucratic, lethargic, ineffective institution, still managed to jump. It doubled in size and membership. Admittedly - and, from hindsight, fortunately - with much US support and prodding, but ultimately still on their own authority. Against their own public opinions. Often even against their own instincts: fearing what this would do to the comfortably smaller and relatively more homogeneous Europe. This was definitely different from US conceptions and manifestations of 'hard' power in the 'military muscle' sense. But it was also different from the German almost anti-power - as it used all sorts of very real levers of power to achieve change in the countries it was going to let into the European Union. So yet another grammar of power.
Yet at the same time, I was also responsible at the Institute for relations with the then DG1A (essentially External Affairs) at the Commission of the European Union. And here I encountered once again an entirely different form of 'power' - and one that left an indelible impact on my views on power. Because of my 'Soviet' background, I was the default person to be sent to various meetings and conferences in Central and Eastern Europe to 'spread the good word' (my expression J) about European integration and cooperation. And I often ended up at those meetings with a colleague of mine from DG1A whose name I will not mention to save him any potential embarrassment. He was quite a bit older and far more experienced than me, with an impressive career first in his own country and then within the EU. Representing the Commission in this part of the world, his words carried the entire weight of European construction. After all, these countries were either in the midst of accession negotiations or were hoping to start them at some point in the future and so they were quite apprehensive. But in these meetings, he would essentially tell our counterparts in no uncertain terms that their legal systems, their economic systems, their political systems just were woefully inadequate and that they were far from ready. (The Commission essentially conveyed the same message in its repeated 'official opinions' known under their French name 'avis', albeit in much more polite wording). But so my EU-colleague essentially told them that they had to shape up, or else... Here was the European Commission, with absolutely no military muscle and minimal competency in issues of foreign and security policy. No 'hard' power whatsoever (I always made sure my own story on West-European military integration and what it might mean to them was - accurately and - blissfully short). But so here we were, doing this European dog and pony show in a part of the world where so much blood had been spilled historically. Where age-old vendettas still lingered just under the surface. In countries that had just thrown of the yoke of the Soviet empire. And yet - here was pure unadulterated raw European power. Administered quite matter-of-factly. With no reference whatsoever to any American 'big brother'. And looking back now - spectacularly successfully, as these countries DID (then) change most of what we the EU told them to change. I have since often told this story to American friends and colleagues who are so disparaging about European power projection. About Europeans not 'getting' power. Almost having 'bowed out of the race'. And yet when a window opened, the heads of state of the EU, this amorphous, bureaucratic, lethargic, ineffective institution, still managed to jump. It doubled in size and membership. Admittedly - and, from hindsight, fortunately - with much US support and prodding, but ultimately still on their own authority. Against their own public opinions. Often even against their own instincts: fearing what this would do to the comfortably smaller and relatively more homogeneous Europe. This was definitely different from US conceptions and manifestations of 'hard' power in the 'military muscle' sense. But it was also different from the German almost anti-power - as it used all sorts of very real levers of power to achieve change in the countries it was going to let into the European Union. So yet another grammar of power.
A final personal recollection about different grammars of power concerns another geographical region that I have studied quite intensively for a longer period of time and that has come to a occupy a special place in my heart (and mind): Eurasia. During the Cold War Soviet power seemed unassailable. Here was an uncontested superpower with formidable military might running a huge empire that could compete - ideologically, economically and certainly militarily - with the 'West'. We knew of course that there were a number of intrinsic weaknesses in that country - an inefficient economic system, various ethnic fractions, problems with internal power transitions, etc. But nobody doubted that this was a gigantic superpower. All power indices confirmed that this empire HAD 'real' power. And the reality of everyday international relations showed that it was also willing and able to exercise that power as one of the poles of a bipolar international system. And yet within a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the emperor was shown to have no clothes. Either the Soviet Union's genuine power had just suddenly evaporated or we had entirely misjudged its actual power. Both hypotheses should have profoundly shaken our views about what power is, how we measure it and how we deal with it. They certainly shook mine.
Today again it is fascinating to observe Russia's elite attitudes towards power. Anybody who has spent any amount of time in the post-Soviet sphere must know that, almost despite anything, Russia still wields enormous (latent) soft power.[My colleague James Sherr is actually running a research project on the topic at Chatham House]. I spent quite a few months in the early 00s in Tbilisi (first under Shevardnadze and then under Saakashvili). RAND ran a few projects there for the US State Department to train various parts of the Georgian official AND non-official world in policy analysis. This was a heady and traumatic period for the country (and for its visitors in those days). For a few months over a period of about 3 years, I spent a few evenings per week working with a different groups of Georgians at the then still fairly modest Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). One of those groups consisted of about 15 staffers of the Georgian National Security Council. Half of those were mid-career officials of the 'old' school. Half of them were younger, with quite a few of them having studied abroad - mostly in the US (the US Muskie program, for instance, must have been one of the highest value-for-money investments in 'power' ("the ability to make somebody do something that they would not do out of their own volition") that the US ever made). The 'clash' between these two (carefully selected) groups was fascinating to observe - especially as over the months the mutual respect grew. First the older participants started becoming impressed with the linguistic skills and the intellectual agility of the younger ones - as well as their willingness to help the older ones in those spheres. But as we entered more and more into defense and security analysis, the respect also started reversing itself - with the younger ones growing increasingly more impressed with (and learning from) the professional qualities and experience of the more senior ones. But so in the discussions with this group, 'power' quickly took center stage again. To these people, power was certainly no dirty word. It was an almost mystical one. It was clear to them that Georgia had too little of it and needed 'more'. To them, power just meant military muscle, which they hoped the West (and especially the US) would be willing to provide. There was no doubt in any of their minds as to who the most 'powerful' country in the world was - the US. And so they wanted to become as close to the US as humanly possible. 'Europe', also here (as in the US), was a concept that they just didn't understand - that they clearly had some emotional affinity with, but that more often than not drove them into despair by not 'wanting' to understand their security predicament. And then there was Russia. In class, they clearly saw Russia in very Manichean terms as the 'big (powerful) bad guy'. That had forced them into the Soviet Union. The one that took Abkhazia and South Ossetia away from them. I was often amazed at both their (in my view) exaggerated assessment of US willingness to exercise its power on their behalf but also at their underestimation of the correlation of forces between themselves and Russia. But what always struck me was how in a more 'informal' environment, when we were NOT talking policy and/or politics, their views of Russia proved far more balanced. With the older generation, we would often fall back into speaking Russian. And then suddenly the 'other' side of Russia appeared. The Russia of Pushkin, of the (in these groups) highly respected Russian intelligentsia, of high-quality and free higher education, of Russian (old Russian AND Soviet) songs, of favorite movies and other cultural (shared) references. The Russia that most of them (certainly the older generation) knew a lot better than Western Europe or the US. I have had many similar experiences with people all the way from Mongolia over Ukraine (including Western Ukraine) to the Baltics. Both with Russians present, and without them. And so to this date I suspect that Russia still has a significant amount of latent power potential in that part of the world. But it is proving remarkably consistent in squandering this very real source of potential power by preferring to exercise other, demonstrably dysfunctional and counterproductive forms of power.
Different countries. Same term: 'power' - with some embracing it, other shunning it. But all of them using a - sometimes dramatically - different 'grammar' within the same 'language'. A different syntax - different elements that compose power and different ways of putting these elements together. A different morphology also - different ways in which these various elements manifest themselves depending on the role they play at any given moment in time. [Lest my readers think I sympathize with Foucault on this, let me assure them that I take this more from Clausewitz, who in the famous passage from his 'Vom Kriege' wrote:
The bottom line to me personally in all of this, BOTH from the point of view of my 'getting defense right' project AND from the point of view of trying to get a better handle on the various grammars of power that I have encountered in my career, is that there are many un(der)explored dimensions of power that can and probably should be included in our capability development process - and of course at the whole-of-government (and maybe even whole-of-society) level. But all of this also still leaves me with some profound questions about what is happening to power today and in the future. Conventional wisdom in the strategic 'kommentariat' these days is that what is happening to power is a) that it is moving from the 'West' to the 'rest' (power transition) and b) that it is shifting from states to non-state actors such as the private sector, but also organizations like Al Qaeda, organized crime, the media, etc. (power diffusion). So power transition and diffusion. Sure two interesting and plausible small (and well rehearsed) hypotheses about what might (be) happen(ing) to power.
But I think the plot is much thicker than that. How about the hypothesis of an exponential rise in the overall amount of sheer power in the world: more people, more effective markets, more riches, more resources, more energy [incidentally- contrary to the current 'gloom and doom boom' I observe around myself in our community - THAT is IMO the real story behind material power (and resources) - NOT scarcity, but increasing abundance)]. And how about the changes in the COST of exercising 'power' - something a lot of the 'network'-scholars (from Castells over various interdependence-liberals to complexity theorist) seem to miss. My own hunch here is that the cost (financial, political, reputational, etc.) of exercising traditional kinetic power is increasing, but that the cost of exercising other forms of power (through social networks, for instance) is declining - a fact that we may be not taking enough advantage off in our defense capability engineering efforts. All of this also raises questions about the power conversion algorithm of how countries can translate their latent or manifest power into realities on the ground - an algorithm that is obviously much more complex than we used to assume. Or how about the hypothesis of the dissipation of power? That there may be more latent power out there, but that opportunities for manifesting power (whether by states or non-states!) are actually declining. And if so - what does THAT mean for international security/stability/prosperity? How about the turbulence of power? I.e. that it is NOT just the 'shifts' from a certain fixed amount of available 'power' here to there (think of ebbs and tides on both side of an ocean); but the (faster) modulations and perturbations (think tsunamis; think Aral Sea; etc.) that we should worry about. Much food for thought - and, I would submit - for a lot more rigorous research.
Today again it is fascinating to observe Russia's elite attitudes towards power. Anybody who has spent any amount of time in the post-Soviet sphere must know that, almost despite anything, Russia still wields enormous (latent) soft power.[My colleague James Sherr is actually running a research project on the topic at Chatham House]. I spent quite a few months in the early 00s in Tbilisi (first under Shevardnadze and then under Saakashvili). RAND ran a few projects there for the US State Department to train various parts of the Georgian official AND non-official world in policy analysis. This was a heady and traumatic period for the country (and for its visitors in those days). For a few months over a period of about 3 years, I spent a few evenings per week working with a different groups of Georgians at the then still fairly modest Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS). One of those groups consisted of about 15 staffers of the Georgian National Security Council. Half of those were mid-career officials of the 'old' school. Half of them were younger, with quite a few of them having studied abroad - mostly in the US (the US Muskie program, for instance, must have been one of the highest value-for-money investments in 'power' ("the ability to make somebody do something that they would not do out of their own volition") that the US ever made). The 'clash' between these two (carefully selected) groups was fascinating to observe - especially as over the months the mutual respect grew. First the older participants started becoming impressed with the linguistic skills and the intellectual agility of the younger ones - as well as their willingness to help the older ones in those spheres. But as we entered more and more into defense and security analysis, the respect also started reversing itself - with the younger ones growing increasingly more impressed with (and learning from) the professional qualities and experience of the more senior ones. But so in the discussions with this group, 'power' quickly took center stage again. To these people, power was certainly no dirty word. It was an almost mystical one. It was clear to them that Georgia had too little of it and needed 'more'. To them, power just meant military muscle, which they hoped the West (and especially the US) would be willing to provide. There was no doubt in any of their minds as to who the most 'powerful' country in the world was - the US. And so they wanted to become as close to the US as humanly possible. 'Europe', also here (as in the US), was a concept that they just didn't understand - that they clearly had some emotional affinity with, but that more often than not drove them into despair by not 'wanting' to understand their security predicament. And then there was Russia. In class, they clearly saw Russia in very Manichean terms as the 'big (powerful) bad guy'. That had forced them into the Soviet Union. The one that took Abkhazia and South Ossetia away from them. I was often amazed at both their (in my view) exaggerated assessment of US willingness to exercise its power on their behalf but also at their underestimation of the correlation of forces between themselves and Russia. But what always struck me was how in a more 'informal' environment, when we were NOT talking policy and/or politics, their views of Russia proved far more balanced. With the older generation, we would often fall back into speaking Russian. And then suddenly the 'other' side of Russia appeared. The Russia of Pushkin, of the (in these groups) highly respected Russian intelligentsia, of high-quality and free higher education, of Russian (old Russian AND Soviet) songs, of favorite movies and other cultural (shared) references. The Russia that most of them (certainly the older generation) knew a lot better than Western Europe or the US. I have had many similar experiences with people all the way from Mongolia over Ukraine (including Western Ukraine) to the Baltics. Both with Russians present, and without them. And so to this date I suspect that Russia still has a significant amount of latent power potential in that part of the world. But it is proving remarkably consistent in squandering this very real source of potential power by preferring to exercise other, demonstrably dysfunctional and counterproductive forms of power.
Different countries. Same term: 'power' - with some embracing it, other shunning it. But all of them using a - sometimes dramatically - different 'grammar' within the same 'language'. A different syntax - different elements that compose power and different ways of putting these elements together. A different morphology also - different ways in which these various elements manifest themselves depending on the role they play at any given moment in time. [Lest my readers think I sympathize with Foucault on this, let me assure them that I take this more from Clausewitz, who in the famous passage from his 'Vom Kriege' wrote:
We maintain, on the contrary, that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. The main lines along which military events progress, and to which they are restricted, are political lines that continue throughout the war into the subsequent peace. How could it be otherwise? Do political relations between peoples and between their governments stop when diplomatic notes are no longer exchanged? Is war not just another expression of their thoughts, another form of speech or writing? Its grammar, indeed, may be its own, but not its logic [emphasis added]]I mentioned at the beginning of this entry that we started doing some work at HCSS to get a better grip on these different 'grammars' of power. We have tried to map as many possible definitions of power that we could find in the literature in different disciplines (non-IR political science, sociology, economics, law, biology, anthropology, etc.). The availability of full-text academic databases across disciplines with ever more sophisticated search options suddenly makes this sort of work feasible (if still far from easy). I do not want to divulge our findings prematurely (the work is still ongoing), but we did identify over 20 different dimensions of power. As we suspected, we found that many of those hardly receive any treatment in the international relations / international security literature. And not only not in the 'realist' paradigm, but even not in liberal or (some) constructivist writings. In a parallel effort, we have also collected various datasets in which various research teams (across the globe) have tried to operationalize the concept of power in international relations. There are some fascinating 'holes' in those datasets too - especially if we map them against the various dimensions of power that we found in the more theoretical literatures.
The bottom line to me personally in all of this, BOTH from the point of view of my 'getting defense right' project AND from the point of view of trying to get a better handle on the various grammars of power that I have encountered in my career, is that there are many un(der)explored dimensions of power that can and probably should be included in our capability development process - and of course at the whole-of-government (and maybe even whole-of-society) level. But all of this also still leaves me with some profound questions about what is happening to power today and in the future. Conventional wisdom in the strategic 'kommentariat' these days is that what is happening to power is a) that it is moving from the 'West' to the 'rest' (power transition) and b) that it is shifting from states to non-state actors such as the private sector, but also organizations like Al Qaeda, organized crime, the media, etc. (power diffusion). So power transition and diffusion. Sure two interesting and plausible small (and well rehearsed) hypotheses about what might (be) happen(ing) to power.
But I think the plot is much thicker than that. How about the hypothesis of an exponential rise in the overall amount of sheer power in the world: more people, more effective markets, more riches, more resources, more energy [incidentally- contrary to the current 'gloom and doom boom' I observe around myself in our community - THAT is IMO the real story behind material power (and resources) - NOT scarcity, but increasing abundance)]. And how about the changes in the COST of exercising 'power' - something a lot of the 'network'-scholars (from Castells over various interdependence-liberals to complexity theorist) seem to miss. My own hunch here is that the cost (financial, political, reputational, etc.) of exercising traditional kinetic power is increasing, but that the cost of exercising other forms of power (through social networks, for instance) is declining - a fact that we may be not taking enough advantage off in our defense capability engineering efforts. All of this also raises questions about the power conversion algorithm of how countries can translate their latent or manifest power into realities on the ground - an algorithm that is obviously much more complex than we used to assume. Or how about the hypothesis of the dissipation of power? That there may be more latent power out there, but that opportunities for manifesting power (whether by states or non-states!) are actually declining. And if so - what does THAT mean for international security/stability/prosperity? How about the turbulence of power? I.e. that it is NOT just the 'shifts' from a certain fixed amount of available 'power' here to there (think of ebbs and tides on both side of an ocean); but the (faster) modulations and perturbations (think tsunamis; think Aral Sea; etc.) that we should worry about. Much food for thought - and, I would submit - for a lot more rigorous research.
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