National power is defined as the sum of all resources available to a nation in the pursuit of national objectives. [1] Assessing the national power of political entities was already a matter of relevance during the classical antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and today. [2] [ failed verification ] Classics Shang Yang, [3] Guan Zhong [4] and Chanakya, [5] widely discussed the power of state. Many other classics, such as Mozi, [6] Appian, [7] Pliny the Elder, [8] also concerned the subject. Herodotes described whence derives the power of Babylon. [9] The considerations of Hannibal on the matter is found in Titus Livy. [10]
National power stems from various elements, also called instruments or attributes; these may be put into two groups based on their applicability and origin - "natural" and "social". [11] [12]
Important facets of geography such as location, climate, topography, size and resources play major roles in the ability of a nation to gain national power. [13] The relation between foreign policy and geographic space gave rise to the discipline of geopolitics including the concepts of lebensraum and "grossraum". The latter is a region with natural resources sufficient for autarky.
Space has a strategic value. Russia's size permitted it to trade space for time during the Great Patriotic War. [12] To a less extent, the same is true for China in the war against Japan.
Location has an important bearing on foreign policy of a nation. The presence of a water obstacle provided protection to states such as Ancient Rome, Great Britain, Japan, and the United States. The geographic protection allowed Rome, Japan, and the United States to follow isolationist policies, and Britain the policy of non-involvement in Europe. The presence of large accessible seaboards also permitted these nations to build strong navies and expand their territories peacefully or by conquest. In contrast, Poland, with no obstacle for its powerful neighbours, lost its independence from 1795 to 1918 and again from 1939 to 1989.
Since Antiquity, the importance of climate was stressed, with the temperate zone being regarded as favoring great powers. Aristotle in Politics argued that the Greeks, placed in the temperate zone, qualify for world domination. [14] Pliny the Elder observed that in the temperate zone, there are governments, which the outer races never have possessed. [8]
The temperate zone as power factor remained widely stressed in the modern research. In fact, all modern great powers have been located in the temperate zone. A.F.K. Organski criticized this hypothesis as "an accident of history." The Industrial Revolution happened, by accident, in the temperate zone and so far, also by accident, there are no major industrial nations outside this zone. But the world will become industrial, "now that the industrial revolution is galloping triumphant throughout the world." [15]
Organski abandoned the theory of temperate zone as untenable. By contrast, Max Ostrovsky developed it further. He doubted historical accidents. Writing half-a-century after Organski, he noted that the Industrial Revolution is still not "galloping triumphant throughout the world" but remains bound to the temperate zone. Moreover, vast temperate zones of Turkestan and Mongolia do not generate great powers. [16] It appeared that besides the mild temperature, a right amount of rain was necessary, as only humid temperate areas have been sources of great power. [17]
This observation challenged a dominant element of the temperate theory. Most of its proponents believed that temperate climate develops industrious mind. None inquired what rain has to do with mind. Instead of climate developing mind, Ostrovsky replaced mind with cereal agriculture. Rains, he argued, favor cereals rather than human mind, while the productive cereal agriculture favors industry. The more productive is the cereal agriculture, the more manpower is available to industry and other non-agricultural sectors. [18] For this reason, and not "by accident," the Industrial Revolution followed the modern Agricultural Revolution in time and space and is not "galloping triumphant" anywhere in the world beyond the humid temperate areas. In size, Russia is larger than the United States, but its temperate zone with optimum rainfall is smaller, as most of the territory is in latitudes well north. [12] All things being equal, Ostrovsky concluded, who rules the largest rainy temperate zone, rules the world. But all things are seldom equal. For this reason, he avoided geographic determinism and formulized an indicator of national power which combines climatic conditions and organizational level (see "National power indicator" below).
Depending on the interaction of the individual elements of national power, attempts can be made to classify states and assign them a status in the international order of states. Globally important states with dominant positions in all or almost all elements of national power are called superpowers. This term was applied to the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. In the 21st century, it is also increasingly applied to the People's Republic of China. Other status classification terms for states include, in descending hierarchy, world powers, great powers, regional powers, middle powers, and small powers. For states or alliances with almost absolute power, the term hyperpower is used.
Despite the difficulty of the task and the multidimensional nature of power, several attempts have been made to express the power of states in objective rankings and indexes based on statistical indicators.
The Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) was conceived by J. David Singer in 1963. It includes the six factors of total population, urban population, iron and steel production, primary energy consumption, military expenditure and number of soldiers and calculates an index from them. His methodology is considered outdated, however, as he only takes into account "hard" power factors and indicators such as steel production no longer have the same significance as in the early 20th century.
Rank | Country |
---|---|
1 | China |
2 | United States |
3 | India |
4 | Japan |
5 | Russia |
6 | South Korea |
7 | Germany |
8 | Brazil |
9 | United Kingdom |
10 | France |
Criticism: CINC suggests, “nonsensically,” that Israel is, and has always been, one of the weakest countries in the Middle East; Russia dominated Europe throughout the 1990s, with more power than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom combined; and China has dominated the world since 1996 and by 2018 twice exceeded the power of the United States. [21]
The National Power Ranking of Countries was published in a paper by the University of Warsaw and the University of Wroclaw. It divides countries into the categories of economic, military and geopolitical power, which is derived from statistical indicators. The report also analyzes the evolution of the distribution of power in the world since 1992 and makes a forecast for 2050, noting an increasing shift of power from the Western world to the Asia-Pacific region.
Economic power | Military power | Geopolitical power | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rank | Country | Rank | Country | Rank | Country |
1 | China | 1 | United States | 1 | United States |
2 | United States | 2 | China | 2 | China |
3 | India | 3 | India | 3 | India |
4 | Japan | 4 | Russia | 4 | Russia |
5 | Brazil | 5 | Saudi Arabia | 5 | Saudi Arabia |
6 | Germany | 6 | France | 6 | Japan |
7 | Russia | 7 | Brazil | 7 | Brazil |
8 | France | 8 | Japan | 8 | France |
9 | United Kingdom | 9 | United Kingdom | 9 | Germany |
10 | Canada | 10 | South Korea | 10 | United Kingdom |
The State Power Index was developed by Piotr Arak and Grzegorz Lewicki and takes into account the factors of economy, military, land area, population, cultural influence, natural resources and diplomacy, which is combined into an overall index.
Rank | Country |
---|---|
1 | United States |
2 | China |
3 | Russia |
4 | India |
5 | Germany |
6 | United Kingdom |
7 | France |
8 | Japan |
9 | Brazil |
10 | Canada |
The World Power Index (WPI) is a numerical expression that refers the accumulation of national capacities that a State possesses for the exercise of its power in the international system.
The WPI is the result of adding 18 indicators, which are organized through three composite indices:
The WPI is presented as an analysis technique that, being quantitative, seeks to help overcome the hermeneutics that underlies the subjective interpretation of national power. [24] In this way, the WPI contributes to the accurate comparison of the national capacities of States and the study of their position in the international structure. [25]
This indicator was developed by Max Ostrovsky. He reduced numerous indexes to one basic indicator—cereal tonnage produced by one percent of national manpower. He argues that this indicator is defined by environmental conditions and organizational level and in its turn defines the percentage of manpower available to non-agricultural activities.
Rank | Country | Thousand tons |
---|---|---|
1 | United States | 134,441 |
2 | France | 42,909 |
3 | Argentina | 33,435 |
4 | Germany | 17,741 |
5 | Canada | 15,365 |
6 | United Kingdom | 14,697 |
7 | China | 7,610 |
8 | Australia | 6,223 |
9 | Russia | 4,677 |
10 | India | 3,820 |
A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize. Edible grains from other plant families, such as buckwheat and quinoa are pseudocereals. Most cereals are annuals, producing one crop from each planting, though rice is sometimes grown as a perennial. Winter varieties are hardy enough to be planted in the autumn, becoming dormant in the winter, and harvested in spring or early summer; spring varieties are planted in spring and harvested in late summer. The term cereal is derived from the name of the Roman goddess of grain crops and fertility, Ceres.
An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, different populations have different sets of rights and are governed differently. Narrowly defined, an empire is a sovereign state whose head of state is an emperor or empress; but not all states with aggregate territory under the rule of supreme authorities are called empires or are ruled by an emperor; nor have all self-described empires been accepted as such by contemporaries and historians.
A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and outside the state are much more likely to occur.
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of states: de facto independent states with limited international recognition and relations between sub-national geopolitical entities, such as the federated states that make up a federation, confederation, or a quasi-federal system.
In international relations, power is defined in several different ways. Material definitions of state power emphasize economic and military power. Other definitions of power emphasize the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations between actors. Power is an attribute of particular actors in their interactions, as well as a social process that constitutes the social identities and capacities of actors.
A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence, which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers' opinions before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions.
Underdevelopment, in the context of international development, reflects a broad condition or phenomena defined and critiqued by theorists in fields such as economics, development studies, and postcolonial studies. Used primarily to distinguish states along benchmarks concerning human development—such as macro-economic growth, health, education, and standards of living—an "underdeveloped" state is framed as the antithesis of a "developed", modern, or industrialized state. Popularized, dominant images of underdeveloped states include those that have less stable economies, less democratic political regimes, greater poverty, malnutrition, and poorer public health and education systems.
Comprehensive National Power (CNP) is a measure of the general power of a nation-state. It is a putative measure, important in the contemporary political thought of the People's Republic of China from the 1980s onwards and first introduced into official documents in 1992.
The economy of North America comprises more than 596 million people in its 24 sovereign states and 15 dependent territories. It is marked by a sharp division between the predominantly English speaking countries of Canada and the United States, which are among the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world, and countries of Central America and the Caribbean in the former Latin America that are less developed. Mexico and Caribbean nations of the Commonwealth of Nations are between the economic extremes of the development of North America.
Hegemonic stability theory (HST) is a theory of international relations, rooted in research from the fields of political science, economics, and history. HST indicates that the international system is more likely to remain stable when a single state is the dominant world power, or hegemon. Thus, the end of hegemony diminishes the stability of the international system. As evidence for the stability of hegemony, proponents of HST frequently point to the Pax Britannica and Pax Americana, as well as the instability prior to World War I and the instability of the interwar period.
Collective security is a multi-lateral security arrangement between states in which each state in the institution accepts that an attack on one state is the concern of all and merits a collective response to threats by all. Collective security was a key principle underpinning the League of Nations and the United Nations. 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.
Geostrategy, a subfield of geopolitics, is a type of foreign policy guided principally by geographical factors as they inform, constrain, or affect political and military planning. As with all strategies, geostrategy is concerned with matching means to ends Strategy is as intertwined with geography as geography is with nationhood, or as Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan state it, "[geography is] the mother of strategy."
Geopolitik was a German school of geopolitics which existed between the late 19th century and World War II.
Okra, Abelmoschus esculentus, known in some English-speaking countries as lady's fingers, is a flowering plant in the mallow family native to East Africa. It has edible green seed pods. Cultivated in tropical, subtropical, and warm temperate regions around the world, okra is used in the cuisines of many countries.
Power transition theory is a theory about the nature of war, in relation to the power in international relations. The theory was first published in 1958 by its creator, A.F.K. Organski, in his textbook, World Politics (1958).
"The Geographical Pivot of History" is an article submitted by Halford John Mackinder in 1904 to the Royal Geographical Society that advances his heartland theory. In this article, Mackinder extended the scope of geopolitical analysis to encompass the entire globe. He defined Afro-Eurasia as the "world island" and its "heartland" as the area east of the Volga, south of the Arctic, west of the Yangtze, and north of the Himalayas. Due to its strategic location and natural resources, Mackinder argued that whoever controlled the "heartland" could control the world.
The Human Poverty Index (HPI) was an indication of the poverty of community in a country, developed by the United Nations to complement the Human Development Index (HDI) and was first reported as part of the Human Development Report in 1997. It is developed by United Nations Development Program which also publishes indexes like HDI It was considered to better reflect the extent of deprivation in deprived countries compared to the HDI. In 2010, it was supplanted by the UN's Multidimensional Poverty Index.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is a book by the American scholar John Mearsheimer on the subject of international relations theory published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2001. Mearsheimer explains and argues for his theory of "offensive realism" by stating its key assumptions, evolution from early realist theory, and its predictive capability. An article adapted from the book had previously been published by Foreign Affairs.
Jacek Kugler is a prominent American political scientist and scholar of International Relations. He is the former Chair of the Department of Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)