Trisha Mae K.

Deiparine
Written Report
Title: Struggle for Power

The Crusaders - to free the holy places from domination by the Infidels. Nazis wanted to open Eastern Europe to German
colonization, to dominate Europe and to conquer the world.

Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. If gives the
former control over certain actions of the latter through the impact which the former exert on the latters minds.

The impact derives from three sources:

1. Expectation of Benefits

2. Fear of Disadvantages

3. Respect or Love for men or institutions

Its Nature: Four Distinctions

A. Between Power and Influence.

The secretary of state who advises the President of the United States on the conduct of American foreign policy. He can
persuade but he cannot compel. The president has the power over the Secretary of State; for he can impose his will upon
the latter by virtue of the authority of his office.

B. Between Power and Force

Political power must be distinguished from force in the sense of the actual exercise of physical violence. The threat of
physical violence in the form of police action, imprisonment, capital punishment, or war is an intrinsic element of politics.
When violence becomes an actuality, it signifies the abdication of political power in favor of military or pseudo-military
power. In international politics in particular armed strength as a threat or a potentiality is the most important material factor
making for the political power of a nation. The actual exercise of physical violence substitutes for the psychological relation
between two minds, which is the essence of political power.

C. Between Usable and Unusable Power

The availability of nuclear weapons makes it necessary to distinguish between usable and unusable power. It is one of the
paradoxes of the nuclear age that, in contrast to experience of all of pre-nuclear history, an increase in military power is no
longer necessarily conducive to an increase in political power. The threat of all out nuclear violence implies the threat of
total destruction. The nation armed with nuclear weapons can assert power over the other nation. The situation is different
if the nation so threatened can respond by saying: If you destroy me with nuclear weapon, you will be destroyed in return.
Here the mutual threats can cancel each other.

The threat of force can be used as a rational instrument of foreign policy, the actual use of that force remains irrational; for
threatened force would be used not for the political purpose of influencing the will of the other side but for the irrational
purpose of destroying the other side with the attendant assurance of ones own destruction. Thus the magnitude of its
destructiveness as compared with the limited character of political purposes which are the proper object of foreign policy,
renders nuclear force unusable as an instrument of foreign policy.

D. Between Legitimate and Illegitimate power

Legitimate power, is power exercised morally or legally justified, must be distinguished from illegitimate power. Power
exercised with moral or legal authority must be distinguished from naked power. The power of police officer who searches
a person by virtue of a search warrant is qualitatively different from the power of the robber who performs same action by
virtue of holding his gun. Power exercised in self-defense or in the name of United Nations has a better chance to
succeed that equivalent power exercised by aggressor nation or in violation of international law.

The Struggle for Power:

All politics, domestic and international reveals three basic patterns; that is, all political phenomenon can be reduced into
three basic types. A political policy seeks either to keep power, to increase power or to demonstrate power.

The Struggle for Power: Policy of the Status Quo

A nation whose foreign policy tends toward keeping power and not toward changing the distribution of power in its favor
pursues a policy of the -status quo.

The concept of status quo is derive from status quo ante bellum, a diplomatic term referring to the usual clauses in peace
treaties which provide for the evacuation of territory by enemy troops and its restoration to the prewar sovereignty.

The policy of status quo aims at the maintenance of the distribution of power which exists at a particular moment in history.

Ex: Peace Treaties with Italy and Bulgaria terminating the Second World War provide that, "all armed forces of the Allied
and Associate Powers shall be withdrawn" from the territory of the particular nation "as soon as possible and in any case
not later than ninety days from the coming into force of the present Treaty".

The Struggle for Power: Imperialism

A nation whose foreign policy aims at acquiring more power than it actually has through reversal of existing power
relations-whose foreign policy in other words seeks favorable change in power status - pursues a policy of imperialism.
Imperialism is: Not every foreign policy aiming at an increase in the power of a nations is necessarily a manifestation of
imperialism. Not every foreign policy aiming at the preservation of an empire that already exists is imperialism.

Three Inducements to Imperialism

1. Victorious Wars

When a nation is engaged in war with another nation, it is very likely that the nation which anticipates victory will pursue a
policy that seeks a permanent change of the power relations with the defeated enemy. The nation will pursue this policy
regardless of what the objectives were at the outbreak of the war. Thus a war that was started by the victor as a defensive
war for the maintenance of the prewar status quo transform itself with the approaching victory into an imperialistic war;
that is for permanent change in the status quo. A policy that aims at a peace settlement to this kind must, according to our
definition be called imperialistic.

Example: The Sixth Day war, Israel was able to retrieve the land of Mt. Sinai in Egypt, from a war that started as a
defensive war.

2. Lost Wars

The very status of subordination, intended for permanency, may easily engender in the vanquished a desire to turn the
scales on the victor, to overthrow the status quo created by his victory, and to change places with him in the hierarchy of
power. In other words the policy of imperialism pursued by the victor in anticipation of his victory is likely to call forth a
policy of imperialism on the part of the vanquished. If he is not forever ruined or else won over to the cause of the victor,
the vanquished will want to regain what he has lost and if possible, gain more.

The typical example of imperialism conceived as a reaction against the successful imperialism of others is German
imperialism form 1935 to the end of the Second World War. The victory of Allies and the subsequent peace treaties created
a new status quo that was the fruition of the imperialistic policies of France.

3. Weakness

Another typical situation that favors imperialistic policies is the existence of weak states or of politically empty spaces, that
are attractive and accessible to a strong state. This is the situation out of which colonial imperialism grew. The
attractiveness of power vacuums as an incentive to imperialism is at least a potential threat to the survival of many of the
new nations of Asia and Africa, deficient as they are in the most important elements of power.

Three Goals of Imperialism

1. World Empire

The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome,
The Arabs in the seventh and eight centuries, Napoleon I and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion
which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the
confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of
domination a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conquerors lust for
power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest,
characteristic of unlimited imperialism.

2. Continental Empire

The type of geographical determined imperialism is most clearly presented in the policies of European powers to gain a
predominant position on the European continent. Mussolini trying to make the Mediterranean an Italian Lake an example
of geographically determined imperialism on a less than continental basis. Continental imperialism is here modified by its
limitation to a localized section of the continent.

3. Local Preponderance

The prototype of localized imperialism is to be found in the monarchical policies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In the 19th century Bismarck was the master of this imperialistic policy, which seeks to overthrow the status quo and to
establish political preponderance within self-chosen limits.

Three Methods of Imperialism

1. Military Imperialism

The most obvious, the most ancient, and also the crudest form of imperialism is military conquest. The great conquerors of
all times have also been the great imperialists.

2. Economic Imperialism

Economic imperialism is less obtrusive and also generally less effective than the military variety and is, as a rational
method of gaining power, a product of modern times. As such it is a concomitant of the age of mercantilist and capital
expansion.

3. Cultural Imperialism

Cultural imperialism is the most subtle and if it were ever to succeed by itself alone, the most successful of imperialistic
policies. It aims not at the conquest and control of the minds of men as an instrument for changing the power relations
between two nations. If one could imagine the culture and more particularly, the political ideology with all its concrete
imperialistic objectives, of State A conquering the minds of all the citizens determining the policies of State B, State A
would have won more complete victory and would have founded its supremacy on more stable grounds than any military
conqueror or economic master. It softens up the enemy, it prepares the ground for military conquest or economic
penetration.

The Struggle for Power: Policy of Prestige

The policy of prestige has rarely been recognized in modern political literature for what it is: the third of basic manifestation
of the struggle for power on the international scene.

Prestige the desire for social recognition is a potent dynamic force determining social relations and creating social
institutions. The individual seeks confirmation, on the part of his fellows of the evaluation he puts upon himself.

Sources: Magstadt