International Relations

Shreya Gambhir(09116--)

Introduction
In the context of international relations, power (sometimes clarified as international power, national power, or state power) is the ability of one state to influence or control other states. States with this ability are called powers, middle powers, regional powers, great powers (sometimes capitalized), superpowers, and hyper powers. Recently, entities other than states has acquired the same ability to influence and control other states, most often these are multinational corporations with financial assets surpassing smaller states, but also organisations such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank show that they have international power.

Recent history :
The Great Powers are often taken to be those nations or political entities that, through their great economic and military strength, are the arbiter s of world diplomacy, and whose opinions must be taken into account by other nations before effecting initiatives. Characteristically, they have the ability to intervene militarily almost anywhere, and they also have soft, cultural power, often in the form of economic investment in less developed portions of the world. Different sets of Great Powers have existed in history, but after 1815, the Concert of Europe formalised France, the United Kingdom,Russia, Austria, and Prussia as the five powers. Again, after 1945, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, China, and the United Kingdom were formalised as the five powers with permanent seats and veto power in the UN Security Council. Clearly, shifts in great power status tend to follow wars. Great powers are also often associated with a particular military technology, such as dreadnoughts ornuclear weapons.Arguably, at the start of the twenty-first century, the USA was the unique Great Power. There is in any case a great contrast with the situation at the start of the twentieth century, when the number of candidate and actual GreatPowers was closer to ten.

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National power is composed of various elements, also referred to as instruments or attributes; these may be grouped into two categories based on their applicability and origin - "national" and "social".
y

National : o Geography. o Resources. o Population. Social : o Economic. o Political. o Military. o Psychological. o Informational.

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Categories Of Power
Political analysis often personifies nation states as powers, discussing superpowers, great powers, second-order powers and "European powers". States have always had variable levels of powers and a number of terms have been developed to describe this such as: AHyperpower is a state that is by far the world's most dominant (for example, the United States today) ASuperpower is a state that is greatly more powerful than almost all other countries (for example, the US and USSR during the Cold War) AGreat power is a state that is one of the leading powers in the world (for example, the United Kingdom in the 19th century) AMiddle power is a state that cannot dominate other states, but does have some international influence (for example, Canada today). A term often used interchangeably with middle power is regional power, a state that dominates other states in its region. Examples of regional powers would be India in South Asia and Australia in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean.

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Instruments Of National Power

The phrase instruments of national power refers to the tools a country uses to influence other countries or international organizations (like the UN), or even non-state actors (like Al Qaida, the PLO, or even Green Peace). In the American perspective, the instruments of national power are: 1) Diplomacy 2) Information 3) Military 4) Economic Recent discussions to attempt to expand these four include: a) Financial (closely related to Economic) b) Intelligence (a combination of national and military intelligence) c) Law Enforcement (as in standards, practices, and abilities) The United States National Security Strategy (NSS) is a mandated by Congress and is the principal document that lays out how the President plans to use the instruments of power to achieve US National Security objectives. The US instruments of power are tremendous because of the magnitude of the capability of this country in each of these areas. The democracy is stable and their diplomats are known for their integrity and expertise. Thei r free press and public access to each branch of government provides uncensored information on American intent and objectives. Their military is known for its might, honour, and global reach. Lastly, economy is strong and quickly give foreign aid to countries that need it. Together these instruments of power form a unique blend of carrots and sticks

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to influence other international players.

State power can be conceived at three levels:

(1) resources or capabilities, or power-in-being; (2) how that power is converted through national processes; (3) and power in outcomes, or which state prevails in particular circumstances. The starting point for thinking about and developing metrics for national power is to view states as capability containers. Yet those capabilities demographic, econom ic, technological, and the like only become manifest through a process of conversion. States need to convert mate rial resources into more usable instruments, such as combat proficiency. In the end, however, what policymakers care most about is not power as capability or power-in-being as converted through national ethos, politics, and social cohesion. They care about power in outcomes. That third lev el is by far the most elusive, for it is contingent and relati ve. It depends on power for what, and against whom.

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National Power, Population & Economic Growth

The current military regime of Burma focused the national power concepts in their propaganda and training programmes of Defence Services Academy (DSA) and Union Solidarity & Development Association (USDA). Also they used the examples of China and India to demonstrate how population growth can increase the national power of a state. In addition, the State Peace & Development Council claimed that the government is struggling for economic growth. As a result, young military officers and USDA members got the propaganda concepts and some think that they are doing the right things. However, the realistic concepts and situations are different. In this essay, I am going to mention the nature of national power and derive the Solow neoclassical model of economic growth written in terms of effective labour units and illustrate the relationship between population and economic growth. Furthermore, I would like to demonstrate why democratization is needed to increase the national power and economic growt h.

The best starting point to discuss about the nature of national power is to characterize what constitutes a nation- state. The characteristics of a nation state include
y y

y y y

Sovereign political unit Population that in being committed to a particular collective identity through a common image of past and future shares a greater or lesser degree of nationalism A territory in its own Common and independent economic patterns Common linguistic and cultural patterns. From the psychological aspect, the nature of a nation state s power is crucial because it represents the capabilities of the nation. The major elements of the national power include

Geography
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y y y

Natural resources Population The nature of a country s government Among them, the military regime emphas ized on the population concepts in its training. In the next section, I would like to demonstrate the theories and applications of the relationship between economic growth and population.

Theory:
The upfront key terms used in this section:
y

Economic growth : A continued increase in the size of an economy (its GDP), i.e. a sustained increase in output over a period (Thomas, 2000:31) Effective labour units: A*N is referred to as effective labour where A is the state of technology and N is labour. Population growth rate: The rate at which a population is increasing (or decreasing) in a given year due to natural increase and net migration, expressed as a percentage of the base population (Hewitt, 2000:126) It is clear that the output per effective labour u nit and the population growth rate is negatively correlated. The higher population growth with unchanged saving means that capital does not grow fast enough to keep up with labour force growth and depreciation in this case, lower capital-labour ratio gives a decline in output per effective labour unit. In contrast, the lower population growth with unchanged saving rate means that there has a sufficient capital to keep up with labour force growth and depreciation. In this case, a higher capital -labour ration gives an increase in output. During the transition phase, growth rises above n and the high population growth can increase the output and capital growth in n goes in hand with growth in y. However, output growth falls back to the growth rate of population. Growth rises above n during transition between steady states

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To summarise, a fall in population growth: causes output per effective labour unit grow in the short run increases output per effective labour unit in the long run gives higher capital-labour ratio

Maintains the sufficient capital to keep up with labour force and depreciation in the long run.

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Conclusion
These are the main reasons why the developing countries are trying to decrease the population growth to improve the economic capabilities. In reality, the national power of the population means the population with industrialization, the population that can increase the output level of production. To achieve the full scale pro duction, the policies of the government should be effective and the effectiveness of the policies depends on the nature of a country s government. Burma has got the comparative advantage in other elements of national power such as a good geographic situati on for International Trade, enormous natural resources and the reasonable level of population. However, the nature of a country s government has been wrong throughout the histories; leading to a drawback in national power. The data for democratization shows that in 1975, 68.7% of the countries were authoritarian, 7.5% were partial democracy and only 23.8% were liberal democracy. In 1995, only 26.2% were still remained authoritarian and the rest were partial or liberal democracy. Stoessinger (1986) claimed that democracy has a great advantage for national power because it rests on the consent and voluntary support of the governed, where dictatorship requires coercion.

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