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Natural Elements:
They are so called because they are endowed by nature and not man
made. These elements are:
1. Geography:
Since time immemorial the most stable element upon which a
nation’s power depends is geography. Geographical factors such as
climate, topography, location and size influence the power potential
of a nation. Climate for example acts as one of the determinants of
the culture and economy of a country. If the climate is good, there
would be a better work culture leading to more productivity. Great
powers of modern times have been situated in those regions blessed
with a temperate climate. Topography plays an important role in the
defense of nations. Topographical features such as mountains,
valleys, rivers may determine natural boundaries between nations
and set limits to their natural expansion. Mountains
like Himalayas the Alps and the Pyrenees and rivers like the Rhine
the Rio Grande and Yale served as guards on the boundaries
between nations. The Chinese aggression on India in 1962 shattered
this belief and necessitated a rethinking on the question whether
topography is important as natural guard or not. Location determines
the extent of a country’s vulnerability to invasion. It is a major
determinant of whether a country is a sea-power or a land-power.
2. Natural Resources:
Natural as well as quantifiable and stable element of power is natural
resources which include raw materials, agricultural products like
food and fiber, forests, minerals, waterfall, fertility of soil etc. It is
evident that the possession of resources such as coal, iron, uranium,
oil, rubber, bauxite, manganese, other ferrous and non ferrous
metals, non metallic minerals and natural gas is essential to
industrial and defense production in nation states. More recently, it
has been proved that the availability of petroleum at reasonable
prices is important to the good economic health of industrial nations.
The contemporary prosperity of many Arab countries is due to the
availability of plenty of oil there.
3. Population:
It seems a large population is an asset for the state. But it is not
really so. For example, China with the largest population in the
world is not as powerful as the United States and the Soviet Union
are. On the other hand Israel, Japan and Germany are powerful
inspite of their small population. That is why quality of population is
as important as its quantity. From quantity three point of view it is a
tangible element whereas it is intangible qualitatively. Thus
population can serve both as an assert and as a liability. If the people
are well fed, educated and properly trained, they are a great source
of power. But if they are ignorant, poor and illiterate, they are a big
burden on the state. Many qualities of population, such as unity,
literacy, loyalty, character and Spirit of love, sacrifice and duty are
crucial for making a country powerful but they are difficult to
measure. A good population serves as good military personnel,
civilians, workers, producers and consumers.
1. Industrial Capacity:
Technology may be said to be a nation’s capacity to convert the
endowed resources into actual power. It can be applied in the
economic and industrial sphere which means better machines and
better and abundant products. No nation in the present world can
become a great power unless it has the capacity to produce
tremendous quantities of goods and services. If a country does not
have the technology, industry and markets to process natural
resources efficiently, it is reduced to the position of a weak raw
material exporting state. On the contrary, a country with developed
technology but without natural resources is greatly dependent on the
importation of raw materials from other countries. For example,
many Western countries with the exception of the US are critically
dependent upon the supply of Middle East oil. They do not have any
firm control over its supply and price fluctuations. It can be safely
said that those countries which have both important raw materials
and developed technologies for processing are fully developed and
powerful countries.
3. Military Strength:
Scientific and technological development is the sustaining factor for
the armed forces without which the military strength cannot be
dependable and self-reliant. Indigenous capacity to produce different
kinds of modern and sophisticated weapons is necessary, otherwise
the nation cannot sustain prolonged warfare. Consequently,
notwithstanding their technological backwardness, many countries
have acquired military strength by buying weapons from the
advanced countries which has contributed to their military might. In
the beginning, most of the states increase their strength in this way
and later on build up their technological capability for defense
production and forces.
Military strength is relevant both in war and peace. No one can win a
war without a strong military base. In peace time also, diplomacy is
significantly affected by the leverages that rivals wield owing to
their respective military might. Military strength involves two main
things-armed forces and weapons. To analyze their role in national
power one has to take into consideration their size and quantity, their
quality and technological sophistication, their mobility and
deployment, their leadership and morale.
The size and number of armed forces are of great importance. Even
the age of space battles and push-button warfare has not undermined
the general importance of number. Therefore, a country with a large
size of defense forces will be always relatively in a better position.
Equally important is the weapons and equipment’s supplied to them.
A state with a small armed force, but armed with sophisticated
weapons and quality equipment can easily defeat another state which
has a much larger armed force using old weapons. Thus the quality
of the army and arms ammunition is also very crucial along with
their quantity. The quality of forces depends on the nature of the
training, the physical endurance and the morale of troops. Next is the
question of mobility and deployment. It stands for the ability of a
state to deploy its armed might in locations inside and outside its
territory.
Political Elements:
Political elements consist of type of government, bureaucratic
efficiency, political leadership and quality of diplomacy. All these
are important parts of the political system of a state and contribute
towards its power. These are discussed as follows:
1. Type of Government:
States formulate and conduct their foreign policy through their
governments. If a governments foreign policy is unified, specific,
representative of the popular will, stable, and at the same time
flexible, it can do wonders for the nation, and its power
position. Government also regulates social discipline, which is based
on the coordination of all efforts in its community. Good rapport
between the government and people bring greater allegiance of
people towards the country. Such an allegiance is a prime factor in
the development of national power.
2. Bureaucratic Efficiency:
If the bureaucracy is impartial, honest, clean and efficient, it will
generate more power for a nation. Corruption and inefficiency will
always cost a nation much both in peace and war. In peace, it will
stall development and progress. in war, it will set at naught all
coordinated efforts and prepare the ground for eventual capitulation.
Rich, well-armed, and even wisely governed countries cannot work
effectively unless they have efficient bureaucracies with which to
execute their policies. There are four views regarding the proper
role, method of operation, and adequate functioning of
bureaucracies. First, communist states believe in large-
scale bureaucratization not only in political but also in economic and
social sectors. But by now it has been realized that over
bureaucratization in communist countries has proved
counterproductive.
3. Leadership:
Leadership is of great significance to any analysis of national power
because it is leadership that utilizes the national resources to build up
power. Morale of the people also revolves around leadership. There
can be no integrated technology sans leadership. It is important for
many reasons. First, leadership utilizes the other components of
national power like geography, resources, population, industrial
capacity, technology etc, and this it does with the qualities that it
possesses. Second, it coordinates other elements of national power.
Third, it allocates resources between military and civilian
programmes. Fourth, it decides the nature of relations with other
states and declares war and peace. Decisions and actions of leaders
have a direct bearing on the power of the state. Couloumbis and
Wolfe rightly observe: Undoubtedly, greatness or incompetence,
wisdom or irrationality, effectiveness or impotence in leadership
considerably affects the power that a country has. Leaders such as
Napoleon, Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, Mao, Gandhi,
Kennedy, de Gaulle, Khrushchev, and Nixon have made a deep
impact on world history.14 An able leadership serves as a source of
great inspiration to a people. Such an inspiration is crucial both in
the realization of national development programmes and in the
assumption of initiative in foreign affairs.
4. Quality of Diplomacy:
Another significant component of national power is the quality of
diplomacy. It embraces all the power resources of a nation to bear in
such a way as to make the most of them, rattling. The sabre here,
offering rewards there, bringing forth arguments at another point
timing actions and concessions in such a way as to persuade one’s
enemies and allies to act as one wishes them to act of all the
elements that play role in gaining national power, the most
important, though unstable and intangible, is the quality of
diplomacy. All other elements are like raw materials, and the state
having them may be a potentially great power. However, it becomes
an actual power when it follows an effective foreign policy towards
this end through diplomacy According to Morgenthau, “The
conduct of a nation’s foreign affairs by its diplomats is for national
power in peace what military strategy and tactics by its military
leaders are for national power in war”15 If morale is the soul of
national power then diplomacy is its brain.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, France and Britain were proud of
their diplomatic skill. It was the art of diplomacy that gave to Britain
the relative consistency of power from Henry VIII to the First World
War. During inter-war period the USA was politically very strong
but played insignificant part in world politics as her diplomacy was
weak. It was only after the Second World War that the US pursued a
great power policy, shouldered commensurate economic, military
and diplomatic responsibilities and transformed the potential into
actual. There are also some diplomats in the third world countries
who have earned a name for their negotiating ability.
New factors such as the rapid increase in the means of transport and
communication, increasing appreciation of the importance of public
opinion and the practice of Open diplomacy have greatly affected
the character of diplomacy and contributed towards its decline. But it
is not fully correct Though it may have suffered a few setbacks yet a
high quality of diplomacy still plays an indispensable role for the
power of a nation. it is the only peaceful alternative to protect and
accomplish national interests. On the last one must remember that a
high quality diplomacy must also possess the element of
consistency.
Social and Ideological Elements:
Social environment of a nation influences its power making. These
elements are concerned with society’s ideals, ideas, attitudes,
sentiments, slogans, morale, character, social traditions and customs.
All these are parts of the social system and structure of a nation.
These are explained as below:
1. Ideology:
Ideology has remained a very vital aspect in the power of a nation
especially in the twentieth century. An ideology is a body of ideas
and beliefs concerning certain values and usually suggesting a
certain political and economic order in order to accomplish these
values. Richard Snyder and Hubert Wilson presents a comprehensive
definition of ideology. In their own words, it is a cluster of ideas
about life, society or government, which originate in most cases as
consciously advocated or dogmatically asserted social, political or
religious slogans or battle cries , which become the characteristic
beliefs or dogmas of a particular group, party or
nationality 16 Ideologies can be of different types-social, political,
economic, religious, racial and so on.
3. National Character:
National character is the trait of people towards all the walks of
national life. It is the outcome of evolutionary process and the
attitude of the previous generations which is transmitted to the next
generations. Each nation has a distinct character. It is also a product
of a specific social environment. National character determine the
attitude of a people to international trends and events, as well as the
resolution with which they will back up foreign policy in peace or in
war. The national character consist of intellectual and moral qualities
of the people which leave their imprint on a nation’s foreign
policy. Nicolson rightly observed national policy is colored and even
governed by national character and I would say that unless we
understand that character we cannot understand the policy.22
The people of a nation, thus, have some common traits and features
with which the sociologists generally identify them. As we generally
perceive Chinese in terms of cosmic unchangeability, of the
Germans in terms of thoroughness and discipline of the Russians in
terms of relentless persistence and tenacity, of the English in terms
of undogmatic common sense of the Americans in terms of
pragmatism and informality, of all Latins in terms of esthetic instinct
and volatility and the Indians in terms of detachment on the verge of
indifference.
The reasons for disunity or unity can vary from ethnic, linguistic,
racial, and religious diversity all the way to economic, political,
ideological and foreign-inspired divisions. Some plausible indicators
of disunity are terrorism, number of political prisoners, riots,
demonstrations, paralyzing strikes, media censorship, insurgency,
and even civil war.25 The most recent example of this factor is the
Soviet Union which has been a victim of internal tensions, disunity
and ethnic problem. All these factors have adversely affected its
power position in the world. India too has been riddled with
communal tensions, terrorism, casteism, riots, strikes, violence for
the last many years. That stood in its way to become a powerful
nation.
5. Accidents:
Sometimes accidents and unforeseen events also put spoke in the
wheel of power. For instance, “the sudden death of a great leader, an
earthquake, a famine, an epidemic of a dread disease such as the
plague, a misunderstanding or a breakdown in communication
during a crisis, and many other unforeseen events may deeply affect
the power relationship of nation-states. Since accidents cannot be
predicted in any other but aggregate statistical sense, they remain at
the summit of the pyramid of intangibility.”26 African countries
ravaged by drought and cyclone prone Bangladesh cannot think of
becoming powerful.
External Elements:
Most of the political scientists have laid stress on different internal
factors discussed above, ignoring external elements completely.
These external factors are in no way less significant than the internal
ones in determining a nation’s power. Couloumbis and
Wolfe,27 Lerche and Said,28 have, however, discussed the same in
their works.
4. Intelligence:
Intelligence in this context implies complete knowledge of the
strength and weakness of external foes and friends. Different nations
employ various secret agencies and spies to obtain this
knowledge. Sherman Kent explains, the idea is to produce “the
kind of knowledge our states must possess regarding other states in
order to assure itself that its cause will not suffer nor its undertakings
fail because its statesmen and soldiers plan and act in
ignorance.”31 This knowledge and information serves the purpose of
power. Such an information can be useful both in times of war and
peace. in war advance information about the strength and strategy of
the enemy greatly helps to effectively deal with the eventuality.
During peace time, prior knowledge about the other party’s plus and
minus points enables a country to extract maximum benefit to itself
on the bargaining table. Keeping in view the significance of this
element different nations have their own network of intelligence
agencies and spies such as USA’s CIA, USSR’s KGB and India’s
RAW.
Relativity of Power:
An evaluator may ignore the relativity of power by erecting the
power of one particular nation into an absolute. France after 1919
and Germany after 1936 were considered as absolute power, but
subsequent history established the falsity of this Opinion. Power is
never absolute. In international relations power is relative and
essentially relational as it cannot be measured in a vacuum. A state is
more or less powerful relative to some other state. Palmer and
Perkins elaborate, “Fifty divisions, three hundred war vessels, two
thousand planes all these may represent overwhelming might against
one opponent and miserable inadequacy against another.”32 its
relativity has been further increased by the development of nuclear
energy and emergence of the power of the weak. in the
contemporary world of nuclear deterrence, the national power is to
be assessed not in terms of the capacity of first attack but in terms of
the capacity of surviving retaliatory strength. The power of the weak
is linked with the emergence of new nations that restrict the
dominant nature of power and makes it further relative.33
Specificity of Power:
The problem of a proper evaluation of power is intimately linked
with the problem of the credibility of power. A threat which is not
credible has no meaning in the game of power. But the problem of
the credibility of power is further linked with the specificity of
power. That is to say, that no particular type of power can be such
that it can be applied in any form and in any condition. Even the
huge stock of nuclear weapons will be meaningless deterrent if the
rival thinks that these weapons will not be used, while less
destructive weapons can be proved fearful for opponent if it
considers that those weapons will be used against it. If all the above
errors are sought to be avoided assiduously then national power
cannot be measured exactly. At the best it remains a matter of
conjecture.
The Geneva Convention of 1864, 1906, 1929 and 1949 as well as the
Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 laid down certain specific
conditions regarding the treatment of the sick and wounded soldiers
by the other side. Third and final, there is moral condemnation of
war in the present century. War as an instrument of foreign policy
has been repudiated on moral grounds and all nations are keen to
avoid it as far as possible. The eschewing of war itself has become
an aim of statecraft only in the last half century. The two Hague
Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907, the League of Nations of
1919, the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, the League of Nations, and
the United Nations in the present times all have the avoidance of war
itself as their final goal.
After Second World War also many powerful states avoided war
even at the huge cost of their political and military advantage. The
desire to eschew war outweighed all other considerations of national
policy. The attempts of all the great powers to confine the Korean
War to the Korean peninsula and thus prevent it from developing
into a third world war and the self-restraint practiced by all of them
during many international crises (e.g Cuba, Suez, Kuwait etc) since
the end of Second World War are striking example of a basic change
in the attitude toward war Morgenthau sums up “Thus, while the
moral limitations upon killing in times of peace remain intact, the
moral limitations upon killing in war have proved to be largely
ineffective.”40
Sanctions:
Moral precepts act as restraint Owing to the following reasons or
sanctions as explained by Frankel. The first is found in the sanctions
imposed for violating the internationally accepted moral standards of
conduct which is in social disapproval. All countries, however
powerful, are sensitive to the dangers of losing the reputation and
prestige of acting morally. All countries are expected to abide by the
generally accepted standards of conduct, and are fully aware of the
disrepute arising if they are not obeyed.
Since all political actions come under public scrutiny and is nearly
always morally evaluated, the moral principles frequently professed
as veil for selfish national policy assume a momentum of their own
in order to avoid the unwelcome reputation of hypocrisy and
duplicity, however insincere they may have been in their
protestations, statesmen usually find it more convenient to obey the
professed norms than to violate them. In other words, domestic as
well as world public opinion compel leaders to follow certain ethical
standards in their international dealings.
Meaning:
These are Some of the minimum set of standards, which all human
beings seek. Morgenthau remarks, “Any violation Of the standards
of this world public opinion, against and by whomever committed,
would call forth spontaneous reactions on the part of
humanity for in view Of the hypothetical similarity of all
conditions, all men would fear that what happens to one group might
happen to any group.”49 But in actual life these set standards have
different meanings in different environments and countries.
International Law:
International morality and world public opinion have been discussed
in detail as above. The other limitations on national power such
as international law, balance of power, international
organizations and disarmament are being touched upon here briefly.
International laws are rules that regulate the conduct of nations at
international level. Most nations endeavor to be known in the eyes of
the world as law-abiding nations and in achieving this goal they
accept the obligations of limitation entailed by international law. If
each nation uses its power in unlimited ways against her rivals, the
world society would perish. There would be no peace or stability. It
would be perpetual state of war. To avoid this a code of conduct in
the nature of international law is essential to limit the national
power. Strictly speaking, international law is not a true law as it
suffers from many shortcoming such as the absence of a common
law making, law enforcing or law adjudicating body. Its execution is
dependent upon the will and convenience of the states. The
execution of these laws by consent or use of external force restricts
the scope of use of national power by any state.
International Organizations:
The coming into existence of international organizations like the
League of Nations and the United Nations has also kept the power of
the states within limits. At present, the member states are expected to
act in accordance with the principles enshrined in UN Charter. It is
correct that the United Nations cannot intervene in the internal
affairs of any state except when they pose a threat to the peace, but it
certainly acts as a check on the unfair and unlimited use of power by
the states and hence is a limitation on power. Chapter VII of the UN
Charter incorporates the theory of collective security which also has
a deterrent effect on the power ambitions of the states. Since its
formation, UN has done remarkable work not only in preserving
peace but also in limiting the ambitions of the super powers.
Disarmament:
Disarmament efforts in and outside the UN have also restricted the
national power. The steps towards disarmament have acquired much
significance in our times. An effort has been made through several
agreements, treaties and conventions to control the use of nuclear
and conventional weapons that have the potentialities to destroy the
entire world. To some extent this also helps in the reduction of
power.
REFERENCES