[MUSIC] In this video, we're going to look at a very, very fundamental concept that animates and motivates the study of politics, be it domestic or international. This is the concept of power, we all love power, we want to be powerful people, we want to have impact. We want to be seen as extremely capable of doing many things and to be recognized as being powerful. That's at the level of human beings, you and I, but think about nations, nation states. They also often have this drive to be powerful. And for millennia, even before there were nation states, we had empires and civilizations. Go back in time. The drive for power to acquire power, to maximize power, to wield power over others, this has been the story of politics since inception and in international relations, power is a very, very fundamental idea. We all know it, there may be 193 countries in the United Nations as nation states, but we know which are the real powers among them. Which are the top powers, which are the medium rank powers and which are the weak or small powers. Most of us instinctively, you name a country, I say, “Kiribati,” you're going to say, “It's a small power.” I say, “Brazil.” You're going to say, "It’s a medium power,” I say, “China.” You're likely to say it's a great power or a superpower. So, in this lesson, we're going to be looking at what it means to have power. In international relations we generally define this concept of power, “as an ability, a capacity or capability of a nation state to be able to mold or influence the behavior of other nation states or non-state actors”. So, the idea is you have some attributes, some strengths, with which you try to influence the behavior, the conduct, or even the thinking of others outside your country. That is power. In other words, it's a relative idea. It's not like, how many tanks do I have in absolute terms? Or how much money do I have in my treasury? That's all there, all that matters but how are you going to use that capacity to influence the conduct of other countries around the world in the way you want them to? That's power. So, think of power as nothing but a kind of capability which you can exert or influence, or impress upon other countries and other possibly non-state actors as well. So, power essentially, the drive for power is supposed to be in built or we are all wired into it. And so, it has been in the international order since time immemorial. Think about all the empires and civilizations in the past before the nation state system came to existence in the 17th century and they all sought this thing called power. It's the ultimate elixir of world politics; without this, there is no quest, there is nothing to achieve or obtain, right? So, if you're a state, which is of course the mainstream political formation of today's time, if you're a nation-state, then you want power. Power for what purposes? We will discuss. But we want power and everyone knows that there are differences, right? It is unfortunately an unequal world, it's never been a place where every country or every political formation has been roughly equal or has been the same. There are some strong and some weak. If you go back to Thucydides, the great Greek historian, who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian wars, there's a very famous dialogue in the Peloponnesian war history called The Melian Dialogue. This is where Thucydides says, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This is an antiquity, Before Christ, BC era, and he's saying the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Let me fast forward you to another example from the 21st century 2010, July 2010 Hanoi, Vietnam. ASEAN countries, Southeast Asian countries are having a dialogue with their regional partners. It's called ASEAN Regional Forum and the foreign minister of China is there at the table along with his ASEAN counterparts. So Yang Jiechi, the Foreign minister, is being asked by ASEAN countries to not to press too hard on the South China sea territorial disputes with them. And China is being reminded that all these smaller countries of ASEAN, many of them have claims, should be treated with dignity and with respect and not bullied. What does Yang Jiechi say? Yang Jiechi says, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact, you cannot deny it.” And he says this with a sense of what can be called arrogance or just the swagger of being powerful. It's a fact. Accept the fact that China is big, Vietnam or Philippines or Malaysia or Taiwan or other smaller countries are small. So, if you intend to make a claim on the South China sea as if you are our equal, “Hey, watch out, you're not our equal, you're actually our inferior.” This was his basic point and a lot of ASEAN countries were really, really stunned because at that time China was only slowly beginning to adopt what is today called expansionist, or assertive form of foreign policy behavior. But even then, a big power was reminding small or medium powers that, “Know your place, we are stronger than you.” So, from a Chinese point of view in that example, might may be right. They're simply saying, “Accept the fact that there are power differences. That there is a vast gap in military, economic and other forms of influence, in capabilities that you have compared to what we have. “So, act your place.” And this also goes back to Chinese, cultural notions, Confucian notions, of everyone having a place in society and here of course is the society of all of Asia or of the Indo-Pacific region. And China is saying, “We are at the top of the chain and you are much lower. And so don't make claims that could be made by equals or superiors, respect us because we are stronger.” So power is that kind of thing; it's always used in dialogue, it's not just expressed in the form of force. We're going to see later on how important power is and how it is actually instrumentalized and how it is measured. But right now, I want you all to think about power as this bunch of capabilities or capacities. And how you use it in your foreign policy vis-a-vis other countries,]. How you're able to apply this core strength of yours and translate it into achieving your Objectives. This course is all about this. It's about the linkage between power and foreign policy and power is without doubt the core idea of politics. So, if you ask me, what is the difference between political science and sociology for example, they're similar, they're both social sciences. But I would say political science is distinguished from sociology by the fact that political science of which international relations is a sub field, is primarily about power and it's about the quest for power, the thirst and the hunger for power. And how different societies and states and non-state actors visualize power. And how they want to attain it and how they want to hold on to it and how they want to use it, for obtaining their objectives. So, this is in many ways the Holy Grail, everybody wants to be powerful, not everyone can become powerful. Some countries and leaders think they are really powerful when maybe they're not. Some of them have ambitions to become, to rise up the ladder of the power configuration. And if you're small today, you want to become medium, if you're medium today, you want to become big. If you're big, you want to remain big and maybe not allow anyone else to become big. That's a folksy way of summing up the what we call power politics or power dynamics. So, the world has never been free of power dynamics and power politics, we have to recognize it. It's not an ethical or a moral issue. It's actually about understanding and acknowledging that power matters in the world. It's about working around the idea of power; it's about being comfortable with power in many ways. Some are uncomfortable, they don't want to be in this race, yes, there are countries that don't want to be in this race too. They don't want to go up the power ladder but I would say they're an exception. Look at the state elites of most countries, they are after power and they want to achieve it and want to sustain and want to use it. So, to sum up power is capability to influence the conduct or behavior or even the thinking or the thought process or the ideology of other countries and only some have great power status. There are quite a few middle powers and the majority of nation states in the world today, or even going back in time, have been small powers. [MUSIC]
