Power and National Interest

01.21 |

POWER

Power is a quite common word. Almost in everyday of our life, we hear that particular word. One might find it in many aspects, for example physics, and politics.

Beside being a common word, power is also a complex word. Many of the scientists have their own definition of power. Some of them are:

1. According to Weber, power is the ability of an individual or group to achieve their own goals or aims when others are trying to prevent them from realising them.

2. Power is the ability of its holder to make other individuals obedient on whatever basis in some social relationship. In Foucault’s theory, power is not only limited as physical force and headed through a single direction, but working in relation, creating counterforces.

According to him:

· Power is not a thing but a relation

· Power is not simply repressive but it is productive.

· Power is not only belongs to the state, nor it is only had by the government.

· Power is exercised and present in every level of social body.

· The exercise of power is strategic and war-like.

But initially, the core definition of power itself is the ability or capability to influence other parties to do a certain thing in order to reach particular goal or outcome.

Based on its form, power can be differenciated into three:

1. Soft power

According to Joseph Nye, soft power is the ability to attract others because of the legitimacy of the state’s values or policy.

The basic concept of the soft power is persuasion and negotiation. This form of power has the principal of no force or coercion. It can be in the form of culture, academic exchange, etc.

2. Hard power

While the soft power is concentrated on cultural and academical aspect, the hard power is concentrated on military and economical aspect. The power known by most of common people is hard power. The exercise of this hard power can be seen through wars, invasions, sanctions, etc. Contrary to the soft power, hard power often times uses force and coercion.

3. Smart power

Smart power is the kind of power that combines the other two forms of power, which are soft and hard power.

Smart power comes from the understanding that soft power is not necessarily better of more important than the hard power. From that understanding, Joseph Nye, Jr. stated that to create an effective strategy, one must combine the hard power with soft power.

NATIONAL INTEREST

National interest is often regarded as a mere agregation of particular interest or the most dominant or active interest, even though they are the minority – considered either asthe proportion of persons or cooperations involved or as the proportion of capital measured by pecuniary standards. (Beard 1935: 156)

In simpler words, one can understand the concept of national interest as the ambition, goal, or wish of a state, wether it is economic, cultural, politic, security, etc.

States, in several aspects is like individuals. Not every need of the people can be found in the state, thus the state must form a relation with another state. The form of relation can be a cooperation, colonialism, or open competition. To achieve its need, which in this case is relation, one state must have enough power.

For example, to achieve a cooperation, one state must have soft power since to achieve that cooperation the states must go through a negotiation. In another case, if one state chooses to colonialize another state, then the state must have enough hard power since to achieve the colonialism the state must go through military way.

Case example of the relation between power and national interest is the case of Shrouded in Mystery, New Bomber Makes Waves.

In late spring or early summer, the US Air Force will decide who will build its next-generation bomber. Yet, despite all the hype and public interest, the program remains shrouded in mystery.

The Long Range Strike-Bomber (LRS-B) program is stealthy, literally and figuratively. Few details are actually known about the bomber's capabilities or design. But the program's impact is already being widely felt throughout the Pentagon and its industry partners.

At the annual Air Force Association conference last September, Northrop Grumman hung a major ad for its LRS-B program.(Photo: Aaron Mehta/Staff)

The half a dozen analysts and experts interviewed by Defense News for this piece all agree on one thing: the LRS-B has the chance to shape American military aerospace for the next 20 years. Whichever competitor wins will reap a windfall of development money; the loser could find itself out of the military attack airframe business entirely.

And while the program appears to be on track, Congress is waiting in the wings for any sign of cost overrun or technological problems.

"This is crunch time," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the Teal Group. "It's the biggest single outstanding DoD competition by a very wide margin. That makes it important in and of itself."