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Concept
Power politics
Summary
Power politics is a theory of power in international relations which contends that distributions of power and national interests, or changes to those distributions, are fundamental causes of war and of system stability.
The concept of power politics provides a way of understanding systems of international relations: in this view, states compete for the world's limited resources, and it is to an individual state's advantage to be manifestly able to harm others. Power politics prioritizes national self-interest over the interests of other nations or the international community, and thus may include threatening one another with military, economic, or political aggression to protect one nation's own interest.
Techniques of power politics include:
Deterrence theory, in which a weaker state deters attack by bolstering its defensive capabilities enough to render attacking infeasible
Conspicuous weapons development (including nuclear development)
Pre-emptive strikes
Blackmail
The massing of military units on a border, whether for stationing or for exercises
The imposition of tariffs or economic sanctions (possibly to initiate a trade war)
Proxy warfare
Bait and bleed and "bloodletting" tactics
Hard and soft balancing
Buck-passing, in which a state attempts to coerce another state to confront a threat, in order to preserve its own capabilities and possibly intervene later
The use of espionage to subvert another state's capabilities from within
Covert and clandestine military operations, in which states obscure their role in an operation or conduct the operation in secret, respectively
Shock and awe, in which a state uses a real (or played-up) show of force to deter potential attack
Asymmetric warfare, in which a state uses unconventional warfare methods in order to exploit another's weaknesses
Propaganda, in which a state or its agencies use adverse inaccurate information to weaken another's reputation.
The German version is Machtpolitik. It celebrates the idea of conflict between nations as a means of asserting the national will and strengthening the state.
Official source
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