Notes on the Elusiveness of Modern Power
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207503000201 |
| Author | Stanley Hoffmann |
| Date | 01 June 1975 |
| Published date | 01 June 1975 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
STANLEY
HOFFMANN
Notes
on
the
elusiveness
of modern
power
Almost
everyone
agrees
with Raymond
Aron
that
power
is
not
quantifiable and
that
the
concept
of
power
cannot
play,
in
the
study
of
international
affairs,
the role
of
the
single
yardstick
which
money
plays
in
economics.
And
yet,
since
we
are
all
con-
vinced
that
politics
in
general,
world
politics
in
particular,
entails
a
struggle
for
power,
since
many of
us
have
been
trained
to stress
the
similarities
between
the
behaviour
of
cities
described
by
Thucydides
and
the
conduct
of
states
in
this
century,
we
tend
to
see
in
power,
for
all
the
diversity
of
its
components
and
for
all the
complexity
of
its
uses,
a
reasonably
stable
phenomenon,
whose
ingredients
are
not
subject
to incessant
changes
and
whose
exercise
follows
a
limited
and
well-known
number
of
imperatives
or
constraints.
By
now, however, many
have
come
to
recognize
that
the
post-
war era
has
witnessed
radical transformations in
the
elements,
the
uses,
and
the
achievements
of
power. One
aspect
of
this
'changing
essence
of
power"
which
deserves
more
attention
is
its
elusiveness:
the
increasingly
varied
and
rapidly shifting
nature
of
its
most
salient
ingredients
or,
if
one
prefers,
the
temporary
and
dubious
character
of
whatever
advantages
a
momentary
superiority in
one
of
these
components
provides, the
bewildering
uncertainties
and
complications
that
affect
the
exercise of
power,
the disproportion
between
ingredients
and
uses
on
the
one
hand,
Professor
of
Government,
and
Chairman,
Center
for
European
Studies,
Harvard
University,
the
author's
most
recent
book
is
Decline
or
Renewal?
France
since
the
Thirties
(New
York
1974).
i
Cf
Seyom
Brown,
'The
Changing
Essence
of Power,'
Foreign
Affairs,
LI
(January
1973),
286-99.
184
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
outcomes
on the
other.
It
is
therefore
not
surprising
to
find
that,
at
any
given
moment,
perceptions
of
power
turn out
to
be
both
misleading
and
fleeting;
and
that
calculations
of
power
are
even
more delicate
and
deceptive
than
in
previous
ages.
If
power
was
once
a
promise,
as
well
as
a
burden,
today
the
burdens
keep
grow-
ing,
but
the
promises
turn
into
illusions,
or
frustrations,
or,
at
best,
into
the
kinds
of
gains
that
condemn the
winner
to
per-
manent
anxiety.
One
can
argue,
of course,
that
this
has
always
been
true,
and
that
the
only
difference
with
the
past
is
a
difference
in
degree,
not
in
kind.
Hasn't
the
dominant
power,
for
instance,
always
been
the
target
of
challenges
and
active
envy,
haven't
the
runners
up
always
been
driven
by
the
anguish
of
competition?
Surely,
but
I
will
try
to
suggest
that
there
is
a
difference
in
kind
-
linked,
paradoxically
enough,
to
the
advent
of
features
of
world
politics
that
are
familiar
to
students
of
domestic
affairs.
The
notes
that
follow
may
well
tend
to exaggerate
both the
originality
of
the
present
and
the
elusiveness
of power.
Both
have
their
limits.
This
is
still
a
world
of
actors
competing
without
any
common
higher
allegiance
or
central
power,
a
world
in
which
military
forces,
population,
resources,
reserves,
gross
national
product,
etc
provide
some
measurable
indicators
of
usable,
and
therefore desirable,
power.
And
yet...
I
Let
us
begin
with
a
first
approximation
to
this
elusiveness
and
impermanence
of
power
today.
It
would
be
amusing
to
draw
up
the
maps
of
power
relationships
that
prevail
in
the
minds
of
statesmen
and
students at
successive
moments.
We
shall
limit
ourselves
to
the
recent
past.
For
a
long
time,
the
dominant
per-
ceptual
map
in
the
United
States
was
that
of
a
world
with
only
two
genuine
centres
of
power.
Clearly,
the
basis
for
this
view
was
the conviction
that
military
might
remained
the
main
ingredient
of
power:
the
United
States
and
the
UssR
had
a
nuclear
quasi-
duopoly,
as
well
as
the
most
sophisticated
conventional
armies.
In
the
rest
of
the
world,
Nehru's
India
loomed
large
as
a
spokes-
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