 You are clear for launch, and with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that, and um... Alright, once again, it's me, Mr. Ruchoff. Alright, in our last two lessons, we were talking about the economic systems and the government systems of the countries around the world. And just as Adam Smith said about individuals, countries also will do what they believe is best in their own interests. And this usually puts them into conflict between one country and another. So this means that countries will find themselves needing to influence other countries, which includes attempting to control territory, to be able to influence internal political relationships, if not actually having war. In other words, countries often, if not continuously, are using power to get other countries to do what they want them to do. And what some of you may not know is that for over 23 years, I served the United States Army and even have a master's degree in military studies, which means I have studied how do countries use power. So in this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to some of the same principles that strategic leaders and capitals around the world use to be able to practice power. So first, we must answer, what is power? Well, the word power comes from the Latin word, which means to be able. It's being able to do something. So the actual definition of power is having the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. So we can see the same definition applied to nations and national power, which is the nation's ability to influence behavior or exercise control over other countries or non-state actors. And when we talk about non-state actors, we're talking about groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Now, as each country is attempting to achieve national power, if one country becomes too powerful, it can lead to that country attempting to conquer the others. There's been examples of this in history, such as Napoleon's France and Hitler's Germany. So there is another very important term when we talk about national power, that is the concept of balance of power. Balance of power is the distribution and opposition of forces among nations such that no single nation becomes so strong that it can dominate the others. The Cold War that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1945 and 1991 was actually an exercise of power. Both sides were pretty much equally powerful, so neither was able to get an advantage. Now oddly, peace is achieved this way, although this peace may not always be entirely peaceful. However, major wars are usually avoided when no side feels it will be successful in totally toppling the other. Alright, so we know what power and national power is and we now understand the importance of the concept of balance of power. But what makes a nation powerful? And here we're going to find out that national power is much more than just armies and navies. When strategic planners from Washington DC or any other nation's capital think about national power, they talk about it in terms of the sources of national power and the instruments of national power. The sources of national power is what contributes to a nation having power. The instruments of national power is how nations use this power. Now first, let's look at the sources of national power. The sources of national power are physical geography, their its economy, its population, national will, and national direction. Now physical geography of a country can provide advantages which can increase that country's power. One example is a country on the island which makes it harder to invade. This is the reason why Germany's Hitler was never able to invade Great Britain, World War II, despite the fact that he really wanted to. And the fact that the United States is separated from the rest of the world by the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean has largely meant for the last 200 years the United States hasn't had to worry about someone trying to invade them. Likewise, mountains also provide protection. Mountainous countries such as Bhutan, Nepal, and Switzerland have seldom been invaded due to their positions in the mountain. But geography doesn't just allow a country to defend itself, it also allows it for it to develop more power. A country's natural ports, its waterways, its rail network all allows it to be able to receive goods and services that it might not be able to produce on its own. This also leads into a second source of national power, its economy. And this can be pretty easy to understand, the richer a country is, the more resources it has to be able to exert power. Now having more resources means that you have more things to trade and you have more trading partners. Now its strong economy allows for a country to exert power through being able to decide who it will and who it will not do trade with. Now if a country has more resources, this also means that it can support a larger military and it can support those military operations over a longer period of time. Furthermore, a strong economy also creates a better standard of living for its people. Now this is important because it is the population that is the third source of national power. A country's power is increased if it has an industrious creative population and a well-trained population. It increases the likelihood that it's going to develop more innovations and inventions that will further give a country an advantage over its peers. Now if the country has a positive population growth, meaning it's growing its population, it may have a manpower advantage over less populous neighboring countries such as the case of France in the time of Napoleon. The rich North European plane gave France a large agricultural producing region. This meant that France had more food and because it had more food it could support a larger army that Napoleon was able to use in order to try to take over all of Europe. Now the people of a country also important for another source of national power that is national will. National will speaks to the support that a population gives to its government and to the government's objectives. For example, for a country to be able to sustain military operations against another country, the government needs the support or at least the lack of opposition of its people. However, if the government lacks the support or its national will then it may find it unable to support this use of power. This was exactly what happened with the United States in the Vietnam War. Now during the Vietnam War the United States enjoyed a much larger economy, had a much more powerful military and was supported by the best technology of the age. This led to the fact that during the Vietnam War the United States military never lost a major battle but it didn't matter. See, as anti-war protests grew at home the US lost the national will to continue the war in Vietnam. This led to the American President having to withdraw our forces from Vietnam and give victory to the North Vietnamese. The United States lost the will of the people therefore it lost its war in Vietnam. Now the will of the people can be influenced by our last source of national power which is national direction. National direction refers to the government's ability to provide a clear vision for our future policy goals, commitments, as well as being able to get the people to support its aims. World War II has many great examples of this. America's Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his government clearly articulated the reason why we had to continue to fight against Germany and Japan. As a result they were able to hardest the efforts of the entire country to be able to continue the fight to the end. Likewise Adolf Hitler used his charisma to be able to galvanize the people of Germany behind his ruinous objectives of conquering all of Europe. Now whether for good or for evil a leader that can impart national direction becomes a great strength for that nation. Now how a nation uses this power is through what is known as the instruments of national power. The instruments of national power represent the resources that can be manipulated and employed as part of a state's strategy for national security. Now we can remember the instruments of national power by thinking of the dime which is diplomacy, information, military, and economics. Together these instruments represents the power the state may bring to bear against its regional and international neighbors. Now national power is a combination of all these elements and the state can use them in varying combinations according to the situation. Now the first of the instruments of national power is diplomacy or the political process. Diplomacy is the use of negotiations and speaking between countries in order to persuade another country to do a country's will. Diplomacy is often considered what we call a soft power because instead of using force to the military diplomacy seeks to find a way to resolve conflicts by talking it out with each other. Diplomacy itself is the art and practice of conducting these negotiations between representatives of different states or countries. The individuals that do this on behalf of their country are known as diplomats. Though diplomacy often results in a formal agreement between countries to either create peace, form an alliance, increase commerce between the countries or some other international objective. This formal agreement is called a treaty. Now perhaps the most important organization to conduct diplomacy is the United Nations. It was created right after World War II in an effort to prevent the world from going to war again in the same manner. Essentially the UN is where the world comes to talk it out. Hoping that their negotiations and discussions at the UN will facilitate cooperation between different nations and being able to solve international problems without resorting to war. Now currently there are 193 countries who are members of the UN. In fact there are only two countries in the world who are not in the UN. That is the Holy See or Vatican City and Palestine. Yes I know, I know that many people do not consider Palestine a country while others dimly declare that it has to be and this pretty much speaks to the reason why Palestine is not in the United Nations yet. Now the real power of the United Nations is in the United Nations Security Council. The Security Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and the nations of the world take turns serving on this council which has 10 members. However five countries are considered permit members and have vetoes over anything the UN Security Council and thus the United Nations itself wants to do. Now three of these are European countries which are Russia, United Kingdom and France. The United States and China are the other two permit members. Now by always having a seat on the Security Council and having that veto that means that these five countries have an enormous amount of diplomatic power. Now the second instrument of the dime is information. The information instrument to national power uses both official and non-official communication in a way to not only influence the governments but the people of these governments. An example of how the government can use information to influence the people of a country is the United States Voice of America. Through Voice of America the United States attempts to broadcast news stories into countries that may not actually have a free press. This not only attempts to weaken the power of totalitarian governments but it also gives the people of these countries a positive impression of the United States. Therefore the United States is using the information as a instrument of national power. Now the third instrument of national power is the use of the military and while conducting full-scale war and strategic strikes to be able to destroy targets in another country is certainly part of the military instrument national power. This instrument includes many other ways of using the military. For example the United States Navy and other navies of the world conducts what is called freedom of navigation operations to ensure that no country is cutting off the trade routes in international waters. But perhaps the most widespread use of the military instrument national power is through military alliances. Military alliances are when countries come together to assist each other's militaries and agree to come to each other's aid in case of undercountry is attacked. Now one of the most important of these military alliances is NATO or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Now this collection of 27 European countries plus the United States trains together shares resources but more importantly operates under the idea that an attack on one is considered an attack on all. NATO's alliance has meant to serve as a deterrent to other countries and originally this was the Soviet Union and also to be able to maintain peace within Europe. Now the last instrument is the use of a country's economic power. In this case nations use economic leverage to be able to get what it needs in the world affairs. For example in 2017 the United Nations passed a set of sanctions on North Korea that sought to prevent North Korea from getting the resources it needed in order to continue building its nuclear missile program. But in addition to blocking resources from going to another country economic power can also be used by providing economic aid to a country. Now this ability to either block trade or to help with trade gives a country the ability to influence other countries. Now in addition to sanctions countries enter into treaties and form organizations to combine the economic power of these countries to increase the influence that they might have. One of these organizations is the European Union or the EU which is an economic and political union. Now the predecessor of the EU was created right after World War II and it had the idea that if these European countries were more economically connected they would be less likely to go to war. Now today one of the advantages the EU has is it serves as a balance of power an economic balance of power to America's might. Now while each individual European country would find it difficult to compete head-to-head with the vast economy of the United States together the EU has roughly the same size economy as the United States and thus it has an economic balance of power. Now the EU today has 27 countries. It used to have 28 but in 2020 Great Britain left the EU in what was known as Brexit. Now another economic alliance meant to harness economic power is OPEC. The members of OPEC are some of the world's largest oil producers. In fact 75 percent of all the world's oil reserves and 50 percent of the world's oil production actually comes through these OPEC countries. This means that OPEC has lots of economic power by working together and how they use this power is by deciding how much oil to either produce or how much oil not to produce. They know that if they reduce the amount of oil they pump they can make the oil prices around the world rise and they know that if they can increase the amount of oil they can make the oil prices low. This gives OPEC a great deal of power on the rest of the world. All right so we have looked at the factors that actually create national power and how countries can be able to exert that through what we call the instruments of national power. You should now be able to look at any situation in the world and start to see how nations are using these instruments of national power or the dime to be able to exert their national power over the countries. All right keep on learning.