Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations

In Politics Among Nations, Morgenthau defined international politics as “the struggle for power” and “power politics.” “The aspiration for power,” he wrote, “is “the distinguishing element of international politics.” “The struggle for power,” he continued, “is universal in time and space and is an undeniable fact of experience.”

Morgenthau identified the elements of national power as geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, military preparedness, population, national character, national morale, the quality of diplomacy, and the quality of government. He judged the quality of diplomacy as the most important of these factors. A nation’s diplomacy, he wrote, “combines those different factors into an integrated whole, gives them direction

Economic dependence reflects a state’s vulnerability to interruption of trade by its trading partner. For a small power, this can be a decisive element in its alignment policy. Hirschman observed that “the power to interrupt commercial or financial relations...is the root cause of the...power position which a country acquires in countries, just as it is the root cause of dependence.” China’s growing international economic presence translates into political influence over its economic partners. The conventional wisdom among policymakers, economic actors, and scholars holds that the translation of economic power into political influence is virtually automatic: higher levels of bilateral economic relations should yield greater influence. Economic power can be measured in terms of bilateral economic relations (e.g. trade flows, foreign direct investment). Attractive venues to assess changed behaviors are in 1) the priorities of foreign leaders, 2) recognition of China as a market economy in accordance with long-standing Chinese goals, and 3) popular perceptions of China writ large. These can be measured, respectively, by whether foreign leaders make frequent visits to China, country recognition of China as a market economy within international

On one level, the rhetoric employed by China’s leaders to discuss their foreign policy goals viz. economic statecraft is of dubious reliability. They offer a sweeping view of what political changes they would like to see in the world, yet their economic integration with the world economy prohibits revisionist behaviour. At the same time, judging Chinese influence by looking at FDI or trade flows is unreliable – these aspects of Chinese economic policy are not consciously promoted as tools of influence, such that finding they do not yield China influence is unsurprising. This suggests the need to carefully re-think the metrics used to identify “influence.”

China as the Dominant Economic Power: South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and ASEAN
During the past four years, China has become the dominant source of economic growth for both South Korea and Taiwan. The result is that their dependence on the Chinese economy is increasingly greater than their dependence on the U.S. economy.

In 2002 the combined China-Hong Kong market became South Korea’s largest