Comment: “International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. (2000, 2006, 20 Marks)
The sentence opens Part Two of Hans J. Morgenthau‘s Politics Among Nations (1948), followed at once by “Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim.” Morgenthau wrote it against interwar idealism, to give post-war American policy a disciplined theory. It is the founding proposition of classical realism. It is indispensable, but it is not the whole of international politics.
What the statement claims
- Power defined: Morgenthau meant “man’s control over the minds and actions of other men”, a psychological relation, not simply military force.
- Root in human nature: in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (1946) he traced the struggle to the animus dominandi, the lust for power. Domestic politics tames this drive through law and government. International politics, lacking a sovereign, leaves it raw.
- Continuity: hence “like all politics”. The difference between the domestic and the international is one of degree, not kind.
- Patterns: all foreign policy reduces to keeping power (status quo), increasing it (imperialism) or demonstrating it (prestige). The analyst’s signpost is interest defined in terms of power.
The strongest case for it
- Anarchy and self-help make relative capability decisive. Kenneth N. Waltz and John J. Mearsheimer rebuilt the claim on structure rather than human nature, but kept its core.
- The record: Russia’s war on Ukraine since 2022; Operation Sindoor against Pakistan (May 2025); the US–Israeli war on Iran from 28 February 2026; and US tariffs on India, raised to 50% in August 2025 and cut to 18% in a February 2026 interim deal. Capability and leverage decide outcomes.
- Institutions reflect power: the P5 veto and quota-weighted IMF voting entrench the distribution of 1945.
- An Indian precedent: Kautilya‘s mandala and the vijigishu, the would-be conqueror, read inter-state relations as a power contest two millennia earlier.
Critiques
- Neorealist correction: Waltz (Theory of International Politics, 1979) argued that states seek security, not power for its own sake. Power is a means, and maximising it can provoke balancing.
- Ends beyond power: Arnold Wolfers distinguished possession goals from milieu goals, such as a stable order or a healthy environment, that no one can own.
- Liberal: Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye‘s complex interdependence (1977) describes multiple channels, no fixed hierarchy of issues and a declining utility of force. Trade, climate and health diplomacy are not reducible to a power struggle.
- Constructivist: Alexander Wendt‘s “anarchy is what states make of it” (1992) treats power politics as a socially produced culture, not a law of nature.
- Marxist: the real struggle is among classes; state power expresses it.
- Feminist: J. Ann Tickner (1988) reformulated Morgenthau’s principles, arguing that power-as-domination is a masculine construct and that power can also mean mutual enablement.
- Methodological: if every act is power-seeking, the claim is unfalsifiable.
Indian experience
Jawaharlal Nehru‘s non-alignment and Panchsheel sought to rise above bloc power politics, and 1962 exposed the cost of underrating it. C. Raja Mohan (Crossing the Rubicon, 2003) traces India’s later turn to a power-conscious realism. Yet India’s multi-alignment, from the Quad to hosting the BRICS summit in September 2026, mixes power-balancing with institution-building, which Morgenthau’s frame captures only in part.
Conclusion
The statement is valid as a description of the irreducible core of international politics: no state can escape the question of power. It fails as a complete explanation, because states also pursue security, welfare, identity and order through cooperation. Morgenthau himself made prudence, diplomacy and the balance of power the means of restraining the struggle he described.