Is power a zero – sum or variable game in international relations? Can zero – sum game explain the mixture of conflict and cooperation of the present dynamics of international relations? (2012, 20 Marks)
Whether power is a fixed quantity that states divide or an expandable one that can grow for several at once divides realism from liberalism most sharply. The answer turns on which sense of power is meant: relative position is zero-sum, while capabilities and welfare are variable-sum. A purely zero-sum model therefore cannot account for today’s blend of rivalry and collaboration.
Power as a zero-sum game
- Relational logic: on Robert A. Dahl‘s definition, power is A’s ability to make B do what B would not otherwise do. Measured relative to a rival, every gain in leverage is someone else’s loss.
- Anarchy and relative gains: Kenneth N. Waltz (Theory of International Politics, 1979) argued that under anarchy states ask not “will both of us gain?” but “who will gain more?”, because today’s partner may be tomorrow’s threat. Joseph M. Grieco (1988) called states defensive positionalists, ready to reject a profitable bargain that shifts the balance against them.
- Offensive realism: John J. Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001) holds that great powers maximise relative power because security is scarce.
- Domain: strongest where goods are positional: territory, status, a veto, a chokepoint.
Power as a variable-sum game
- Absolute gains: neoliberal institutionalists, led by Robert O. Keohane (After Hegemony, 1984), argue that states mainly ask whether they are better off than before. Institutions supply information, extend the “shadow of the future” and dampen relative-gains fears.
- Power as a circulating medium: Talcott Parsons likened power to money, which expands with confidence and credit. Hannah Arendt saw it as the capacity to act in concert, so cooperation creates power rather than dividing it.
- Soft power and public goods: Joseph S. Nye‘s attraction is not depleted by sharing; climate stability and freedom of navigation are non-rival goods.
- Evidence: within the European Union, Franco-German relative gains stopped being a security question after three wars.
Can the zero-sum game explain today’s mixture?
On its own it cannot. Strict zero-sum adversaries would not trade or co-author agreements, yet rivals do both.
- US–China: American chip export controls met China’s sweeping rare-earth controls of 9 October 2025. At Busan on 30 October 2025 Beijing suspended them for a year and Washington halved its fentanyl-linked tariff to 10%; their Washington summit of September 2026 extended the truce to 10 January 2027.
- India–China: Xi Jinping came to New Delhi for the BRICS summit (September 2026) and agreed with Narendra Modi to seek a “fair, reasonable and mutually acceptable” boundary settlement, while India’s trade deficit with China reached about $112bn in 2025–26.
- India’s multi-alignment: S. Jaishankar‘s The India Way (2020) prescribes a time to “engage America, manage China”, a mixed-motive brief: India sits in the Quad and also chaired BRICS in 2026.
Thomas C. Schelling (The Strategy of Conflict, 1960) supplies the better model, the mixed-motive game, in which parties share an interest in avoiding mutual loss while competing over distribution. Robert Axelrod (The Evolution of Cooperation, 1984) showed that repeated play lets cooperation emerge among egoists. The realist rejoinder still holds: relative-gains fears explain where cooperation stops, at strategic technology and territory. Issue structure, positional or non-positional, sorts the two logics, and Alexander Wendt adds that the sorting is not fixed: shared identity can convert positional rivalry into partnership.
Conclusion
Power is variable-sum in aggregate and zero-sum at the margin of position. Zero-sum reasoning explains the limits of cooperation, not its existence. Today’s system is a mixed-motive game, in which conflict and cooperation are not alternating phases but simultaneous properties of different issues within the same relationship.