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.Theybelieve that the American way is the right way, that America s adver-saries are either wrong or evil, and that more often than not, beingreasonable and negotiating plays into villainous, untrustworthyhands.To deal with an unruly and threatening world, they definepower mainly as military might and the fear its use can engender inour enemies.Unlike liberals, in my experience, conservatives arenot embarrassed by this hard-nosed image of themselves; indeed,they embrace it.Moderates typically offer a little from column A, a touch fromcolumn B, and a pinch of C without an overall ideology and withoutmuch effect on the political debate.Moderates generally don t farewell in the political trenches; their distinctions and subtleties fadein the fray.They generally shy away from overall strategy, although,to their great credit, they emphasize facts and sensible pragmatism.I ve watched them lose countless political debates initially and fora while.They are not good at packaging their ideas for popular con-sumption; nor are they good proselytizers.They re too complex anddon t know how to make complexity more simple.However, yearsdown the line they often win by default after years of costly policyfailures caused by the more dogmatic liberals and conservatives.Arguments about power have been the stuff of presidential cam- 28 Power Rulespaigns as well as fierce battles waged on op-ed pages around theland, and the latter are not merely examples of rhetorical jousting:Jimmy Carter accused Henry Kissinger (and through him, RichardNixon) of sacrificing true American values on the altar of balance-of-power cynicism (although when I interviewed Carter off therecord as a reporter for The New York Times at the end of the 1976Democratic primaries, and asked him who he thought was the na-tion s most able foreign policy thinker, he replied, Kissinger ).ToCarter, values were power.Ronald Reagan charged Jimmy Carterwith exalting vague ideas of human rights over national interests andof being naive and weak when it came to Soviet power grabs.ToReagan, clear military superiority was the heart of power, althoughhe later added values to his quiver.Bill Clinton pounded GeorgeH.W.Bush and Bush s secretary of state, James A.Baker III, forheartless and un-American realism in the face of threats to human-ity in the Balkans and in Africa, yet he himself did nothing in eitherarena for years.To Clinton, international power was mainly eco-nomic power.And George W.Bush attacked the Clinton team fordraining America s military strength in its vain attempts at nation-building and for its weak responses to dictators like Saddam Hus-sein, yet Bush undertook the two biggest nation-building enterprisesin American history.To the second Bush, the will to use force andto stay the course was power.However intellectually flawed theirconcepts of power may have been, these concepts helped each manto capture the White House.The cycle of winning and losing definitions is familiar: Forceproves too costly or ineffective to one president, and a rival unseatshim with pleas for dialogue and values, and vice versa.At the endof the day, both conservatives and liberals actually do harm to U.S.foreign policy by misconstruing what they cherish so dearly thenature of power itself.Power is getting people or groups to do something they don twant to do.It is about manipulating one s own resources and posi-tion to pressure and coerce psychologically and politically.It s easy to confuse power in personal relations or within na- What Power Is, and What Power Isn t 29tions and power between nations.With people and inside countries,power can often be exercised by personality, leadership, values, per-suasion, and the like.There are generally far more shared values andinterests in these venues than in international affairs, and thereforegive-and-take can be relatively contained and controlled and thus bequite effective.Between states where there is little common frame-work, power necessarily takes on a harder edge and is more difficultand complicated to apply.It s easier to say no.In international af-fairs, persuasion and leadership rarely work, and force can be metwith counterforce, especially today.In twenty-first-century interna-tional relations, power entails far more pressure and coercion than itdoes in domestic politics or personal relations.Long before the world evolved to its present state and evenbefore the dawn of think tanks, the ancients perceived the distinctnature of international affairs.The Chinese and Roman empireslasted far longer than all those that followed, in both cases becausetheir leaders fully grasped the richness of power and the wide array ofinstruments and techniques for exercising it.They were particularlyadept at using their superiority in resources and generating successesto intimidate and co-opt adversaries.This, in turn, allowed themto avoid the constant application of costlier forms of power, such asmilitary force.China and Rome accumulated immense resources andpower, and never lost an opportunity to remind everyone else of theirsuperiority.Both, nonetheless, refrained as much as possible frompounding their conquered subjects militarily, and this restraint ledboth empires to rule relatively effectively and cheaply.The UnitedKingdom, more than other later empires, copied this strategy well.No one thought harder or with more insight and sophistica-tion about power and governing than the ancient Chinese and theRomans.They saw power from many angles: as the potential to dodamage or confer benefits, as momentum toward future accomplish-ments, as the grandeur of legitimacy and authority, as reputation, ascultural superiority, and as brute force
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