Star Trek and IR

After our discussion in class about power and how it is created and vested in people, I was watching TV Thursday afternoon and saw an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. If you never watched the show the characters won’t mean anything to you but the quote is still important. Gul Dukat and Weyoun are talking about what to do after the Dominion conquers Earth. Weyoun wants to kill all the humans so that they can not rebel, but Gul Dukat sees it differently. He says that the only way to ever truly defeat your enemy is to make them realize that they were wrong to oppose you in the first place.

This has a lot to do with power in my opinion. Weyoun’s understanding of power is a very literal one. The only way to prove that you have more power than someone else is to kill them. Until that happens they are still ultimately free to do as they want (see my previous post on anarchy for more about this). But Gul Dukat sees it differently; he sees power as being able to persuade others to see things your way. This raises the question of what is power, both in the international system and in our classroom that seems to serve as an example of the world at large.

In the international system power is more than just armies and economies. Kofi Annon has neither at his disposal yet he sometimes manages to get states to act the way that he wants. He somehow or another has some kind of power. The same could be said of the Pope. Recently the Catholic Church hasn’t invaded anyone, yet it still has some ability to sway events in the world. There must be something more to power than just the ability to kill the other actor. Professor Jackson could fail us but Jesse can’t, and yet we still listen to him. If Jesse told us to read something for class we would do it, or at least as many of us as if Professor Jackson had told us to. Jesse has no way of “killing” us yet he still has power.

I’m not sure that I have an answer as to how these sources of power are created when the actor can’t really back up their threat. The good realist in me says that they don’t actually have any power and that we are just to lazy to stand up to them or that they have strong allies that have some actual power, but another part of me says that maybe power can be created through repeated interactions and norms. Maybe power can be vested in someone merely by our understanding of the relationship between us. *shudder* I can’t believe that I might actually be thinking that. Well before I turn all constructivist or something I think I need to stop this entry and go freshen up on my Machiavelli.

Matt Bank