Reviewing Traditional Approaches to Measuring National Power

Given that power is central to international politics, it is not surprising to find most theorists of international relations advancing some means or another of measuring national capability.1 Indeed, among all modern treatises on the subject, George Liska’s The Ways of Power is perhaps exceptional in that it does not attempt any systematic definition of either the sources or the manifestations of national power.2 Kenneth Waltz seems to strike a middle ground: he proposes that power “be defined in terms of the distribution of capabilities”3 but does not specify too clearly what the components that make up each data point in the distribution ought to be, except that they should encompass “all of the following items: size of population and territory, resource endowment, economic capability, military strength, political stability and competence.”4 Hans Morgenthau is perhaps the most systematic of all modern theorists in this respect, and his approach has been followed by numerous other theorists since his work Politics Among Nations was first published in 1948. In