Strategic Interest Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Strategic interest is, by definition, a highly contextual notion reflecting the preferences of the actors involved in politics or in policy. Simply put, a strategic interest implies the preference or a set of preferences that are considered crucial by a specific actor. An actor’s interests will define its actions.

Strategic interests will prescribe its behavior. Yet, as this definition makes it clear, each actor has different interests and values differently each option to fulfill its goals therefore emphasizing different key enablers for its policy.

Scholars of international relations have developed analytic tools to model strategic interactions. Game theory is a branch of mathematics concerned with predicting bargaining outcomes. It assumes that actors are rational and that they perform cost-benefit analyses. The different games capture the fundamental dynamics of various bargaining situations. The results of the analyses depend on the preferences that actors are assumed to have about outcomes. Preferences ultimately depend on the identification of the actor’s strategic interests.

The identification of strategic interests is at the core of theories of negotiations, conflict resolution, foreign policy, and coercion. A successful bargaining process implies knowledge of what the other party treasures and what scares it. This provides a range of interests that, when combined with ours, describes a zone where a possible agreement can be met by both parties. Strategic interests are those interests beyond which no agreement can be found. Alternatively, the identification of the enemy’s strategic interest and its denial also allows coercing it into an agreement or capitulation.

In theories of international relations, interests are considered by the materialists as coming from the power structure of the international system. For the realists the distribution of material capabilities defines a state’s interests. For the neorealists, the ultimate strategic interest is survival; for the classical realists, it is power. For the latter, strategic interests are those that allow power projection or deny others the ability to do so. These can be territories, allies, or technology. For sociological approaches, interests come from ideas and cultural contexts. Also, interests are not limited to states but can stem from domestic groups or be influenced by international actors. Strategic interests are here conceived as those that are essential for the maintenance of the actor’s values. The major limitation of these two approaches is that they are one-sided. Not only do they assume that interests are determined unilaterally by power or norms but they are also mutually exclusive.

The relationship among interests, identity, and power is best conceived as reflexive, each feeding back one upon the other. Adopting this understanding implies that strategic interests can evolve with time and that a dynamic approach to the analysis of strategic interest must be adopted. This can be done by adopting a two-level game of analysis. This concept was coined by Robert Putnam (1988), and it implies that state’s strategic interests are the result of both the domestic and the international environment. A state must make a cost-benefit analysis that ultimately depends on the maximization of its utility at the domestic and international level.

Bibliography:

Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996.
McSweeney, Bill. Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Putnam, Robert D. “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics:The Logic of Two-level Games.” International Organization 42, no. 3 (1988): 427–460.

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