Concept Of National Interest

DEFINE THE CONCEPT OF NATIONAL INTEREST.

WHAT ARE THE DETERMINANTS OF NATIONAL

POWER IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA?

“ In International Relations, there are neither permanent friends or permanent enemies; there are only permanent interests “. - Lord Palmerston

INTRODUCTION

National Interest traces its roots at least back to the pessimistic realism of Machiavellian in the 15th century . National interest lies at the heart of the military and diplomatic professions and leads to the formulation of a national strategy and of the calculation of the power necessary to support the strategy.

National Interest is a general term, represents it the best or optimum set of conditions the people of a nation choose

It assumes a variety of meanings in the various contexts in which it is used. In fact, the concept has not been objectively or scientifically defined and a numbers of scholars have attempt to explain that “ concept of national interest are centred on core values of the society which includes the welfare of the nation, the security of its political beliefs, national way of life, territorial integrity and self preservation . Hans J. Morgenthau in ‘ Politic Among Nations ‘ mentions that the main requirement of the nation state is to preserve and protect its physical, political and cultural identity against encroachments by other nation states . From this, one is led to more specific objectives; the preservation of physical identity being equated with the maintenance of territorial integrity of the states; political identity being preservation of existing politico - economic regimes and preservation of cultural identity being equated with ethnic, religious, linguistic and historical norms in a nation state. Meanwhile, Joseph Frankel’s in his book “ National Interest “, defines and divided the concept of the national interest into 3 stages or levels as

Population. Population can be considered as a tangible element in the sense that it can be readily counted. There is frequent assumption made that the populace of the nation-state makes it powerful. To a certain extent this is true, but we can counter seriously if we assume that there is a direct relationship between population and power. For example, although China is more populous than United States, it is consider less powerful than the United States. On the other hand, Israel is disproportionately powerful considering its small population of a just over four million. Furthermore, even a tangible element of power such as population has some influence in the sense of intangible. It is obvious that all populations are not the same. A population that is healthy, well fed, unified, evenly spaced, well informed and loyal to its governmental authorities is likely to be much more powerful than a population that is badly nourished, diseased, over-crowded, illiterate, disunited and