A FAMILIAR sight in the newspapers and weekly magazines is a world map (often, I regret to say, on the Mercator projection) on which population, oil production, or similar information is shown by rows of small men, barrels, or other appropriate symbols. These maps are often interpreted in caption or accompanying text as indices of national power. No one denies that such information is relevant to power, but no reader of this journal needs to be cautioned that such information is only a first step toward an evaluation. The present paper spells out that caution and tries to take another step or two. Its thesis is: An estimate of national power has two aspects which are related, in a figurative way, like the two rays of a triangulation. Either ray gives direction, but it takes the two to give distance. A better analogy, perhaps, is that of two searchlight beams groping through the dark until they intersect on the target. One ray or beam is the conventional inventory of the elements or factors of power. It gives the power resources of a nation, using “resource” in a broad sense. The other ray is here called “national strategy.”

A FEW months before the French National Assembly was to consider the ratification of the European Coal and Steel Treaty, a board member of the National Council of French Employers, the president of the Association of Engineering and Metal-processing Industries, wrote confidently: “This treaty, drafted as it is with the definite, though unavowed and hence shamefaced, intention of destroying the very principle of business representation, will be rejected by the French parliament. …” A year later, the treaty, ratified without any modification, had obtained force of law for the six participating countries and opened the way for the operation of the common market.

EXPANSION of internal trade and a wider market for its products are generally considered necessary conditions for the economic strengthening of Western Europe. Obviously, creation of a wider market presupposes at least some liberalization of trade. Liberalization of intra-Western European trade might be part of some broader scheme, such as a world-wide liberalization of trade, or the establishment of a huge block of interlocking preferential areas, as advocated by the Strasbourg Plan; or it might be restricted to Western Europe alone. At all events, it is clear that the economic consequences of liberalization will depend on the areas to be liberalized and on the character of the agreements that pertain to the mutual removal of trade restrictions.

TENSION is not of itself an evil. Indeed, certain levels of tension are necessary if either life or social processes are to occur. Therefore, tensions may be either functional or dysfunctional. Dysfunctional tensions produce an inaccurate orientation to reality, impede or prevent the attainment of desired goals, or permit their realization at an unnecessarily high cost. Dysfunctional tension is, in general, undesirable, although it may at times be an appropriate instrument of policy. It should not be assumed that international tension is a cause of war, at least in a simple or direct fashion. Dysfunctional international tension is, however, usually productive of undesired consequences.