Intervalo comercial

Quebraram meu bandolim

“Não querem mais ouvir as minhas mazelas
E a minha voz chinfrim”

International Power and Influence

The relations between sovereign states assume three different forms: cooperation, conflict and indifference. When they cooperate, they benefit from the creation of new values, material or non-material. When they are in Conflict, they attempt to gain values at each other’s expense. In either case, they are interdependent. Whereas this analytical distinction is clear cut, interdependence in real life often involves conflict and cooperation at the same time. Not only can two states be in conflict regarding one or more issues while cooperating with, or remaining indifferent to, one another concerning issue ares, but their behavior may also be one of interlinked conflict and cooperation in the same issue area, as when two governments quarrel over how to share the values produced by cooperation or cooperate with a view to confining conflict within certain limits. Analytically speaking, power is relevant only when interstate relations are conflictive, not when they are cooperative (or indifferent). Influence, however, not only plays a role in situations of conflict but may also do so in the establishment, maintenance, and expansion of a purely cooperative enterprise. If it does so, however, it is not influence resulting from power.

(Klauss Knorr, The Power of Nations – The Political Economy of International Relations)