19 June 2025, NIICE Commentary 11317
Dibya Deep Acharya
The world is made up of constructs dictated by propaganda, history, narratives, ideologies, and so much more, and through them, countries try to justify a certain thing as ‘right’, which usually becomes a political preaching of what you want your’ people to believe. For states to seek power and for their pursuit to be justified, to give each country’s pursuit some merit when it comes to their chase, comes deeply from the ideas of nationalism, self-help, sovereignty, the rights of the people, and so on.
But one can argue, especially in a constructivist world, isn’t the want for power at its core is only a narrative ‘your’ country tells ‘you’? Meaning, why is China’s national interests more important for the Chinese and the same is less important for the Americans? A simple answer to the above would perhaps be nationalism, and that’s the end of this paper. But this paper tries to dissect the ideas of overarching nationalism and analyse the aspects that are beyond them. It explains that for a state’s pursuit of power to be justified, states need a functioning narrative.
The Ethnocentric State of Nations
All power seeking nations think their structure is better, as that is what is engraved and integrated in them and such nations believe that their ascend to the top is something that they deserve, something that they need, and something that would be better perhaps not for the world, but at the very least, for themselves. The pursuit of power is universally and scholarly argued as that one static and unchanged core desire of not just capable states but every nation.
For a better understanding of the world’s division, the world system of power-seeking nations can be divided into three types:
- status quo powers
- revisionist states and
- revolutionary states
Status quo powers are the hegemons that do not want change, while revisionist states want a revision in the existing international order because they’re not happy with its structure. American scholars like Ikenberry talk about how the US has become a revisionist state. China, too, can be called a revisionist state because all they want is influence through their own ways/ideas of governance and global structures.
The US, once a global hegemon, today is challenged by the global order it helped create. Though it does not explicitly wish for reforms, it makes them, and in the contemporary period, through tariffs and its ‘self-preserving’ foreign policy conduct. China’s desire for accession to the IMF, as well as equitable reforms in the global structure, and their desire for changes in the UN, too, are what make them a revisionist state. But then, who is the Status quo power of today?
The Powerful One Wishes No Change
All power-seeking countries today wish for change, and they always will until they are the one singular strength. If they become the only might of the world, they’d want stability and they’d be status quo power, and if they fail to do so, they tend to become revisionist states. That’s a simple summary of the ‘Hegemon and the Revisionist State’, but in today’s multipolar world, the power structures have never been more complex, as there is no ‘one status quo power’ or a particular hegemon.
China keeps on building its military, production, and economic might, whereas the United States of America keeps on failing to nurture its core strengths. But to understand this power-struggle in terms of the hegemon and the revisionist, one must have a nuanced outlook through a segmented form of reality attribution.
Categories through attribution help us understand them better, like how states would only want to maintain the status quo in aspects if it’s beneficial for them, and would want reforms in other aspects if it’s harming their agendas or national interests. Thus, this idea and pursuit almost become subjective and something that’s driven by desire and necessity, all in an attempt to maintain and justify their pursuit of power.
Assumptions for a Justification
In terms of dissecting the idea of power and its nuances, assumptions can be made, assumptions to justify the idea that revisionism and narratives serve only as a tool for the justification of power-pursuit:
- Revisionist countries have their own version of a narrative for their power pursuit and a narrative of why they think they deserve ‘things’ more (Assumption-1)
- Revisionist countries feel like they’ve been done wrong in some sense in the international order, and that’s a narrative they use as their bargaining chip to seek reforms (Assumption-2)
- The pursuit of power in some form comes from a sentimental desire for a nation (as well as their level of capacity) (Assumption-3)
Examples & Justifications
Assumption 1: The ‘deserving’ Bias
Referring to India as an example, the sentiments of how they were glorious before colonialism, and were left behind in the world of growth. For them, their status quo and its naturality come from the ideas and historical narratives of ancient India and its romanticisation. Thus, when India (a revisionist country) seeks power through reforms, it makes sense from not just a national standpoint but also from an international standpoint.
Assumption 2: The ‘victim’ narrative
Referring to the United States of America as an example, the sentiment of today is that they’ve been done wrong for decades when it came to trade with their ‘unfair non-reciprocal system’ (which at the time was made by them and done so to create an equitable international trading system). And now, the narratives of them being done ‘wrong’, and all of their reform pursuits are well ‘justified’ despite the fickle nature of truths in their narrative setting.
Assumption-3: The ‘self-serving’ nature
Despite most nations’ desire for power stemming from so many other factors, at their crux is a sentimental reason for the want of growth, prosperity, stability, as well as to preserve their own protection. Thus, aspects like their capabilities intertwined with a sentiment of wanting power (for whatever reason) push a state narrative of their pursuit, making sense in the international order as well as nationally.
What about Non-Power-Seeking Nations?
At first glance of geopolitics, it is fairly easy to discount Low Middle Income Countries in their pursuit of power struggles, but to each, the game of power-pursuit in the international system becomes their very own game. For example, countries like Nepal, the pursuit of power comes from the softer side, the sustaining, the balancing, the hedging, and the equidistancing, among other power struggles.
Similarly, for Nepal, certain narratives dictate its desire for power, which makes it make sense and turns their pursuit of power non-futile from an emotional purview. Ideas like ‘peace-loving’, ‘spirituality’, ‘the land of the Buddha’, ‘the beautiful nation of the Himalayas’ (which arguably were strategic narratives of Nepal’s own self-help initiatives) become a tool of merit for their lack of power to make sense.
To Justify a Pursuit
To justify power and its pursuit, perhaps it is fundamentally shaped through narratives, not just for great powers but for smaller nations as well. Nonetheless, at the very core of this paper lies the idea of how important narratives are and how even though in a world where everything political is usually ‘propaganda’ of one form or the other; to come out of such structured & spoon-fed way of thinking can help us see the world in a better light. Narratives shape even the core desires of nations, and they shape everything beyond, so perhaps the narratives we choose to believe should be something we are informed about.
Dibya Deep Acharya is currently pursuing his Master's in International Relations and Diplomacy, Tribuvan University, Nepal.
