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Having More Allies May Decrease a Country's Power

posted by janrinok on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:53AM   
from the get-rid-of-your-friends dept.

AnonTechie writes:

Researchers at Yale University have found that the more allies a country has, the less power it has. The authors say the findings have potential implications for current events.

The scientists published their results in the July issue of IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (JAS), a joint publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Chinese Association of Automation (CAA).

The scientists developed a simple, yet sophisticated, computer game to examine relationships between countries and the resulting strategic environments."We have developed a power allocation game to study countries' strategic interactions in a complex environment," said Yuke Li from Yale University. Dr. Li and Prof. A. Stephen Morse, the Dudley Professor of distributed control and adaptive control in electrical engineering at Yale University, used the game to ask if having more allies in a networked, strategic environment will always be beneficial to a country in terms of power allocation outcomes. "The answer is, surprisingly, no. This is especially so for a country without sufficient power to mediate between the conflicts among its potential allies."

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-allies-decrease-country-power.html

[Abstract]: The power allocation game on a network: a paradox

At the rate at which the current POTUS is alienating allies, the USA will become even more powerful, as per the above article.

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Original Submission

• Re:Trumpian neo-con reversals Re:Trumpian neo-con reversals (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @09:09AM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @09:09AM (#699201)

  Now having more allies may mean having less power, but given the paradox of power, the less power you have, the more actual power you actually have, Just probably means you can't do whatever you want with it.

  Yes, you can have a state of laws or you can be a king of one. The problem is this is using two different meanings of "power" in different places of the supposed paradox.

  1. power - an means of coercion
  2. power - as means of getting your way

  For example, you can kidnap a driver and tell them to drive you somewhere. That is coercion. But you can also get some money and give it to a professional driver to do the same, and they will be glad to do it. That is the 2nd version of power. Cooperation gives you ability of getting 2nd power. But if you backstab your friends, well, then your only means will become coercion and then you get no power at all - no friends to cooperate and everyone will at very least avoid you so you can't even grab anyone to coerce ;)

  The entire point of politics is to get your way even if it looks like you bend over a few times. But if you always see politics as means of coercion, well my friend, you will be alone and isolated, like North Korea.

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• Re:Trumpian neo-con reversals (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:44PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @01:44PM (#699289)

  I suspect that Dick Turpin [wikipedia.org] had a problem each time that he wanted to hail or hire a comfy stagecoach, as well. Goes with the job.

  Parent