Chapter Six
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exploration. Stalin (1879-1953) was forced, under pressure from the ruling
party, to use extreme violence, mass murder, and slave workers in order to
industrialize the USSR.
Those who search to understand China with accounts of occasional
events, such as Jean-Luc Domenac, research director at the Center of
International Studies and Research (CERI - Centre d’Études et de
Recherches Internationales), can only testify to the diversity of an
asymmetric country. However, the debilities of the People’s Republic
cannot be seriously considered or even identified simply by writing a book
of no effective consequence.^4
Figure 6-1
To Understand the Power of the States
In this special matter, I suggest that we rely on an important book written
in the 1980’s by Ray S. Cline, about Polytectonic Zones, in which he
exposed his views on the World of Powers.^5 In those pages, he explained
the Geopolitical Theory of Polytectonics, and he moved forward with a
formula to calculate, in numeric terms, the power of the World States.
He sustained that formula by emphasizing the weight of Population,
Territory, Economic Capacity, and Military Capacity, and by multiplying
the sum of these factors by a new non-objective factor submitted to the
evaluation of two vectors: Strategic Capability and National Will. Such a
way of looking at power follows the tradition of great thinkers in
international relations who assumed these same factors were significant,
(^4) Domenac, Comprendre la Chine D’Aujourd’hui.
(^5) Cline, World Power Trends and US Foreign Policy for the 1980s.