The Traditional Approach National diplomacy is the process of trying to advance a country's national interest by applying power assets to attempt to persuade other countries to give way.
Power is the foundation of diplomacy in a conflictual world.
National power is the sum of a country's assets that enhance its ability to get its way even when opposed by others with different interests and goals. Measuring power is especially difficult. The efforts to do so have not been very successful, but they do help us see many of the complexities of analyzing the characteristics of power. These characteristics include the facts that power is dynamic, both objective and subjective, relative, situational, and multidimensional. The core and infrastructure are discussed here and form the basis for economic and military power, which are analyzed in later chapters.