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Politicians can interact with other countries in one of three ways, as described in the next three sub-sections:
· They can seek national advantage by applying coercion (6.7.7.1).
· They can compete fairly, whilst behaving as responsible global citizens (6.7.7.2).
· Or they can use 'soft power' to persuade other countries to co-operate (6.7.7.3).
Politicians can take the internal view of these three options – calculating what would best increase their own domestic popularity – or, taking the broader view, they can assess what kind of world order would best suit their countries' interests.
Appearing to be strong on the international stage – nationalism – is a way of courting political popularity at home (6.6.4.2); it is easy to persuade people that the appearance of power means that their country is respected and that their government is doing the best for them by acting coercively. A peaceful world order, however, is likely to be in every country's real interests – even though that sometimes requires governments to make concessions in in order to reach agreement. A quiet stance might be hard to defend against other politicians, who might urge a more flamboyant approach, but a good leader would explain why coercion doesn't work.
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