Hcss report

HCSS REPORT
13
the interactions between countries, that there is an element of threat, and that there 
also has to be some escalation in that threat), there are two elements that we feel 
less comfortable about. The first one is the definition’s sole focus on ‘costs’. Some 
forms of verbal assertiveness – “we are ‘better’ (/‘more Christian’, /’less aggressive’/, 
etc.) than others”, for instance – may not really impose costs on other countries, but 
may still be perceived as (and represent) assertiveness. Secondly, we miss a reference 
to ‘power’, which we feel plays an important role in international assertiveness.
Our own definition of assertiveness is therefore based on 
power
instead of on costs. 
We differentiate between different aspects of ‘national’ power: the power a country 
intrinsically possesses (however one wishes to define that), the power it is willing and 
able to manifest through concrete actions (factual), the power it professes rhetorically 
and the power that is perceived by other countries (see Figure 2.8).
FIGURE 2.8: DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF POWER
It is clear that these different aspects of power are to a large degree distinct from one 
another. A country can have significant ‘latent’ power that it could actualize but may 
decide not to. The case of Germany’s international stance in security affairs might 
once again serve as an example. Other countries may try to project far more 
international power than they actually possess, arguably as in the case of North Korea. 
And the perception of a country’s power by third countries can vary widely – 
sometimes even entirely unrelated to any of the other three aspects of power. 
Therefore, we define ‘assertiveness’ as an increase in any of the three aspects of 
power to the right of Figure 2.8: in power projection, power assertions or in the 
perception of these first two by others. The two middle ones – the power a country 
The Power
that You