Power politics is a state of international relations in which sovereigns protect their own interests by threatening one another with military, economic, or political aggression. Power politics is essentially a way of understanding the world of international relations: nations compete for the world's resources and it is to a nation's advantage to be manifestly able to harm others. It prioritizes national self-interest over the interest of other nations or the international community. International relations (IR), a branch of political science, is the study of foreign affairs of and relations among states within the international system, including the roles of inter-governmental organizations (IGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and multinational corporations (MNCs). ... Sovereignty is the exclusive right to exercise supreme authority over a geographic region, group of people or oneself. ... Economics (deriving from the Greek words οίκω [okos], house, and νέμω [nemo], rules hence household management) is the social science that studies the allocation of scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants. ... Politics is the process and method of decision-making for groups of human beings. ... The term international community can refer to either: All the lands represented in United Nations. ...

Techniques of power politics include, but are not limited to, conspicuous nuclear development, pre-emptive strike, blackmail, the massing of military units on a border, the imposition of tariffs or economic sanctions, bait and bleed and bloodletting, balancing, buck passing, covert operations, and asymmetric warfare. Nuclear war, or atomic war, is war in which nuclear weapons are used. ... Most often used to describe a military attack which is designed to prevent, or reduce the impact of, an anticipated attack from an enemy. ... Blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal substantially true information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a monetary demand is met. ... A tariff is a tax placed on imported and/or exported goods, sometimes called a customs duty. ... Economic sanctions are economic penalties applied by one country (or group of countries) on another for a variety of reasons. ... In realist theories of international relations, balancing is a term for joining a weaker coalition to counter the influence or power of a stronger coalition. ... Covert operations are military or political activities that are not only clandestine (undertaken in a manner that disguises the identity of the perpetrators) but also covert, i. ... Asymmetric warfare is a military term describing warfare in which the two belligerents are mismatched in their military capabilities or their accustomed methods of engagement. ...

The English term 'power politics' is derived from the German word Machtpolitik.