Post #1 -Juan Sarmiento Rojas: Avatar: International Relations (Power)

In looking to get a grasp the material covered I decided to connect some major ideas to one of my favorite television shows. The series of Avatar: The last Air Bender and Avatar: Legend of Korra creates many distinctions between different nations and their international relation. By looking at instances of how the nations and those relations are portrayed we can gain a better understanding of the broad topic of power.

            In relation to the lecture focusing on Power, many of the forms of power and their definitions are present in the TV series. The world of Avatar consists of 4 groups of people: Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe and Air Nomads. As taught in the lecture, realism and liberalism focuses on power that can make someone do what you desire. Power is elaborated on by the idea of “Hard Power”, which is simply military and economic power. This is all enforced by coercion and having threats and/or attacks that make others do what you wish. To better understand what kind of implications this really has I began to relate Hard Power to both the Fire and Earth Nations. The Fire Nation’s Hard Power focuses on Military power, which in turns creates economic power allowing them to increase military power even more. The Fire Nation created a 100-year war where they looked to take over all the other nations and managed destroy all the Air Nomads and their temples and almost decimated the Southern Water Tribe. Their military advances of iron ships and cannon like weapons allowed them to expand their nation take over people and force others to do things such as migrating or picking a side. The Earth Kingdom although very advanced in technology because of their huge empire and colonies and immense economy was the biggest rival to the Fire Nation.

Earth Kingdom possessed similar qualities of Hard Power with the armies and economy. The difference between was they did not really look to take over anyone other nation. Because of this, the ideas that the Fire Nation looked for realist power while the Earth Kingdom looked for a Realist Security can be applied in this case. Great rock walls defending the main city surrounded the Earth Kingdom. This can be attributed to the realist security ideal of physical survival and self help. Not looking to expand but also avoiding an invasion by the territory-hungry Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom protects its self and its land in order to maintain the limited amount of security that can go around all the nations. The Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe create alliances in order to defend against the tyranny of the Fire Nation and balance their power, as taught in class.

In contrast to the more powerful nations, the Water Tribes and Air Nomads focus more on soft power as well as smart power, as taught in lecture. Both groups of people focus on their traditions and their beliefs. The Air Nomads practice Yoga and meditating, even reaching enlightenment. They believe in peace and the idea that if all can reach this harmony there will be no more power struggle. The Water Tribe is also very traditional when it comes to the family and relationship with nature. Both groups are able to persuade people, even from the Fire and Earth groups. This sort of power is not very apparent but it seems as if all accepted those traditions the world would be a better, harmony filled place.

Hopefully relating some ideas of power taught in lecture to a “kids” TV show, we all will be better at understanding the idea of power in International relations.