s and discoveries, at home, and of the introduction into the United States of such as may have been made in other countries," by way of what he calls bounties and what today would be called a government patent, grant, or contract (Hamilton, 1996, p. 84). Hamilton continues:
[T]here is no truth, which may be more firmly relied upon, than that the interests of the revenue [that is, the national interest] are promoted, by whatever promotes an increase of National industry and wealth (Hamilton, 1996, p. 86).
International status flows from a strengthened domestic economy, in Hamilton's argument because domestic strength enables the nation-state to engage in meaningful international negotiations and power relationships. If national interest is the controlling idea of Realism, it follows that it is in the nation's interest to achieve as much geopolitical status as possible.
Economic nationalism is the term employed by Gilpin to describe the underlying power ratios as the basis for determining the quality of international relations (1996, p. 12). The current debate over international competitiveness is another way of conceptualizing the Realist position in the current political climate. For example, the fall of the Soviet Union may initially have fed the notion of US relative gain as leader of the Allies. Later, however, that translated into concerns that such Allies as Germany and Japan achieved relative economic gains as meaningful market competitors who no longer had to depend on US protection (Rapkin & Strand, 1996, p. 120).
A major 20th-century voice of the realist perspective is Morgenthau, who argues that geopolitics is always a power struggle and that no country, including (or especially) the US, "can escape . . . from power politics into a realm where action is guided by moral principles" (Morgenthau, 1982, p. 13). From the realist perspective, therefore, there is no moral win-win option, only a series of very crucial win-...