To reveal one’s power is to stake a claim—and yet, paradoxically, to risk relinquishing it. The act of measurement, then, is not merely a technical exercise. It is a transformation. To measure power is to render it legible. But what becomes of power when it is rendered transparent?
This question animates a central paradox in contemporary strategic thought. On one hand, the measurement of power is indispensable. States must gauge capacities, compare themselves to others, project deterrent thresholds, and plan alliances accordingly. But on the other hand, measurement carries with it the dangerous illusion of fixity. Power is not an object to be weighed and catalogued; it is a relation, a tension, a becoming. In seeking to capture power in metrics and models, we risk diminishing the very thing we aim to understand. Michel Foucault, in Surveiller et punir, reminds us that measurement is never neutral. It is always a technique of control. The ruler who measures is also the one who disciplines, who normalizes, who defines the acceptable. And in doing so, he initiates a regime of visibility in which power is no longer exercised fluidly, but administered predictably.
Carl von Clausewitz offers a different, but not unrelated warning. His famous dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means is often cited, but less often considered is his skepticism toward the over-rationalization of warfare. For Clausewitz, friction—the element of uncertainty, chance, and the unknown—was central to any strategic endeavor. To eliminate friction through calculation was not to master war, but to misunderstand its nature. Power, once fully calculated, becomes susceptible. It becomes a system, not a force.
This tension is not merely conceptual; it is ontological. To measure power is to commit an act of ontological violence: it reifies what is essentially dynamic. Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation helps us here. For Simondon, being is not static but always in the process of becoming. Power, in this light, is not an attribute to be measured, but a potentiality to be actualized—contingent, emergent, relational. The metric flattens this becoming into a score; it betrays the very nature of puissance.
Nietzsche would go further. For him, the will to power is not a thing one possesses but a force that propels one beyond oneself. Power is thus inherently unstable, always seeking to transcend itself. It is not something one has, but something one becomes. In this framework, measurement appears as a kind of betrayal—an attempt to arrest what must remain in motion. The will to power is precisely the refusal of stasis, the rejection of being categorized or normalized. The moment power is measured, it ceases to be powerful in the Nietzschean sense, for it is no longer striving—it is settled.
The Heideggerian critique is even more radical. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger introduces the notion of Gestell, or enframing—the tendency of modern thought to reduce the world to a standing reserve, a collection of resources to be optimized and exploited. Measurement, in this sense, is not merely epistemic; it is ontological. It structures our very being-in-the-world. When we measure power, we do not simply assess it—we reconstitute it as something measurable, manageable, manipulable. We lose the thing itself in the process. The world becomes a spreadsheet.
Yet strategy is not philosophy. Or rather, it is philosophy in action. And the strategist cannot simply refuse measurement on ontological grounds. Power must be estimated, thresholds must be set, capabilities must be compared. But what if this necessity was itself a trap? Classical Chinese strategy offers a provocative alternative. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu writes, “All warfare is based on deception.” True power, in this tradition, is hidden, shapeless, like water. It adapts, evades, flows. What is seen is already obsolete. The most effective strategy, therefore, is one that resists legibility. Invisibility becomes a form of dominance.
The performative effect of measurement thus becomes central. As Judith Butler and Pierre Bourdieu have separately argued in different contexts, the act of naming, of classifying, of measuring, does not merely describe reality—it produces it. A state labeled as “middle power” begins to behave like one; an army ranked fifth in the world may alter its posture to meet or contest that ranking. This reflexivity undermines the objectivity of measurement. The map does not precede the territory—it shapes it. Strategic indicators, like economic indices, are not mirrors but scripts.
This has critical consequences in international relations. Rankings of military strength, like the Global Firepower Index or the CINC Score, claim to offer neutral assessments. But their methodologies inevitably embed political judgments. What counts as power? GDP? Number of tanks? Technological edge? Willingness to use force? Each choice privileges some actors and marginalizes others. The inclusion of nuclear capability, for instance, disproportionately advantages the P5, while neglecting the growing relevance of cyber, space, or narrative warfare.
Moreover, these indices obscure the temporality of power. They offer a snapshot, a freeze-frame of a dynamic process. But power unfolds over time; it is not merely possessed but projected. The ability to imagine, plan, and shape futures—this too is a form of power. Hannah Arendt’s notion of natality—the capacity to begin anew—suggests that power is inseparable from temporality. An actor’s strength lies not just in what it is, but in what it might become. The metric cannot capture this.
Nor can it capture the intersubjectivity of power. Power is not only a relation of capacities, but of perceptions, of recognitions. As Alexander Wendt famously argued, anarchy is what states make of it. The same is true of power: it is what others believe it to be. The symbolic dimension is not ornamental—it is constitutive. France, for example, maintains global influence not merely through military or economic means, but through its cultural capital, its diplomatic traditions, its historical narrative. These are not easily measurable, yet they shape strategic realities.
In this sense, the act of measurement risks becoming a form of strategic myopia. It privileges what can be counted over what counts. It creates incentives for states to “game the index,” investing in quantifiable capabilities at the expense of qualitative depth or strategic agility. It may lead to what James Scott called “seeing like a state”: the privileging of legibility over complexity, of order over nuance.
And yet, the temptation persists. We seek to measure power not because it is measurable, but because it is elusive. The desire to know, to classify, to compare, stems from a deeper anxiety: the unpredictability of the international system. Measurement becomes a form of security, a way to domesticate the unknown. But this security is illusory. As the philosopher Zygmunt Bauman noted in his reflections on modernity, the attempt to control contingency often produces new vulnerabilities. The more we rely on measurement, the more brittle our understanding becomes.
Ultimately, we must ask: what kind of knowledge do we seek from measurement? If we treat power as a force to be captured and controlled, we risk reducing it to caricature. But if we approach it as a relation to be understood, as a potentiality to be interpreted, then our models must remain provisional, reflexive, open-ended. The epistemology of power must mirror its ontology: dynamic, situated, contested.
This calls for a methodological humility. We can construct indices, models, frameworks—but we must do so with an awareness of their limits. We must resist the fétichisation of the indicator, the reification of what is fundamentally fluid. We must complement quantitative assessments with qualitative inquiry, empirical observation with narrative analysis, and static comparison with diachronic understanding. Power, like all meaningful concepts, resists final capture.
In the end, to measure power is both to exercise it and to risk neutralizing it. It is an act of dominance and of vulnerability. It clarifies and obscures, empowers and constrains. A truly strategic approach must hold this tension, not resolve it.
How to measure power ? 