The struggle for recognition provides us with insight into the
nature of international politics. The desire for recognition that
led to the original bloody battle for prestige between two individual
combatants leads logically to imperialism and world empire.
The relationship of lordship and bondage on a domestic level is
naturally replicated on the level of states, where nations as a whole
seek recognition and enter into bloody battles for supremacy.
Nationalism, a modern yet not-fully-rational form of recognition,
has been the vehicle for the struggle for recognition over the past
hundred years, and the source of this century's most intense conflicts.
This is the world of "power politics," described by such
foreign policy "realists" as Henry Kissinger.