A realist view holds coercive power may be preferable to wider impotence.

Evidence

The world and human beings are to be taken the way they are and are going to remain. Coercive power may sometimes be humanly ugly; but it is here to stay and is, moreover, certainly no uglier than the more socially extended impotence that it confronts, reproduces and, to a large degree, protects from a still worse fate. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1128