The perturbative expansion of static force and potential is reanalyzed concerning its practical applicability. A well behaved perturbative prediction is given by the integration of the renormalization group equation for the coupling alpha (qq)(mu = 1/r) = (C-f)(-1)r(2)F(r). Since the Lambda-parameter of the N-f = 0 theory is known from [ALPHA Collaboration, S. Capitani., M. Luscher, R. Sommer, H. Wittig, Nucl. Phys. B 544 (1999) 669], the perturbative prediction contains no free parameter. It is confronted with recent non-perturbative results. For alpha less than or similar to 0.3 where the truncation error of the perturbative expression is naively estimated to be moderate, it is really quite accurate and large "non-perturbative terms" are excluded. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.