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Balance of Power and Power Shifts: Global Interests at Stake

CHAPTER 4 Balance of Power and Power shifts : Global Interests at StakeWhat made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian Power andthe fear which this caused in Sparta. ThucydidesRelative capabilities are widely acknowledged as one of the key factorsthat determine the outcomes of deterrence and other con ictual situa-tions. In the general international relations literature, realism stands outfor its central focus on the idea of Power . The realist tradition gives ustwo opposite approaches to Power distributions and war: the Balance -of- Power school insists on peaceful consequences of Power equality,while the Power preponderance, or, more accurately, the Power shiftschool, nds this condition unstable and conducive to war. Thus, in thecontext of deterrence, realism provides us with two mutually exclusiveprecepts for con ict avoidance.

In his Politics Among Nations(1948), Morgenthau elevated the idea of power to the very core of the modern study of international relations, and balance of power …

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Transcription of Balance of Power and Power Shifts: Global Interests at Stake

1 CHAPTER 4 Balance of Power and Power shifts : Global Interests at StakeWhat made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian Power andthe fear which this caused in Sparta. ThucydidesRelative capabilities are widely acknowledged as one of the key factorsthat determine the outcomes of deterrence and other con ictual situa-tions. In the general international relations literature, realism stands outfor its central focus on the idea of Power . The realist tradition gives ustwo opposite approaches to Power distributions and war: the Balance -of- Power school insists on peaceful consequences of Power equality,while the Power preponderance, or, more accurately, the Power shiftschool, nds this condition unstable and conducive to war. Thus, in thecontext of deterrence, realism provides us with two mutually exclusiveprecepts for con ict avoidance.

2 According to the Balance -of- Power the-ory, we should not expect deterrence failure between two equal powers,while according to the Power shift approach, the exact opposite is to beexpected. This chapter rst offers an analytical survey of these compet-ing realist arguments, then empirically examines the effects of relativepower on deterrence outcomes between major of PowerThe international relations literature was dominated for severaldecades by the classical realist approach, which states that a Balance ofpower creates peaceful structural conditions (Morgenthau 1948; Waltz1979). This approach was later challenged by Power transition theoryon both logical and empirical grounds (Organski 1958; Organski and71 Kugler 1980).

3 Related theories of hegemonic decline (Gilpin 1981;Kennedy 1987) and Global cycles (Modelski and Thompson 1989) alsoattempt to demonstrate that the history and logic of major Power rela-tions run contrary to the classical realist arguments of both schools have been tested in formal modelsand systematic empirical analyses. The tests tend to grant greater valid-ity to the Power shift argument. Still, there are a number of strongadherents to the Balance -of- Power school who have shaped the mod-ern study of international relations since the early postwar publicationof Morgenthau s classic politics among the Balance -of- Power notion was in uential in estab-lishing modern studies of international relations, the idea is quiteancient.

4 In his mid-eighteenth-century political essay Of the Balanceof Power (1742), English philosopher David Hume did not fail toobserve that the phrase Balance of Power could have been the inven-tion of later ages, but the very ideaoriginated in ancient Greece astesti ed in the records of Thucydides and other Greek historians. Nev-ertheless, the policyof Balance of Power in the Western world was rec-ognized only centuries later, speci cally in Renaissance Italy. Machi-avelli is often cited for his acknowledgment of the Balance -of-powerpolicy of his political master Lorenzo Medici, who, prior to the Frenchinvasion of 1494, wrote Italia era in un certo modo bilanciata ( Inthose days when there was a Balance of Power in Italy, 1950, 78).

5 Equally famous in his lifetime, the Renaissance historian Guicciardiniwent a step further in his well-known Storia d Italiaby attributing thefoundations of the tranquility of Italy to the fact that Lorenzo Medici employed all his devices, means and directions that the things of Italyshould be evenly balanced (the rst 1579 English trans. by Fenton,cited in Vagts 1948, 97). The idea that Balance -of- Power policy bringspeace continued to attract many great intellectual gures from differ-ent epochs, including the modern MeaningsIn his politics among nations (1948), Morgenthau elevated the idea ofpower to the very core of the modern study of international relations,and Balance of Power became the central theory in modern problem that plagues Balance -of- Power theory, however, is that itskey term carries many different meanings.

6 As Claude (1962, 13)noticed, the trouble with the Balance of Power is not that it has nomeaning, but that it has too many meanings. Balance -of- Power schol-72 When the Stakes Are Highars did not seem overly concerned to narrow down its meaning, andMorgenthau himself listed four different meanings of his central term:(1) as a policy aimed at a certain state of affairs, (2) as an actual stateof affairs, (3) as an approximately equal distribution of Power , and (4)as any distribution of Power (1948, 134). Haas (1953) and Wight (1966)later developed their taxonomy of distinct meanings of Balance ofpower as found in the literature, well illustrating the severity of theconceptual problem. Distinct Meanings of the Balance of Power Haas 1953, 447 58 Wight 1966, 1511.

7 Distribution of Power 1. An even distribution of power2. Equilibrium 2. The principle that Power ought to beevenly distributed3. Hegemony 3. The existing (any possible) distribu-tion of power4. Stability and Peace 4. The principle of equal aggrandize-ment of the Great Powers at theexpense of Instability and War 5. The principle that our side ought tohave a margin of strength in order toavert the danger of Power becomingunevenly distributed6. Power politics generally 6. A special role in maintaining an evendistribution of power7. Universal Law of History 7. A special advantage in the existingdistribution of power8. System and Guide to 8. Predominancepolicy-making9. An inherent tendency of interna-tional politics to produce an evendistribution of powerDespite its diverse connotations, whenever the term Balance ofpoweris employed, it is most likely to be used to refer to the balancingpolicy or the condition of Balance .

8 Thus, Quincy Wright (1942, 2:743) ltered out two principal definitions from the array of different usagesby distinguishing between the condition of Balance ( static Balance ofpower ) and the policy adopted by governments to maintain that con- Balance of Power and Power Shifts73dition ( dynamic ). Going a step further, Wight (1966, 151) empha-sized that the primary meaning refers to an even distribution of Power ,and Morgenthau (1948, 134) similarly clari ed that whenever theterm is used without quali cation, it refers to an actual state of affairsin which Power is distributed among several nations with approximateequality. The Balance -of- Power Policy and Dyadic ConditionIn his seminal work on world politics that laid the grounds for modernrealism, Morgenthau distinguished between two methods of balancing: The balancing process can be carried on either by diminishing theweight of the heavier scale or by increasing the weight of the lighterone (1948, 172).

9 The principle of divide and rule is the classic man-ifestation of the former method, while the latter method of addingpower to the weaker nation can be carried out through a policy of ter-ritorial compensation, arms buildup, or alliances. Later advocates andcritics of Morgenthau s Balance -of- Power theory concentrated on histheory of balancing through alignments, though Morgenthau himselfdid not by any means exclude other balancing aspect of Morgenthau s theory of balancing by means of analliance was particularly criticized for its logical inconsistency. Accord-ing to Morgenthau (1948, 187), one of the scenarios for the Balance -of- Power system consist[s] of two scales plus a third element, the holder of the Balance or the balancer.

10 The balancer is not permanentlyidenti ed with the policies of either nation or group of nations . Its onlyobjective within the system is the maintenance of the Balance , regard-less of the concrete policies the Balance will serve. Organski (1958)was rst to observe that the idea of equilibrium as the primary goal ofa balancer is logically inconsistent with Morgenthau s rst principleof realism that considered all states equal in their primary motivationfor Power maximization. This theoretical incoherence led Organskiand others to reconsider the very idea of the Balance of Power as a sta-ble system and develop instead an entire range of Power shift theoriesas an alternative for Balance of Power itself, recent literature has devoted greaterattention to the methods of balancing versus bandwagoning.


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