Balance of Power

Principle 1:

Maintaining or Restoring an International "Balance of Power"

"Balance of power," as an international relations concept, is an outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. The nations of Europe become convinced the only way to prevent France, or any other European nation, from making another attempt to conquer a European empire is to create a series of perfectly balanced alliances. The power of each of the separate individual alliances is perfectly balanced by the power of each other individual alliance. No one alliance can conquer any one other alliance. No combination of alliances can conquer any combination of the remaining alliances. The power of each of the individual alliances is so perfectly balanced that no one alliance can successfully aggress on any of the other alliances. In addition to a balance of alliances, there is also a balance among the individual nations so no one nation can defeat any other nation. Under a balance-of-power system, each state maximizes its ability to arm and defend itself. Warfare is possible, but also irrational, even useless, in attempting to achieve state objectives. Under a balance-of-power system, cooperation and mutual accommodation among states is encouraged, and the continued, perpetual existence of each state is virtually guaranteed.

"The 'balance of power' international system is characterized by the operation of the following essential rules, which constitute the characteristic behavior of the system: (1) increase capabilities, but negotiate rather than fight; (2) fight rather than fail to increase capabilities; (3) stop fighting rather than eliminate an essential actor; (4) oppose and coalition or single actor that tends to assume a position of predominance within the system; (5) constrain actors who subscribe to supranational organizational principles; and (6) permit defeated or constrained essential national actors to re-enter the system as acceptable role partners, or act to bring some previously inessential actor within the essential actor classification. Treat all essential actors as acceptable role partners.

The first two rules of the 'balance of power' international system reflect the fact that no political sub-system exists within the international social system. Therefore, essential national actors must rely upon themselves or upon their allies for protection. However, if they are weak, their allies may desert them. Therefore, an essential national actor must ultimately be capable of protecting its own national values. The third essential rule illustrates the fact that other nations are valuable as potential allies. In addition, nationality may set limits on potential expansion.

The fourth and fifth rules give recognition to the fact that a predominant coalition or national actor would constitute a threat to the interests of other national actors. Moreover, if a coalition were to become predominant, then the largest member of that coalition might also become predominant over the lesser members of its own coalition. For this reason members of a successful coalition may be alienated; they may also be able to bargain for more from the losers than from their own allies.

The sixth rule states that membership in the system is dependent upon only behavior that corresponds with the essential rules or norms of the 'balance of power' system. If the number of essential actors is reduced, the 'balance of power' international system will become unstable. Therefore, maintaining the number of essential national actors above a critical lower bound is a necessary condition for the stability of the system. This is best done by returning to full membership in the system defeated actors or reformed deviant actors." (Kaplan, 469)

The power resources factored into determining the balance of power in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries include total population size, military-age population size, industrial capacity, military equipment (ships, artillery pieces, airplanes, tanks, etc.), number of men in the standing military and in the reserves, mobilization time, and control of strategic geography.

Until World War I, the United States avoids being included in European balance of power calculations. World War I proves that a balance of power can successfully prevent any aggressor nation, or any combination of aggressor nations, from achieving military victory over non-aggressor nations. The Europeans fight themselves to a bloody stalemate. Neither side can win; conversely, neither side can loose. The entry of the United States into the war, tips the balance of power and is considered by many historians to be the decisive factor in the final outcome of the war. During the post-war period, America withdraws from active involvement in European alliance-building activities but does participate in several world-wide arms control and arms limitation conferences intended to reduce the absolute power of each of the alliances while maintaining the relative balance of power among the alliances. In World War II, American resources and manpower prove, once again, to be the decisive factor in determining the final outcome of the war. Since World War II, America is a major proponent of, and participant in, global balance of power politics. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) balances the Warsaw Bloc nations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Bloc eventually fall under the burden of the arms race to keep up with the Americans and Europeans; the South-East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) balances the growing Communist Chinese, Soviet, North Korean, and North Vietnamese military power until the Communist block tips the balance in its favor by overrunning most of the SEATO allies in Asia. The United States government is an active participant and leader in both of these alliances and in scores of other alliances designed to balance "The West" against "The East" in economic, military, and cultural power.

One of the essential elements of a balance of power system is "deterrence." Deterrence is probably best understood as "giving as good as you get" so that a potential "bullying" nation begins to see there is no advantage to engaging in bullying behavior.

"It is important to distinguish three types of deterrence. The first of these is: Type I Deterrence, or deterrence against a direct attack... Typically, discussion of the capability of the United States to deter a direct attack compare the pre-attack inventory... that is, the number of planes, missiles, army divisions, and submarines of the two countries are directly compared. This is the World War I and World War II approach.

The really essential numbers, however, are estimates of the damage that the retaliatory forces can inflict after being hit....

Type II Deterrence is defined as using strategic threats to deter an enemy from engaging in very provocative acts other than a direct attack on the United States itself.... Type II Deterrence will involve the possibility the United States will obtain the first strike... in retaliation for a... provocation....

Type III Deterrence might be called 'tit-for-tat deterrence.' It refers to those acts that are deterred because the potential aggressor is afraid that the defender or others will then take limited actions, military or nonmilitary, that will make aggression unprofitable

The most obvious threat that we could muster under Type III Deterrence would be the capability to fight a limited war of some sort." (Kahn, 225-237)

Even with the development of nuclear weapons, nations still think in terms of balance of power; each of the two super-power alliances during the now-defunct "Cold War" seeks to balance the other's nuclear arsenal bomb-for-bomb until each alliance is capable of destroying the other alliance many times over. Balance of power is finally reduced to "mutual assured destruction," a balance of power that assures each super-power will be able to destroy each other in the next global war.

"The United States and the Soviet Union continue to be locked into a cycle of open-ended weapons competition in both the nuclear and conventional armaments field. They do so in the belief that, given the absence of confidence in one another's pledges and stated intentions, security can only be vouchsafed through a balance of nuclear forces." (Lewis, 25)

In addition to being able to destroy the other, each super-power must be unable to fully protect itself from the other. Each must be able to destroy just enough of the others arsenal to make the other uncertain of their ability to launch either a successful first strike or a successful counter strike. At the same time, each must be able to protect just enough of its arsenal to be able to successfully launch at least a partial first strike or partial counter strike. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and presidential arms control advisor Paul Nitze describe defense tactics of the 1980s.

"Defensive technologies... must, at minimum, be able to destroy a sufficient portion of an aggressor's attacking forces so as to deny him either confidence in the outcome of his attack or the ability to destroy a credible portion of the targets he wishes to destroy.... Any effective defensive system definitely must be both survivable and cost-effective," (Perle, 23-24)

"Survivable and cost-effective defenses could so complicate a potential attacker's planning for a first strike that such an attack could not be seriously contemplated and deterrence would thus be significantly enhanced." (Nitze, 265).

Balance of power, as a principle in foreign policy, may have limited value in the Twenty-first Century. First, growing global reliance on terrorism and surprise commando strikes directed against key targets, and the availability of weapons of mass destruction which can be wielded by small teams of aggressors is difficult to counter with a "balance of power." The days of mass armies, masses of firepower, and the massing of military hardware are over. Modern military tactics call for small forces with quick maneuverability armed with very powerful precision weapons capable of striking small targets. The power of a massive army is easily balanced by a single nuclear weapon with a pin-point delivery system or a single nuclear weapon hand delivered in a suitcase. Second, the possibility of constructing a strategic defense shield, as envisioned by President Ronald Reagan in his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), may soon be a reality. SID makes a nation impenetrable to attack by any nation using conventional or nuclear arms. Third, the "new world order" may see the globe dominated by one single superpower and each hemisphere dominated by one preeminent nation-state; in such a system, lesser states may feel compelled to seek the protection of the one most powerful state rather than forming alliances independent of that state. On the other hand, there appears to be an emerging go-it-alone attitude in America that may eventually pit the one superpower against all the combined mass of power of all the other nations of the world.

In a study of "secondary" states, Kenneth Waltz finds that, rather than joining with the stronger side or the one most powerful state, states prefer to join with the weaker coalition.

"The first concern of states is not to maximize power but to maintain their position in the system. Secondary states, if they are free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens them. On the weaker side they are both more appreciated and safer, providing, of course, that the coalition they join achieves enough defensive or deterrent strength to dissuade adversaries from attacking....

(O)ne predicts a strong tendency toward balance in the system. The expectation is not that a balance, once achieved, will be maintained, but that a balance, once disrupted, will be restored in one way or another. Balances of power recurrently form." (Waltz, in Ikenberry, 105-106)

There is clear reluctance for states to take a potentially subservient position under the protection of a most-powerful super state and a clear willingness for states to build coalitions independent of that super state. This tendency, coupled with the long history of balance-of-power politics and the intuitive appeal of balance of power as an organizing principle for international relations, should insure "balance of power" will be a major justification for foreign policy decisions well into the future.

Some experts argue, however, that balance of power is not as useful in preventing armed warfare as its proponents claim.

"The relationship between peace and the balance of power appears to be exactly the opposite of what has been claimed. The periods of balance, real or imagined, are periods of warfare, while the periods of known preponderance are periods of peace....

The claim that a balance of power is conducive to peace does not stand up. Indeed, it is not even logical. It stands to reason that nations will not fight unless they believe they have a good chance of winning, but this is true for both sides only when the two are fairly evenly matched, or at least when they believe they are. Thus a balance of power increases the chances of war. A preponderance of power on one side, on the other hand, increases the chances for peace, for the greatly stronger side need not fight at all to get what it wants...." (Organski, 292)

President Ronald Reagan abandons the policy of balance of power and deterrence and the policy of mutual assured destruction, both popular during the 1960s and 1970s, and pursues a policy of unilateral American military superiority and, through the strategic defense initiative, a policy of unilateral national security. His actions bring the collapse of the Soviet Union and a period of peace among the essential global actors. Perhaps the critics of balance-of-power international politics are correct when they claim that balance of power brings war and that preponderance of power brings peace-- at least in those cases where the preponderance of power is in the hands of those who would pursue moral and ideal goals of peace, cooperation, and the maximization of human potential.

Principle 1:

Maintaining or Restoring an International "Balance of Power"

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