Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

Chapter 6
The Balance of Power and War
Introduction
The state-centric view of the world, especially in its realist variant, paints
a picture of great insecurity and fear. Concerned for their own security,
possibly desiring to dominate others, states are obliged to keep a watchful
eye open for ways of enhancing their own power, and reducing that of others.
Unrestrained and unprotected by any international government, states must
look after their own security, even though they cannot but be aware that
their attempts to do so may induce insecurity in others. Thus, the scene
seems set for a wretched world, in which the idea of an international ‘order’
would be preposterous. Yet there is a degree of order in the world; interna-
tional relations may be anarchic in the formal sense of lacking government,
but they are not anarchic in the sense of being lawless and disorderly – or at
least not entirely so. How can this be?
According to realist International Relations theory, order of a kind and to
a degree is preserved by two key institutions – the balance of power and war.
The idea that the balance of power generates order is plausible enough, but to
suggest that war is a source of order seems counter-intuitive, implausible and,
indeed, somewhat distasteful. Nonetheless, this thought, however distasteful,
must be borne with, because war, seen as a political instrument, does indeed
play this role. It does so in two senses: first, as part of the balance of power,
because, contrary to some accounts which suggest that the balance of power
is designed to prevent war, war is an essential mechanism for preserving a bal-
ance, and, second, as a conflict-resolving mechanism that does something that
the balance of power cannot do, namely bring about, as opposed to frustrate,
change. In other words, war both complements and completes the balance of
power. Without war, the balance of power could not operate as a functioning
institution of an international system or society. War and the balance of
power stand together – or, perhaps, fall together, because it may well be that
there are features of international relations in the early twenty-first century
which mean that an account of the world in which war plays a central role is
indefensible, not simply on moral grounds, but as a practical proposition. If
this is so, yet more doubt will be cast on state-centric International Relations,
to be added to the reservations already expressed in Chapters 4 and 5.
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The first section of this chapter will examine the balance of power; after
a cursory examination of the long tradition of balance of power thinking in
the European states system, two modern versions will be examined, or in
one case re-examined – those of Kenneth Waltz and Hedley Bull. The next
section will outline the political, Clausewitzian theory of war – in contrast
to other accounts of war which stress its irrational, cataclysmic nature – and
the role of war as a conflict-resolving mechanism in classical international
relations. The final section will offer a number of reasons why this account
of war, and the account of international relations upon which it rests, is,
under current conditions, no longer plausible.