Understanding International Relations, Third Edition

The balance of power
The balance of power is one notion that is virtually inescapable in the
discourse of International Relations as it has developed over the last three
or four centuries. The term goes back to at least the sixteenth century –
although not to pre-modern times; according to Hume, the Greeks knew
nothing of it (1987) – and was theorized in the eighteenth century and after.
It appears in treaties (for example, that of Utrecht 1713), in the memoirs of
statesmen and diplomats and in the writings of historians and lawyers.
To the diplomats of the Ancien Régime, it was the underlying principle that
created stability. By contrast, to radical liberals such as Richard Cobden
it was a mere chimera, a simple collection of sounds with no meaning
(Cobden in C. Brown, Nardin and Rengger 2002). In the twentieth century
it has been invoked at one time or another by all the major international
actors.
Unfortunately, no one can agree on what it means. Scholars such as
Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield have between them collected exam-
ples of at least eleven different meanings revealed in the writings or speeches
of its adherents. Neither is there internal consistency in the way particular
writers use the term – Inis Claude, for example, notes that Hans Morgenthau
shifts back and forth between several different meanings in his chapter on
the subject in Politics Among Nations, a chapter explicitly designed to clear
up confusions (Claude 1962: 25). No doubt almost every other writer could
be exposed in the same way.
What is to be done about this confusion? Claude more or less gives up,
and tries to restrict the term to a description of the system of states as
a whole – thus, a balance of power system is simply the term we give to a
system which is based on sovereignty and the absence of world govern-
ment. However, this is a little too defeatist. There is a root idea of some
importance here, and it would be a shame to lose this as a result of past
confusions. This root idea is the notion that only force can counteract the
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effect of force, and that in an anarchical world, stability, predictability and
regularity can only occur when the forces that states are able to exert to get
their way in the world are in some kind of equilibrium. The notion of 
a ‘balance’ is rather a bad metaphor here, if it suggests the image of a pair
of scales, because this implies only two forces are in equilibrium. Better,
although less conventional, is the image of a chandelier. The chandelier
remains level (stable) if the weights which are attached to it are distributed
beneath it in such a way that the forces they exert (in this case the down-
ward pull of gravity) are in equilibrium. There are two advantages to this
metaphor; in the first place it makes more difficult some of the more per-
plexing usages associated with the idea – it would become clear, for exam-
ple, that ‘holding the balance’ is rather difficult, while a balance ‘moving in
one’s favour’ is positively dangerous if standing under a chandelier.
More seriously, it conveys the idea that there are two ways in which equi-
librium can be disturbed, and two ways in which it can be re-established.
The chandelier moves away from the level if one of its weights becomes
heavier, without this being compensated for – if, let us say, one state becomes
more powerful than others for endogenous reasons, for example, as a result
of faster economic growth than other states. It also becomes unstable if
two weights are moved closer together without compensatory movement
elsewhere – if, for example, two states form a closer relationship than
heretofore. Restoring stability can also take two forms – another weight
increasing, or two other weights moving closer together. Put differently,
disruptions are both created and potentially rectified by arms racing, or by