Explain the concept of balance of power. What are the various techniques of maintaining balance of power? (2020, 20 Marks)
The balance of power is the oldest organising idea of the states system. Through countervailing pressure and shifting alignment, no state or coalition is allowed to grow strong enough to endanger the independence of the rest. Its purpose is negative: it prevents hegemony rather than guaranteeing justice, and peace is a by-product of checked ambition.
The concept
- Meanings: Hans J. Morgenthau (Politics Among Nations, 1948) found four uses of the term: a policy aimed at equilibrium, an actual state of affairs, an approximately equal distribution, and any distribution at all. Inis L. Claude Jr. (Power and International Relations, 1962) sorted usages into a situation, a policy and a system, and noted its use as a propaganda symbol. Ernst B. Haas (1953) counted eight meanings.
- Mechanism: when capabilities concentrate, others arm or combine until equilibrium is restored and no great power is eliminated. The expectation of a counter-coalition deters aggression in advance.
- Assumptions: anarchy and self-help; rational, survival-seeking states; several powers of comparable weight; flexible alignment; and a shared interest in preserving the system.
- Lineage: Kautilya’s mandala made the neighbour the natural enemy and the neighbour’s neighbour the natural friend. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) named the principle, and the Concert of Europe after 1815 institutionalised it.
- Structural realism: Kenneth N. Waltz (Theory of International Politics, 1979) treated balancing as a recurrent outcome of anarchy that needs no statesman’s intention. Stephen M. Walt refined it as a balance of threat, weighing capability, proximity, offensive power and intentions.
Techniques of maintaining the balance
Morgenthau’s own catalogue (divide and rule, compensation, armaments, alliances, the holder of the balance) remains the core, with later additions.
- Alliances and counter-alliances, the principal instrument: capabilities are pooled against a would-be predominant power, from the coalitions against Louis XIV to the Triple Entente and NATO.
- Compensation: a gain by one power is offset by matching gains for its rivals, usually territory taken from the weak or divided by victors at a peace settlement, as in the Partitions of Poland (1772–95).
- Armaments and disarmament: competitive build-up risks an arms race, while agreed proportionate cuts, as in the Washington Naval Treaty (1922) or Cold War arms control, fix the equilibrium more cheaply.
- Intervention and non-intervention: the balancer’s tools. Intervention ranges from a small tilt away from neutrality to full entry into war. Non-intervention suits small states and satisfied great powers.
- Buffer states: neutralised states (Belgium, 1839), satellites or dependencies cushion rivals. Afghanistan served this role between British India and Russia.
- Divide and rule: keeping a rival region fragmented, as France did with the German states.
- The holder of the balance: a detached power, classically Britain, which shifts its weight to the lighter side.
- War, the last resort, restores what diplomacy cannot.
- Modern variants: soft balancing through institutions (BRICS, the New Development Bank) and hedging.
Contemporary application
- NATO’s Hague summit (June 2025) committed members to defence spending of 5% of GDP by 2035. The Saudi–Pakistan–Turkey Mecca Joint Defence Agreement (August 2026) is a new counter-alignment on India’s western flank.
- India balances China internally, with defence spending of $92.1 billion in 2025 (SIPRI), and externally through the Quad, while keeping strategic autonomy. C. Raja Mohan (“India and the Balance of Power”, 2006) argued that India was becoming the swing state of the global balance.
Conclusion
The balance of power remains a basic feature of the states system, though not a guarantee of peace. Its techniques have shifted from territory to technology, institutions and partnerships, but the underlying logic of resisting preponderance is intact.