Comment: Balance of power and its impact on world politics. (2003, 20 Marks)
The balance of power is a distribution of capability in which no state or coalition can dominate the rest, maintained by states arming themselves and combining against any would-be hegemon. Hans J. Morgenthau (Politics Among Nations, 1948) called it an essential stabilising factor in a society of sovereign states. Woodrow Wilson called it the cause of the Great War. Its impact on world politics has been to preserve the plurality of states while making war a normal instrument for preserving it.
How it works
States balance internally (armament, economic growth) and externally (alliances), and rely on classical devices: compensation, buffer states, a holder of the balance such as Britain, and war as the last resort. Kenneth N. Waltz (1979) argued that under anarchy balancing recurs whether or not anyone intends it.
Positive impact
- It blocked universal empire. Coalitions defeated the bids of Louis XIV, Napoleon and Hitler, keeping the states system plural. Hedley Bull (The Anarchical Society, 1977) credits the balance with preventing the system’s conversion into an empire, protecting the independence of states within regional balances, and making the other institutions possible.
- It produced long periods of relative peace. The Concert of Europe after Vienna (1815) gave a century without a general European war. John Lewis Gaddis called the bipolar nuclear balance of the Cold War a “long peace” among the great powers.
- It produced institutions. Utrecht (1713) wrote the principle into treaty law, congress diplomacy evolved into multilateralism, and arms control (Washington, 1922; SALT and New START later) was balancing by agreement.
Negative impact
- It generates war. Rigid alliances turned a Balkan assassination into 1914, the “chain-ganging” that Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder identified in 1990. Arms races, such as the Anglo-German naval race, fed the security dilemma.
- Small states paid the price. The Partitions of Poland and colonial compensation in Africa and Asia show that the balance stabilised great-power relations at the expense of the weak.
- The peace it brought was fragile. Jawaharlal Nehru saw in it a fearful truce sustained by armament, which is why non-alignment refused to join the blocs. The Cold War balance of terror kept the central front quiet but moved violence into proxy wars from Korea to Afghanistan.
- Uncertainty. Counter-coalitions form slowly, often after buck-passing, as in the 1930s.
Impact today
- Great-power competition has returned. China’s rise has brought the Quad, AUKUS and tighter US alliances with Japan and the Philippines. Russia’s war in Ukraine expanded NATO to 32 members and produced the Hague pledge (June 2025) of 5% of GDP for defence by 2035. Counter-alignments are spreading: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in August 2026.
- Armament is rising and arms control is eroding. World military spending reached $2,887 billion in 2025 (SIPRI), and New START expired on 5 February 2026 with no successor.
- Management alongside balancing. The “constructive relationship of strategic stability” that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed in Washington (September 2026) recalls the concert diplomacy that once moderated the balance.
- India balances China internally (defence spending of $92.1 billion in 2025) and through partnerships without alliance, while its neighbours use China to balance India. C. Raja Mohan (“India and the Balance of Power”, 2006) saw India becoming the swing state of the global balance.
Conclusion
The balance of power has been the main way the states system has preserved itself, but at a recurring price in war and in the sovereignty of the weak. Its impact is therefore ambivalent: it preserves order rather than peace. With the return of multipolar competition, its influence on world politics is growing again rather than fading.