Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T15:21:51.843Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The place of the balancer in balance of power theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

Although, as the quotations above indicate, the question of the importance of the ‘balancer’ in balance of power systems has generated strong opinions from both critics and proponents, it has never stimulated a specific study of the balancer. The picture of the balancer as it currently exists has to be obtained by abstracting descriptions of the balancer role from general writings on the balance of power. This is unfortunate for even those authors like Padelford and Lincoln who saw the balancer role as critical, failed to devote more then a few paragraphs to the topic. The aim of this paper therefore is to try to clarify the nature and function of the balancer by synthesizing the views of analysts of the role over the past three centuries to produce a paradigm of the balancer strategy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Organski, A. F. K., World Politics, 2nd edn (New York, 1968), p. 288.Google Scholar

2. Padelford, N. J. and Lincoln, G. A., The Dynamics of International Politics, 2nd edn (New York, 1967), p. 300.Google Scholar

3. Wright, M. (ed.), The Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power 1486–1914 (London, 1975), p. ix.Google Scholar

4. For example Palmer, N. and Perkins, H., International Relations (London, 1954), p. 312Google Scholar; Liska, G., International Equilibrium (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morgenthau, H. J., Politics Among. Nations, 4th edn(New York, 1967), p. 188Google Scholar; Organski, op. cit., p. 280.

5. Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 188.

6. Organski, op. cit., p. 285.

7. Newman, W. J., The Balance of Power in the Interwar Years (New York, 1968), p. 188.Google Scholar

8. Palmer and Perkins, op. cit., p. 312.

9. Liska, op. cit., p. 37.

10. Brougham, Lord Henry, ‘General Principles of Foreign Policy’, in Works, Vol. VIII (London, 1857)Google Scholar. Cited in Gareau, Frederick H. (ed.), The Balance of Power and Nuclear Deterrence (Boston, 1962), p. 70.Google Scholar

11. Brougham, , Works, Vol. VIII, p. 8Google Scholar Quoted in Gulick, E. V., Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York, 1955), pp. 5354.Google Scholar

12. Guicciardini, F., History. of Italy (1561)Google Scholar, quoted in M. Wright, op. cit., p. 9.

13. Bacon, F., ‘Of Empire’, in Spedding, J. (ed.), The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. VI (London, 1870), p. 420.Google Scholar

14. John, Henry St., Bolingbroke, Viscount, Letters on the Study and Use of History; Letter 8, 1 Kramnick (ed.) (Chicago, 1972).Google Scholar

15. Bolingbroke, , Works, Vol. II, p. 499Google Scholar; cited in Maurseth, P., ‘Balance of Power Thinking from the Renaissance to the French Revolution’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. I (1964), p. 125.Google Scholar

16. Although certain writers such as Schleicher, Charles, Introduction to International Relations (New York, 1954)Google Scholar; Organski, op. cit.; Leckie, Francis Gould, An Historical Research into the Nature of the Balance of Power in Europe (London, 1817)Google Scholar; and (though not consistently), Morgenthau, op. cit., have argued that it preserved peace, most have argued that its function was simply to preserve the system, for example Gulick, op. cit.; Liska, op. cit. and Wight, Martin, ‘Balance of Power and International Order’, in James, Alan (ed.), The Bases of International Order (London, 1973).Google Scholar

17. Liska, op. cit., p. 39

19. Lerche, Charles O., Principles of International Politics (New York, 1956), p. 129Google Scholar; see also Herz, J., International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York, 1959), p. 153Google Scholar; and Riker, W., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, 1962), p. 188.Google Scholar

20. Henry Craik, Selections from Swift, quoted in Pollard, A. F., ‘The Balance of Power’, Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, vol. 2 (1923), p. 59.Google Scholar

21. Waltz, Kenneth M., ‘Realpolitik and Balance of Power Theory’, in Greenstein, F. and Polsby, N. (eds), International Politics (Reading, Mass., 1959), p. 38.Google Scholar

22. Claude, Inis, Power and International Relations (New York, 1962), p. 46.Google Scholar

23. Waltz, op. cit., p. 38.

24. Claude, op. cit., p. 49.

26. Sterling, Richard, Macropolitics (New York, 1974), p. 55.Google Scholar

27. Rosecrance, Richard N., Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston, 1963), p. 229.Google Scholar

29. Wight, Martin, ‘The Balance of Power’, in Butterfield, H. and Wight, M. (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (London, 1966), p. 156.Google Scholar

30. Wright, Quincy, A Study of War (Chicago, 1942), vol. 2, pp. 757758.Google Scholar

31. Organski, op. cit., p. 287.

32. Sterling, op. cit., p. 57.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Defoe, Daniel, A Review of the State of the English Nation, vol. 3, no. 65 (1 1706 06)Google Scholar. Quoted in M. Wright, op. cit., p. 48.

36. Organski, op. cit., p. 287.

38. Quoted in Parkinson, F., The Philosophy of International Relations (London, 1977), p. 51.Google Scholar

39. Gentz, Friedrich von, Fragments on the Balance of Power (London, 1806), p. 55.Google Scholar

40. Kaplan, Morton A., ‘Balance of Power, Bipolarity and other Models of International Systems’, in Gray, Richard B. (ech), International Security Systems (Itasca, 111., 1969), p. 42Google Scholar

41. Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 188.

42. For a discussion of these Swedish balancer aspirations see Michael Roberts, ‘Charles XI’, in his Essays in Swedish History (London, 1967), pp. 228–30.

43. Reynolds, P. A., An Introduction to International Relations (London, 1971), p. 200.Google Scholar

44. Kovacs, A. F., ‘The Development of the Principle of the Balance of Power from the Treaty of West-phalia to the Congress of Vienna’, unpublished ms (University of Chicago Library), p. 1915.Google Scholar

45. Parliamentary History, vol. X, 720 (Windham).

46. Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 188.

47. Mackintosh, John P., ‘Britain and Europe. Historical Perspective and Contemporary Reality’, International Affairs, xlv (1969), p. 247Google Scholar; also Liska, op. cit., pp. 37–8.

48. Hartmann, Frederick H., Readings in International Relations (New York, 1952), p. 118.Google Scholar

49. Newman, op. cit., p. 188.

50. Waltz, ‘Realpolitik and Balance of Power Theory’, op. cit., p. 41.

51. Organski, op. cit., p. 279 ff; Palmer and Perkins, op. cit., p. 319; Parkinson, op. cit., pp. 48–54; Liska, op. cit., pp. 36–9; Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 187 ff; Claude, op. cit., pp. 47–9.

52. Brougham, Lord, ‘General Principles of Foreign Policy’, loc. cit., p. 187Google Scholar; Organski, op. cit., p. 287; Reynolds, op. cit., p. 200.

53. Liska, op. cit., pp. 36–7; Morgenthau, op. cit., p. 187; Organski, op. cit., p. 287; Reynolds, op. cit., p. 200.

54. Brougham, op. cit., p. 71.

55. Churchill, W. S., The Gathering Storm (London, 1960), pp. 190193Google Scholar; see also Spykman, N., American Strategy in World Politics (New York, 1942), pp. 99100Google Scholar; and Trevelyan, G. M., History of England (London, 1973), p. 674Google Scholar. Churchill's argument echoes that of William III, who declared in 1675 that in the event of Habsburg aggression he would be ‘as much a Frenchman as I am now a Spaniard’. Quoted by Gibbs, G. C., ‘The Revolution in Foreign Policy’, in Holmes, G. (ed.), Britain after the Glorious Revolution 1689–1714 (London, 1969), p. 61Google Scholar. Or as Bolingbroke more sardonically put it ‘pique must have no more place than affection, in considerations of this kind’. Bolingbroke, Lord, Works, vol. 2, p. 293Google Scholar. Quoted by Gulick, op. cit., p. 69.

56. Greene, F., Dynamics of International Relations (New York, 1964), p. 221.Google Scholar

57. Spykman, op. cit., pp. 104–5.

58. Greene, op. cit., p. 221.

59. For example, Lord Brougham, ‘General Principles of Foreign Policy’, op. cit., p. 78; and Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations (1758), Book III, Chapter III in Forsyth, M. G., Keens-Soper, H. M. A. and Savigear, P. (eds), The Theory of International Relations (London, 1970), pp. 114115.Google Scholar

60. For example, Sir Robert Walpole, cited in Ernst B. Haas, ‘The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept or Propaganda?’ World Politics, vol. 5, p. 457.