Brooks and Wohlforth Reply

Abstract

Robert Art’s response to our article is arguably the boldest and most forthright attempt to do what so many scholars have tried to do over the past decade: to revise balance of power theory to make it relevant to the great power politics of today’s unipolar world.1 Even in his hands, however, the effort fails—a result that substantially reinforces our argument that scholars seeking to explain contemporary great-power politics should resist the temptation to revise a theory so thoroughly enmeshed in the experience of past systems. Our reply highlights three points: everyone involved in the debate agrees on aspects of current international behavior that all call into question the relevance of balance of power theory; Art’s treatment of the cases of the European Union (EU) and China actually reinforces this assessment; and Art’s revision of “balancing” to make it relevant would render balance of power theory an inherently unfalsiaable catch-all description of international relations writ large.