Balance Of Power Theory Research Articles

Strategi Cina menghadapi “Malacca Dilemma” dalam Rangka Pengamanan Jalur Energy Cina di Selat Malaka

As much as 80% of oil imports pass through this strait, while we know that industrialization in China is going very fast, and requires oil energy so that the industrial wheels continue to spin. This situation inevitably brought the Malacca Strait to the dilemma position of China (Malacca Dilemma). On the one hand, the Chinese government wants to reduce its dependence on oil imports through the strait given the vulnerability to sabotage, piracy and intervention from major countries (America and India), which have proxies in countries adjacent to the Malacca Strait. The theories used in this study are the theory of maritime strategy by Alfred T. Mahan, Sir Balford Mackinder's Geopolitical Theory, and the Balance of Power Theory of Nye. then the method used is a qualitative data analysis method. A series of steps to reduce dependence on the Malacca Strait is aggressively carried out by the Chinese government, such as Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), String of Pearls, Nine Dash Line, and Construction of the Kra Canal in Thailand. Facing this condition, it is also necessary to review Indonesia's position in the face of the complexity of the problems in the Malacca Strait in order to deal with the various maneuvers that took place in the Straits of Malacca.

The Domestic Political Unrest and the Military Doctrine Change in the Neighborhood: Arab Uprisings and Israel (2011–2015)

The “Arab Spring” uprisings are a historic milestone from Israel’s national security perspective, regarding to the political and security changes in the regional strategic environment, as Israel’s geographic neighboring, Egypt and Syria, have become more threatening. As a serious scientific attempt under the umbrella of the balance of power theory in the political science literature on military doctrine change, this paper aims to examine conditions under which a domestic political change or unrest in a state may affect, positively or negatively, the change of the military doctrine of another state or states in neighborhood. By applying this research question to the case of the Arab uprisings and Israel, the study examines, from Israeli elite’s perspective, why and how the aforementioned uprisings affect the Israeli military doctrine, and explores whether the particular components of this doctrine have been affected to the same degree. The study uses elite approach, and discourse analysis as key methodological tools. The general findings indicated that the Arab uprisings have strong and diversified impacts on the components of the Israeli military doctrine. These impacts may be compared to those of regional wars and military conflicts, as they have reshaped the map of security risks and threats.

The rise of China, balance of power theory and US national security: Reasons for optimism?

ABSTRACTWhen and why might a rising China challenge the power and security of a relatively declining United States? Conventional wisdom argues that China – like other rising states – is apt to adopt an increasingly ambitious strategy that imperils US interests as its relative power grows. Drawing on balance of power theory, I instead argue that the threat of Chinese predation is overstated. Rising in a crowded geopolitical neighbourhood, China faces incentives to avoid preying on the United States, and may even have reason to cooperate with the United States over the long term.

Bargaining: Revisi Teori Perimbangan Kekuatan dalam Hubungan Diplomasi Indonesia, Malaysia, Cina dan Amerika Serikat

Tulisan ini berupaya untuk mengkritisi teori perimbangan kekuatan dan menawarkan strategi alternatif. Telah lebih dari tiga abad Teori Perimbangan Kekuatan (TPK) menjadi konsep utama dari paham Realis. Namun bagi negara lemah dalam menghadapi aliansi lawan yang lebih kuat, TPK hanya menawarkan dua opsi strategi: Balancing dan Bandwagoning. Kedua solusi itu tdak cocok bagi negara lemah yang netral, sehingga perlu dirancang strategi ketiga – yang mampu meningkatkan kekuatan relatif namun tetap memelihara netralitas politik negara lemah. Strategi ketiga itu penulis sebut dengan Bargaining – yang mengutamakan manfaat kemitraan strategis sebagai instrumen diplomasi.

Classical geopolitics, realism and the balance of power theory

ABSTRACTSince the end of World War II, classical geopolitics as a particular form of realism has been disengaged from the development of mainstream realist theories. This disengagement has not only concealed the value of classical geopolitics as a framework of analysis for policy and strategy, but also created an increasing rift between theory and policy in contemporary realist theories. This paper seeks to reengage classical geopolitics with mainstream realist theories by clarifying its realist traits and analytical characteristics, (re)stating its core propositions and probing into its potential contribution to the development of mainstream realist theories. This paper contends that classical geopolitics, while having a distinctive pedigree, can arguably be considered an integral part of the family of realist theories in view of its basic theoretical assumptions concerning international anarchy, the unit of analysis and power politics. As a framework of analysis, classical geopolitics incorporates three interrelated strategic propositions. Those three propositions not only constitute the theoretical core of classical geopolitics, but also manifest a peculiar balance-of-power conception that is essentially distinct from those proposed by mainstream realist theories. This paper argues that those three propositions combined promise to fill in prominent lacuna in the balance-of-power research programme, and also have significant implications for contemporary world politics.

Kashmir Crisis: A Critical Analysis of Indo-Pak Intercession

This paper explores the various intervention approaches adopted by both India and Pakistan regarding Kashmir issue. It uses the theoretical approaches of Constructivism, Realism and Balance of Power Theory. The study's objectives are divided into three categories, each entailing the Kashmir issue under the mentioned three theoretical approaches mentioned earlier. These variables are observed keeping in mind the empirical data available over the years, which define the situation of Kashmir from the time of Independence 1947 to the present scenario with regards to the Indo-Pak policies of influence under the cited theoretical prospects. As a result, the research concludes that not only Kashmir has been a humanitarian crisis where innocent people are slaughtered daily, but also a grave phenomenon for the international community who has failed to resolve it in 70 years.

Aliance Behavior of States in Balance of Power Theory

This paper analyses the role of weak states in the theory of balance ofpower. Using advanced quantitative methods, this study builds on StephanWalt’s concept of balance of threat, which is derived from an original theoryof Kenneth Waltz, and examines the relation between two types of states’behaviour (balancing and bandwagoning) and the factors influencing thetendency of a state to choose one or the other. The influence of thesefactors is analysed in the period from the end of the Napoleonic Wars untilthe beginning of WWII in the European and South American regions. Basedon a statistical analysis, our study concludes that when the power of a statedecreases, its tendency towards balancing the main threat decreases aswell. The behaviour of states is also influenced by the geographic proximityof the main threat and the number of available allies as well as by thecharacter of the political regime of the given state, although these factorsoften have different influences within the examined regions.

A Brief Reflection on Conversations about Security

A few years ago, I agreed to write an entry for the International Studies Association (ISA) Compendium entitled “Alliances and Arms: The Quest for Security” (Denemark 2010). The submission was requested by the Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) Section editors, Paul Diehl and Jim Morrow. My colleague Cliff Morgan and I were tasked with reviewing the literature on alliances and arms, with a focus on the contributions of SSIP style work. When the volume containing our contribution arrived in the mail sometime later, I discovered that the very next entry alphabetically in the compendium was entitled “Alliances and War,” and was written by Patricia Weitsman, commissioned by the International Security Studies Section (ISSS). Until the volume came out, Cliff and I were unaware that Patty was working on a similar entry, and I expect she was not aware of our contribution either. After reading the two entries, I was struck by the separation of communities concerned with similar problems. Weitsman’s compendium entry cites 156 studies. Leeds and Morgan’s cites ninety-six studies. The two share twenty-nine citations in common—19 percent of the Weitsman citations and 30 percent of the Leeds and Morgan citations. The topics of the two essays are not identical, and we were specifically told to focus on literature related to the traditions of our sections, which surely helps explain some of the differences. Still, it seems that the two essays attempt to answer similar questions relying on different bodies of work. But do they reach the same conclusions? The answer is yes and no. In explaining alliance formation, both essays begin from the same starting point—balance of power theories. The first major difference between the two essays is that Weitsman concludes that “balancing is a central role that alliances …

Me, myself, and allies: Understanding the external sources of power

As far back as Thucydides, scholars have hypothesized that power affects the onset of conflict. Despite its importance, power remains a difficult concept to measure, and scholars have primarily relied on material measures that quantify the internal resources available to a state. This concentration on internal sources of power, however, excludes an important power resource available to a state: its external relations. It is reasonable to expect that when a state estimates the power of a potential opponent it looks not only at the internal resources but also at the power of states that would likely join the conflict. In this article, we develop a new measure of external power that explicitly accounts for the external sources of state power. Unlike previous studies that aggregate a state’s expected alliance contributions, our measure is based on the expected contribution of all states, allies and non-allies alike. We conduct a preliminary test of this new measure on dispute onset, and our results provide support for power preponderance over balance of power theories. External power parity contributes to dispute onset rather than deterrence. In addition, we show that examining the combined, rather than individual, effects of external and internal power produces some intriguing results, suggesting that one state’s internal power preponderance can be offset by another state’s preponderance of external power. These results altogether suggest that further studies examining the role of external power can produce fruitful results.

Structural realism and Dulles's China policy

AbstractThe Eisenhower administration's tough containment policy toward China has been conventionally viewed as an unsensible policy resulting from domestic political pressures or ideology. Refuting the conventional explanations, this article argues that during the early Cold War, the US superiority in bipolarity drove China to balance the United States in Asia. Dulles, the architect of the China policy, made accurate assessments of the power structure in Asia and the inevitable enmity with China. Driven by structural imperative, he decided to pursue containment to maintain the favourable balance of power in Asia by retarding the relative power growth of China allied with the Soviet Union and secondarily by accelerating their conflict through harder pressure on a weaker China. This case long considered as a prime anomaly to balance of power theory actually demonstrates how powerfully distributions of power shape alliance behaviours of states in the anarchic international system.

Historyzacja pojęcia „równowaga siły” w nauce o stosunkach międzynarodowych

The paper focuses on a major question: should we abandon balance of power theory or seek to amend it in light many recent challenges? Author also raises crucial conceptual concerns: how should we define concepts such as „balancing”, „the balance of power”, and „balance of power theory”? Article elaborates a distinction between three related theories: balance of power theory, theories of power balances, and theories of balancing. In section II author discuss the concept balance of power in works of Edmund Burke. In section III he presents a survey of three historical international systems: ancient Middle Eastern system, the Greek city-state system and ancient China system. The weight of historical evidence casts significant doubt on the balancing efforts. This evidence shows that balancing processes rarely blocked the emergence of a prominent power or undermined it once it came into being. The balancing dynamics often failed in the face of the logics of domination. The balance of power theory is metaphor for the peculiar, impersonal form through which our collective human agency is expressed in the history of international relations. If and when it do disappear it will be through a process of social transformation, not one of cognitive reformulation. Balance of power theory must not any longer be the integrating theory of international relations.

Network Power and Militarized Conflicts

This study argues that a state’s power is best conceptualized by considering how a state interacts with all other states in different networks within the international system. This social network explanation for national power is applied to militarized conflicts, one of the most widely studied empirical phenomena in international relations, focusing on their power explanations. The empirical analysis of militarized conflicts at the dyadic level produces findings that strongly support power preponderance theory over balance of power theory. The evidence from nonparametric model discrimination statistics and information criteria measures also shows that our conflict models with new social network power measures have greater explanatory power than or statistically outperform models relying on attributional power measures, such as Correlates of War index and Gross National Product (GNP).

Predicting the Loss of Constitutional Rights and Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security

The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship between the increased need for national security standards and the negative impact on constitutional rights and civil liberties of U.S. citizens. Balance of Power Theory and Balance of Threat Theory as well as the LAMP technique were employed to develop a method for studying the relationship and for deriving results. Through the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP) technique, the study determines likely futures based on three scenarios: the U.S. faces a massive terrorist attack, the U.S. faces numerous small-scale attacks, and the U.S. faces no terrorist attack. After developing permutations for all three scenarios, the likely alternate futures support the notion that the U.S. courts, U.S. population, and U.S. national security community would not prevent alterations to current laws and Acts granting citizens constitutional rights and civil liberties if the threat of attack was imminent. The study concludes by supporting the hypothesis that national security standards will impinge on constitutional rights and civil liberties.

Structure and Perceptions: Explaining American Policy Toward China (1949–50)

American policy toward China during the early Cold War has long been considered as a prime anomaly to balance of power theory. Many realists have argued that domestic forces caused a confrontational policy, overriding structural imperative to accommodate China to balance the stronger Soviet power in Asia. Refuting the domestic explanation, I argue that balance of power consideration primarily determined the U.S. policy. Under the powerful pressure of bipolar competition, the Truman administration persistently pursued a realist policy of forming an alliance with Communist China, or at least neutralizing it, through accommodation in order to balance the Soviet Union in Asia. This policy was based on the assessment of Soviet superiority in Asia. However, my analysis of the power structure shows that there was little structural incentive for China to cooperate with the United States against the Soviet Union because the latter was in a somewhat disadvantageous position globally and had limited offensive capabilities in Asia. Further, Chinese leaders perceived the United States as the superior power in bipolarity. Consequently, China formed an alliance with the Soviet Union to check the United States according to its own balance of power logic.

Limited Defensive Strategic Partnership: Sino–Russian rapprochement and the driving forces

The deepening rapprochement between China and Russia, those two formidable continental powers, constitutes one of the most noteworthy phenomena in post-Cold War world affairs. Through detailed investigation of this vital bilateral relationship over a variety of issue areas, we characterize the current Sino–Russian relations as a limited defensive strategic partnership, with strategicness constituting the core of the Sino–Russian relationship. More than that, we further argue that the Sino–Russian rapprochement is externally-driven rather than internally-driven. More specifically, realism's balance of power theory, or its variety balance of threat theory, provides a relatively convincing explanation regarding the increasingly strengthened Sino–Russian strategic partnership. In a roughly chronological way, this paper will demonstrate how America's increasing unilateralism in its foreign policy approaches was correlated with, and thus contributed to, the deepening rapprochement between China and Russia.

Population Shifts and Civil War: A Test of Power Transition Theory

Do shifts in the distribution of ethnic group populations within a multinational state make civil war more likely? This article tests the proposition that they do using the competing logic of two core theories of interstate politics: power transition (PTT) and balance of power theory (BPT). The universe of potential population transition types are reduced to nine, and the logic of each of the competing explanations of war likelihood are reduced to four testable hypotheses. Overall, PTT fares better than BPT; although the article concludes that, as is the case at the interstate level, the key determinate of war likelihood rests more with how power is perceived than with raw changes in its distribution across the spectrum of meaningful political actors. Finally, the article offers a useful framework for further specifying the conditions under which population shifts alter the likelihood of an escalation to civil war.

Nuclear Arms in Asia: Theory and Policy Issues

Neither a balance of power model nor a balance of terror model can predict with assurance whether nuclear Asia will be stable or unstable. Even if fewer than eight states in Asia become nuclear weapons states, the problems of crisis management and escalation control, growing out of clashes between conventional armed forces, becomes harder to manage. As well, nuclear weapons have psychological effects on their owners, and not always predictable ones. Classic balance of power theory, written prior to the nuclear age, anticipated the use of small wars for intrasystemic adjustments without the elimination of major actors. Balance of terror theory regards small nuclear wars as possible escalators into larger ones. Europe's nuclear experience may be a misleading guide for twenty-first century Asia—with regard to the effects of both power and terror relationships.

The Case of the Missing Hegemon: British Nonintervention in the American Civil War

Balance of power theories have come roaring back into prominence in recent years as international relations theory grapples with new developments, including offshore balancing and soft balancing. Recent works demonstrate the importance of more than just the distribution of power, and have addressed the role that domestic politics plays in balancing. One overlooked aspect of this debate, with implications for offensive realism and the current discussion on the United States and soft balancing, is the role that nonintervention conventions play in decision making. British nonintervention during the American Civil War presents a case at odds with offensive realist theory, as Britain should have intervened to protect its national interests—cotton, trade, and shipping—while also restraining a regional hegemonic power. Domestic cleavages, democratic peace norms, and public opinion pressures do not sufficiently explain this behavior. Instead, this paper posits that nonintervention was a result of British adherence to precedents and conventions.

European Union Security and Defense Policy: Response to Unipolarity?

The European Union has, since 1999, moved deliberately, if slowly, to develop the capability to undertake autonomously a range of demanding political military operations beyond Europe's borders. This effort, the European Security and Defense Policy (esdp), is a puzzle insofar as post-Cold War Europe is very secure, and most European nations are members of an established alliance, the u.s.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. esdp is best explained by the international relations theory known as structural realism, the modern guise of balance of power theory. Balance of power theory is contrasted with balance of threat theory. Though European states are not motivated by a perception of an imminent threat from the United States, they are balancing u.s. power. The concentration of global power in the United States, unipolarity, is uncomfortable even for its friends who fear the abandonment that u.s. freedom of action permits and who wish to influence the global political environment the United States could create.

The Travails of Balance of Power Theory: The United States in the Middle East

Balance of power is a ubiquitous concept in theory and practice, but it is rarely tested. This study tests balance of power and balance of threat theories in the case of U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf. Propositions are derived from the theories and from a conceptualization that treats external states as facing potentially competing and contradictory pressures to balance at the global and regional levels as well as against power and threat. Evidence strongly disconfirms balance of power theory, while balance of threat theory is partly confirmed. Conditions are identified that make balance of threat theory more robust against the historical period explored and possibly in other cases.