What is balance of power?

The equilibrium that must be maintain to prevent armed conflict among countries or alliances and to prevent any one country from becoming stronger than others and gain the ability to enforce its will on other nations is defined as Balance of Power. A main aspect of “real politik” where self-preservation is the primary guiding principle which leads to forging alliances with nations that shared ideologies. During the Cold War years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact operated with a balance of power principle, aware that "unbalancing" actions would trigger greater conflicts or even nuclear war.

The theory of “balance of power” predicts that a country will take advantage of its strength and attack weaker neighbors, thus providing an incentive for those threatened to unite in a defensive alliance such as NATO. The theory maintains that the status quo would be more stable as bellicosity would appear unattractive and would be deterred if there was equilibrium of power between the rival coalitions of nations. Other schools of international relations, such as the constructivists, are critical of the balance of power theory, disputing the core assumption realists make regarding the international order.

David Hume explained in his Essay on the Balance of Power, that the concept is as old as history, whereas it was used by Greeks such as Thucydides who was both a political theorists and a practical statesmen.

The concept was reenacted during the Renaissance among the Italian city-states in the 15th century. “Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence, were the first rulers actively to pursue such a policy, with the Italic League, though historians have generally attributed the innovation to the Medici rulers of Florence.”

Universalist doctrine, which was the central direction of European international relations before the Peace of Westphalia, gave way to the doctrine of the balance of power. This idea of balance-of-power principle, once formulated as a theory it became a subject-maxim of political science. Honore Daumier a famous French cartoonist represented in 1866, the balance of power as men in different military uniforms balancing the earth with bayonets.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said in 1946 that “If the Western Democracies do not stand together then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all.” He follows with the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security.”

Today’s international system is built not around a balance of power but around American hegemony with a work in progress theory of “Overwhelming Power” This new theoretical interpretation supersedes the old one and becomes the new 'paradigm' for successive inquiry into the subject.

Robert Pape, T. S. Paul, and Stephen Walt argue that traditional power balancing is not occurring, but instead they say the US is engaging in 'soft balancing where the net effect is that independent states are free to join or to refrain from joining alliances or align with others as each seeks to maximize its security and to advance its national interest.

The necessary preponderance of power is unlikely to emerge from any other international combination aside from the permanent alliance of the United States in NATO, with the addition of such Latin American states and such European democracies that might wish to join.

The US strategy throughout the Cold War was a strategy of preponderance or overwhelming force. This post-Cold War strategy holds that "only a preponderance of US power ensures peace.” This theory states that US capabilities are sufficient to intimidate all potential challengers and to comfort all coalition partners.

“Power Preponderance is going to replace balance-of-power neo-realism and become the dominant brand of American “Real Politik” for the foreseeable future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin complained: “Instead of establishing a new balance of power the United States has taken steps that throws the international system into a sharp and deep imbalance.”

Of course, such statement coming from a thug and dictator like Putin is laughable considering his current criminal behavior in the Ukraine and Syria.