In his article “The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept,
or Propaganda?”, Ernst Bernard Haas a well renowned political scientist analyses the meanings given to the term; The
balance of power. The widely accepted definition of ‘balance of power’ is that
states tend to seek equilibrium in the international politics in order to avoid
conflict with other states. But Haas further argues that there is no one
meaning of this term rather if we look at the history we will notice that this
term is applied and understood by many statesmen and political scientists in many
different ways. He mentions eight different meanings of the phrase from different
authors, to further strengthen his argument. Some of the meanings include
‘hegemony’, ‘propaganda’ and ‘instability and war’. He also says that different
meanings given to this term can’t even be classified or categorized with one
another.
The concept of ‘balance’ of power is one of the oldest in international
politics. I f we analyze this theory in accordance with present situations in
international political arena, I think we can easily realize that every state
is formulating its foreign policy according to concept of ‘dynamic balance of
power’. This term was coined by Prof. Quincy Wright which means that every
state tries to strengthen its position through military might, which can be
counted as the most important index of their dominance. But, today in this modern era one cannot gauge
the dominance of a country only by its military might. Other factors such as
economic dependency also play an important role in the making of the foreign
policies of states.
It is also worth mentioning here that this theory of balance
of power was introduced in Europe while the European countries were dominating
the international politics. And the scientists who proposed theories regarding
the implications this term were in an environment where every European country
was in constant urge to dominate the other one. In today’s uni-polar world this
theory might not be that valid as it was in the time of European dominance or
even till the end of cold war.
I agree with Hamza that this theory was introduced in a different situation and that it might now be valuable to us today. But if you think of it in the other way, it does actually define different things happening in the international society, like we can take the example of USA and China. Both of them are in conflict for more power and China is constantly gaining superiority as it is becoming the economic superpower.
ReplyDeleteEconomic might is a necessity to achieve a favorable balance of power and so is military might. But economic might does usually lead to a country being strong militarily, in my opinion, as the country can afford to spend more to protect itself from threats.
ReplyDeleteRealists care primarily about military might, as this is what is used to project power. Although we are living in a unipolar moment, there has been what Fareed Zakaria has termed a "rise of the rest" where economic development has lifted many countries around the world. This economic development may lead to new great powers. Some are arguing that we are going towards a multipolar system again with powers such as the BRICS and EU supplanting sole U.S. authority.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree with Ali's point about how economic power begets military power.