(Page 3 of 42) - Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Isn't Pushing Back authored by Lieber, Keir. and Alexander, Gerard.

Kenneth N . W altz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 127.

Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” Intern ation al Se curity, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 5-

41, at p. 38.

Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” Intern ation al Se curity, Vol. 18,

No . 2 (Fa ll 199 3), pp . 44-7 9; Ch ristoph er La yne, “T he U nipo lar Illusion : W hy Ne w G reat P owe rs W ill
Rise,” Intern ation al Se curity, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51. John Mearsheimer’s widely-cited
article about a return to multipolarity (and the dangers that would follow) was predicated on the assumption
that the United States would join the Soviet Union in withdrawing its forces from Europe; see John J.
Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,” Intern ation al Se curity, Vo l.
15, No. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5-56.

Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” p. 27.

The result is that most countries either do not have a direct stake in this conflict or, as
often as not, share the U.S. interest in the reduction of threats from terrorism and
weapons of mass destruction. This line of argument refocuses analytic attention away
from U.S. relations with “the world” as a disaggregated whole, and toward a sharp
distinction between, on the one hand, U.S. policy toward rogue states and cross-national
terrorist organizations and, on the other, U.S. relations with other states.

2. Predictions of Balancing

Both realists and liberals predict that states will balance against American power

under current conditions. In general, realists tend to see great power balancing as an
inevitable phenomenon of international politics and liberals see balancing as the likely
result of imprudent American policies, but either logic is employed in both camps.

Traditional structural realism holds that states motivated by the search for

security in an anarchical world will balance against concentrations of power. According
to Kenneth Waltz, the most famous proponent of balance-of-power theory, “states, if they
are free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens
them.”

“Balancing is a strategy for survival,” Waltz writes elsewhere, “a way of

attempting to maintain a state’s autonomous way of life.”

In other words, the most

powerful state will always appear threatening to others because weaker states can never
be certain that it will not use its power to violate their sovereignty and independence, or
threaten their survival. The inherent mistrust and fear generated by the nature of
international system means that weaker states will attempt to check the power of the most
powerful state.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States was left with a

preeminence of power unparalleled in modern history. Prominent realists predicted that
other major powers would balance against the United States.

A decade later, Waltz

identified “balancing tendencies already taking place” and argued that it was only a
matter of time before other great powers formed a serious balancing coalition.

Note that

the standard realist prediction of balancing does not require that U.S. power meet some
kind of threshold of global hegemon or empire. In terms of criteria for expecting
balancing in realist terms, all that matters is that the United States is the preeminent
power in the system, which it was in 1990 and clearly remains today.

The distinctive strand of realist balance-of-threat theory holds that whether states

balance depends on the threats they perceive, not just the amount of raw power possessed
by others. Stephen Walt argues that perceived threat depends on a combination of