Waiting for Balancing Gerard Alexander Why the World Is...

Many scholars andpolicy analysts predicted the emergence of balancing against the United Statesfollowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War Sincethen however great power balancingmdashwhen states seriously commit them-selves to containing a threatening statemdashhas failed to emerge despite a hugeincrease in the preponderant power of the United States More recently theprospect and then onset of the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 gener-ated renewed warnings of an incipient global backlash Some observers claimthat signs of traditional balancing by statesmdashthat is internal defense buildupsor external alliance formationmdashcan already be detected Others suggest thatsuch ldquohard balancingrdquo may not be occurring Instead they argue that theworld is witnessing a new phenomenon of ldquosoft balancingrdquo in which statesseek to undermine and restrain US power in ways that fall short of classicmeasures But in both versions many believe that the wait is over and that theworld is beginning to push back

This article argues in contrast that both lines of argument are unpersuasiveThe past few years have certainly witnessed a surge in resentment and criti-cism of speciordfc US policies But great power balancing against the UnitedStates has yet to occur a ordfnding that we maintain offers important insightsinto statesrsquo perceptions and intentions The United Statesrsquo nearest rivals are notramping up defense spending to counter US power nor have these statessought to pool their efforts or resources for counterbalancing We argue fur-ther that discussion of soft balancing is much ado about nothing Deordfning oroperationalizing the concept is difordfcult the behavior typically identiordfed by itseems identical to normal diplomatic friction and regardless the evidencedoes not support speciordfc predictions suggested by those advancing theconcept

Global interactions during and after the Iraq war have been ordflled with botha great deal of stasismdashas many states leave their policies toward the UnitedStates fundamentally unchangedmdashand ironies such as repeated requests by

Keir A Lieber is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame He is also FacultyFellow at the Joan B Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Nanovic Institute for EuropeanStudies at Notre Dame Gerard Alexander is Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia

The authors thank Keven Ruby Randall Schweller and the participants of the Program on Interna-tional Politics Economics and Security at the University of Chicago for comments on an earlierdraft of this article They also thank Ozlem Kayhan for her research assistance

International Security Vol 30 No 1 (Summer 2005) pp 109ndash139copy 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Waiting for Balancing

Waiting for Balancing Keir A Lieber andGerard Alexander

Why the World Is Not Pushing Back

109

the United States for its allies to substantially boost their military spendingand capabilities requests that so far have gone unordflled Moreover US rela-tions with regional powers such as China Russia India and other key states(eg Egypt Jordan Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) have improved in recentyears These revealing events and trends are underappreciated by many per-haps most analyses in search of balancing

The lack of balancing behavior against the United States constitutes a genu-ine puzzle for many observers with serious implications both for theorizingand for US foreign policy making and so is a puzzle worth explaining Thenext section of this article reviews approaches that predict balancing undercurrent conditions The second section presents evidence that classic forms ofbalancing are not occurring The third section argues that claims of soft balanc-ing are unpersuasive because evidence for them is poor especially becausethey rely on criteria that cannot effectively distinguish between soft balancingand routine diplomatic friction These claims are in that sense nonfalsiordfableThe fourth section proposes that balancing against the United States is not oc-curring because the postndashSeptember 11 grand strategy designed by the GeorgeW Bush administration despite widespread criticism poses a threat only to avery limited number of regimes and terrorist groups As a result most coun-tries either do not have a direct stake in the ldquowar on terrorrdquo or often share theUS interest in the reduction of threats from rogue states and terrorist groupsThis line of argument refocuses analytic attention away from US relationswith the entire world as a disaggregated whole and toward a sharp distinctionbetween on the one hand US policy toward rogue states and transnationalterrorist organizations and on the other US relations with other states

Predictions of Balancing International Relations Theory andUS Foreign Policy

The study of balancing behavior in international relations has deep roots but itremains fraught with conceptual ambiguities and competing theoretical andempirical claims1 Rather than offer a review of the relevant debates we focushere on a speciordfc set of realist and liberal predictions that states will balance

International Security 301 110

1 Recent surveys of balance of power theory that also include discussions of contemporary inter-national politics include G John Ikenberry ed America Unrivaled The Future of the Balance of Power(Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 2002) John A Vasquez and Colin Elman eds Realism andthe Balancing of Power A New Debate (Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall 2002) and TV PaulJames J Wirtz and Michel Fortmann eds Balance of Power Theory and Practice in the 21st Century(Stanford Calif Stanford University Press 2004)

against US power under current conditions Although realists tend to seegreat power balancing as an inevitable phenomenon of international politicsand liberals generally see it as an avoidable feature of international life the ar-guments discussed below share the view that balancing is being provoked byaggressive and imprudent US policies

Traditional structural realism holds that states motivated by the search forsecurity in an anarchical world will balance against concentrations of powerldquoStates if they are free to choose ordmock to the weaker side for it is the strongerside that threatens themrdquo2 According to Kenneth Waltz and other structuralrealists the most powerful state will always appear threatening becauseweaker states can never be certain that it will not use its power to violate theirsovereignty or threaten their survival With the demise of the Soviet Union in1991 the United States was left with a preeminence of power unparalleled inmodern history The criteria for expecting balancing in structural realist termsdo not require that US power meet a speciordfc threshold all that matters is thatthe United States is the preeminent power in the system which it was in 1990and clearly remains today Consistent with earlier theorizing prominent real-ists predicted at the end of the Cold War that other major powers would bal-ance against it3 A decade later Waltz identiordfed ldquobalancing tendencies alreadytaking placerdquo and argued that it was only a matter of time before other greatpowers formed a serious balancing coalition although that timing is theoreti-cally underdetermined ldquoTheory enables one to say that a new balance ofpower will form but not to say how long it will take In our perspective thenew balance is emerging slowly in historical perspectives it will come in theblink of an eyerdquo4

John Mearsheimerrsquos work is an important exception to the structural realistprediction of balancing against the United States He argues that geographymdashspeciordfcally the two oceans that separate the United States from the worldrsquosother great powersmdashprevents the United States from projecting enough mili-tary power to pursue global hegemony Given this lack of capability the

Waiting for Balancing 111

2 Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics (New York McGraw-Hill 1979) p 1273 Kenneth N Waltz ldquoThe Emerging Structure of International Politicsrdquo International Security Vol18 No 2 (Fall 1993) pp 44ndash79 and Christopher Layne ldquoThe Unipolar Illusion Why New GreatPowers Will Riserdquo International Security Vol 17 No 4 (Spring 1993) pp 5ndash51 John JMearsheimerrsquos widely cited article about a return to multipolarity (and the dangers that wouldfollow) was predicated on the assumption that the United States would join the Soviet Union inwithdrawing its forces from Europe See Mearsheimer ldquoBack to the Future Instability in Europeafter the Cold Warrdquo International Security Vol 15 No 1 (Summer 1990) pp 5ndash564 Kenneth N Waltz ldquoStructural Realism after the Cold Warrdquo International Security Vol 25 No 1(Summer 2000) pp 27 30

United States must be content with regional hegemony This means that theUnited States is essentially a status quo power that poses little danger to thesurvival or sovereignty of other great powers Thus according to Mear-sheimer no balancing coalition against the United States is likely to form (Forsimilar reasons historyrsquos previous ldquooffshore balancerrdquomdashGreat Britainmdashdidnot provoke a balancing coalition even at the height of its power in the nine-teenth century)5

A distinctive strand of realist theory holds that states balance against per-ceived threats not just against raw power Stephen Walt argues that perceivedthreat depends on a combination of aggregate power geography technologyintentions and foreign policy behavior6 With this theoretical modiordfcationWalt and others seek to explain why the United States provoked less balancingin the last half century than its sheer power would suggest7 Although geogra-phy is important as in Mearsheimerrsquos explanation above balance of threattheorists ordfnd the key to the absence of real balancing in the United Statesrsquo dis-tinct history of comparatively benign intentions and behavior especially theabsence of attempts to conquer or dominate foreign lands As Robert Pape ar-gues ldquoThe long ascendancy of the United States has been a remarkable excep-tionrdquo to the balance of power prediction and the main reason for this is itsldquohigh reputation for non-aggressive intentionsrdquo8 Given the United Statesrsquolong-standing power advantages this has been partly the result of self-re-straint which Walt believes can continue to ldquokeep the rest of the world lsquooff-balancersquo and minimize the opposition that the United States will face in thefuturerdquo9

Now however many balance of threat realists predict balancing based onwhat amounts to an empirical claim that US behavior since the September 112001 terrorist attacks is sufordfciently threatening to others that it is acceleratingthe process of balancing For these balance of threat theorists US policies are


5 John J Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York WW Norton 2001) See alsoJack S Levy ldquoWhat Do Great Powers Balance Against and Whenrdquo in Paul Wirtz and FortmannBalance of Power pp 29ndash516 Stephen M Walt The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1987)7 The United States was overwhelmingly the worldrsquos most dominant country immediately afterWorld War II surpassed the Soviet Union by a considerable margin in the primary indicators ofnational power throughout the Cold War and was left as the sole superpower after the Cold War8 Robert A Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo paper pre-pared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association Chicago Illinois Sep-tember 2ndash5 2004 pp 11 139 Stephen M Walt ldquoKeeping the World lsquoOff-Balancersquo Self-Restraint and US Foreign Policyrdquo inIkenberry America Unrivaled p 153

undermining the reputation of the United States for benevolence Walt com-pares the position of the United States today with that of imperial Germany inthe decades leading up to 1914 when that countryrsquos expansionism eventuallycaused its own encirclement According to Walt ldquoWhat we are witnessing isthe progressive self-isolation of the United Statesrdquo10 Pape argues that Presi-dent George W ldquoBush[lsquos] strategy of aggressive unilateralism is changingAmericarsquos long-enjoyed reputation for benign intent and giving other majorpowers reason to fear Americarsquos powerrdquo In particular adopting and imple-menting a preventive war strategy is ldquoencouraging other countries to formcounterweights to US powerrdquo11 Pape essentially suggests that the Bush ad-ministrationrsquos adoption of the preventive war doctrine in the aftermath of theSeptember 11 attacks converted the United States from a status quo power intoa revisionist one He also suggests that by invading Iraq the United States hasbecome an ldquolsquoon-shorersquo hegemon in a major region of the world abandoningthe strategy of off-shore balancingrdquo and that it is perceived accordingly byothers12

Traditional structural realists agree that US actions are hastening the bal-ancing process They argue that the United States is succumbing to theldquohegemonrsquos temptationrdquo to take on extremely ambitious goals use militaryforce unselectively and excessively overextend its power abroad and gener-ally reject self-restraint in its foreign policymdashall of which invariably generatecounterbalancing Christopher Laynersquos stark portrayal is worth citing atlength ldquoMany throughout the world now have the impression that the UnitedStates is acting as an aggressive hegemon engaged in the naked aggrandize-ment of its own power The notion that the United States is a lsquobenevolentrsquo he-gemon has been shredded America is inviting the same fate as that which hasovertaken previous contenders for hegemonyrdquo13 The Bush administrationrsquosdecision to go to war against Iraq is singled out as a catalytic event ldquoIn comingyears the Iraq War may come to be seen as a pivotal geopolitical event that


10 ldquoOpposing War Is Not lsquoAppeasementrsquo An Interview with Stephen Waltrdquo March 18 2003httpwwwtompainecomfeaturecfmID743111 Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo pp 3 14 22 andRobert A Pape ldquoThe World Pushes Backrdquo Boston Globe March 23 200312 Robert A Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How the World Will Respond to US Preventive Waron Iraqrdquo article posted on the Oak Park Coalition for Truth amp Justice website January 20 2003httpwwwopctjorgarticlesrobert-a-pape-university-of-chicago-02-21-2003-004443html andPape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo p 2413 Christopher Layne ldquoAmerica as European Hegemonrdquo National Interest No 72 (Summer2003) p 28 See also Waltz ldquoStructural Realism after the Cold Warrdquo p 29

heralded the beginning of serious counter-hegemonic balancing against theUnited Statesrdquo14

Liberal theorists typically argue that democracy economic interdependenceand international institutions largely obviate the need for states to engage inbalancing behavior15 Under current conditions however many liberals havejoined these realists in predicting balancing against the United States Theseliberal theorists share the view that US policymakers have violated a grandbargain of sortsmdashone that reduced incentives to balance against preponderantUS power In the most detailed account of this view John Ikenberry arguesthat hegemonic power does not automatically trigger balancing because it cantake a more benevolent form Speciordfcally the United States has restrained itsown power through a web of binding alliances and multilateral commitmentsinfused with trust mutual consent and reciprocity This US willingness toplace restraints on its hegemonic power combined with the open nature of itsliberal democracy reassured weaker states that their interests could be pro-tected and served within a US-led international order which in turn kepttheir expected value of balancing against the United States low This arrange-ment allowed the United States to project its inordmuence and pursue its interestswith only modest restraints on its freedom of action16 Invoking a similar em-pirical claim Ikenberry argues that US policies after September 11 shatteredthis order ldquoIn the past two years a set of hard-line fundamentalist ideas havetaken Washington by stormrdquo and have produced a grand strategy equivalentto ldquoa geostrategic wrecking ball that will destroy Americarsquos own half-century-old international architecturerdquo17 This has greatly increased the incentives forweaker states to balance18

These claims and predictions rest on diverse theoretical models with differ-ent underlying assumptions and one should not conclude that all realist orliberal theories now expect balancing But there is unusual convergenceamong these approaches on the belief that other countries have begun to en-


14 Christopher Layne ldquoThe War on Terrorism and the Balance of Power The Paradoxes of Amer-ican Hegemonyrdquo in Paul Wirtz and Fortmann Balance of Power pp 103ndash126 at p 11915 See for example John M Owen IV ldquoTransnational Liberalism and American Primacyrdquo Inter-national Security Vol 26 No 3 (Winter 20012002) pp 117ndash152 G John Ikenberry ldquoDemocracyInstitutions and American Restraintrdquo in Ikenberry America Unrivaled pp 213ndash238 and TV PaulldquoIntroduction The Enduring Axioms of Balance of Power Theory and Their Contemporary Rele-vancerdquo in Paul Wirtz and Fortmann Balance of Power pp 1ndash25 at pp 9ndash1116 G John Ikenberry After Victory Institutions Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding of Order afterMajor War (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 2001)17 G John Ikenberry ldquoThe End of the Neo-Conservative Momentrdquo Survival Vol 46 No 1(Spring 2004) p 718 Ibid p 20 and G John Ikenberry ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Ikenberry America Unrivaled p 10

gage in balancing behavior against the United States whether because of theUS relative power advantage the nature of its foreign policies (at least asthose policies are characterized) or both

Evidence of a Lack of Hard Balancing

The empirical evidence consistently disappoints expectations of traditionalforms of balancing against the United States This section ordfrst justiordfes a focuson this evidence and then examines it

justifying a focus on hard balancing

Some international relations theorists appear to have concluded that measure-ments of traditional balancing behavior since September 11 are irrelevant toassessing the strength of impulses to balance the United States They havedone so because they assume that other states cannot compete militarily withthe United States Therefore they conclude any absence of hard balancing thatmay (well) be detected would simply reordmect structural limits on these statesrsquocapabilities and does not constitute meaningful evidence about their inten-tions Evidence of such an absence can thus be dismissed as analyticallymeaningless to this topic We dispute this and argue instead that evidence con-cerning traditional balancing behavior is analytically signiordfcant

William Wohlforth argues that the United States enjoys such a large marginof superiority over every other state in all the important dimensions of power(military economic technological geopolitical etc) that an extensive counter-balancing coalition is infeasible both because of the sheer size of the US mili-tary effort and the huge coordination issues involved in putting together sucha counterbalancing coalition19 This widely cited argument is invoked by theo-rists of soft balancing to explain and explain away the absence of traditionalbalancing at least for now20

Wohlforthrsquos main conclusion on this matter is unconvincing empirically Asa result the claim that the absence of hard balancing does not reveal intentionsis unconvincing analytically There is certainly a steep disparity in worldwide


19 Additionally ldquoEfforts to produce a counterbalance globally will generate powerful counter-vailing action locallyrdquo thus undermining the effort William C Wohlforth ldquoThe Stability of a Uni-polar Worldrdquo International Security Vol 24 No 1 (Summer 1999) p 2820 See for example Stephen M Walt ldquoCan the United States Be Balanced If So Howrdquo paperprepared for the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association Chicago IllinoisSeptember 2ndash5 2004 p 14 and Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a UnipolarWorldrdquo pp 2ndash3 Both Walt and Pape stress the coordination aspects in particular

levels of defense spending Those levels fell almost everywhere after the end ofthe Cold War but they fell more steeply and more durably in other parts of theworld which resulted in a widening US lead in military capabilities EvenEuropersquos sophisticated militaries lack truly independent command intelli-gence surveillance and logistical capabilities China Russia and others areeven less able to match the United States militarily In 2005 for example theUnited States may well represent 50 percent of defense spending in the entireworld

Although this conordfguration of spending might appear to be a structural factin its own right it is less the result of rigid constraints than of much more mal-leable budgetary choices Of course it would be neither cheap nor easy to bal-ance against a country as powerful as the United States Observers might pointout that the United States was able to project enough power to help defeatWilhelmine Germany Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan it managed to con-tain the Soviet Union in Europe for half a century and most recently it toppledtwo governments on the other side of the world in a matter of weeks (theTaliban in Afghanistan and the Baathist regime in Iraq) But it is easy to exag-gerate the extent and effectiveness of American power as the ongoing effort topacify Iraq suggests The limits of US military power might be showcased ifone imagines the tremendous difordfculties the United States would face in try-ing to conquer and control say China Whether considered by populationeconomic power or military strength various combinations of Britain ChinaFrance Germany Japan and Russiamdashto name only a relatively small numberof major powersmdashwould have more than enough actual and latent power tocheck the United States These powers have substantial latent capabilities forbalancing that they are unambiguously failing to mobilize

Consider for example Europe alone Although the military resources of thetwenty-ordfve members of the European Union are often depicted as being vastlyovershadowed by those of the United States these states have more troops un-der arms than the United States 186 million compared with 143 million21 TheEU countries also have the organizational and technical skills to excel at com-mand control and surveillance They have the know-how to develop a widerange of high-technology weapons And they have the money to pay for them


21 Of this the ordffteen countries that were EU members before May 2004 have an estimated 155million active military personnel See International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) The Mili-tary Balance 2003ndash2004 (London IISS 2003) pp 18 35ndash79

with a total gross domestic product (GDP) greater than that of the UnitedStates more than $125 trillion to the United Statesrsquo $117 trillion in 200422

It is true that the Europeans would have to pool resources and overcome allthe traditional problems of coordination and collective action common tocounterbalancing coalitions to compete with the United States strategicallyEven more problematic are tendencies to free ride or pass the buck inside bal-ancing coalitions23 But numerous alliances have nonetheless formed and theEU members would be a logical starting point because they have the lowestbarriers to collective action of perhaps any set of states in history Just as im-portant as discussed below the argument about coordination barriers seemsill suited to the contemporary context because the other major powers are ap-parently not even engaged in negotiations concerning the formation of a bal-ancing coalition Alternatively dynamics of intraregional competition mightforestall global balancing But this too is hardly a rigid obstacle in the face of acommonly perceived threat Certainly Napoleon Adolf Hitler and Joseph Sta-lin after World War II all induced strange bedfellows to form alliances and per-mitted several regional powers to mobilize without alarming their neighbors

That said even if resources can be linked there are typically limits to howmuch internal balancing can be undertaken by any set of powers evenwealthy ones given that they usually already devote a signiordfcant proportionof their resources to national security But historical trends only highlight thedegree to which current spending levels are the result of choices rather thanstructural constraints The level of defense spending that contemporary econo-mies are broadly capable of sustaining can be assessed by comparing currentspending to the military expenditures that West European NATO membersmdashacategory of countries that substantively overlaps with the EUmdashmaintainedless than twenty years ago during the Cold War In a number of cases thesestates are spending on defense at rates half (or less than half) those of the mid-1980s (see Table 1)

Consider how a resumption of earlier spending levels would affect globalmilitary expenditures today In 2003 the United States spent approximately$383 billion on defense This was nearly twice the $190 billion spent by West


22 These ordfgures are the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentrsquos estimatesfor 2004 See httpwwwoecdorgdataoecd48433727936pdf Of this the prendashMay 2004 EUmembers had a combined 2004 GDP of approximately $12 trillion EU per capita income ofcourse is somewhat lower than in the United States and dollar-denominated comparisons shiftwith currency ordmuctuations23 Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics pp 155ndash162

European NATO members But if these same European countries had resumedspending at the rates they successfully sustained in 1985 they would havespent an additional $150 billion on defense in 2003 In that event US spend-ing would have exceeded theirs by little more than 10 percent well within his-toric ranges of international military competition24 Moreover this underlyingcapacity to fully if not immediately match the United States is further en-hanced if one considers the latent capabilities of two or three other states espe-cially Chinarsquos manpower Japanrsquos wealth and technology and Russiarsquosextensive arms production capabilities

In sum it appears that if there were a will to balance the United States therewould be a way And if traditional balancing is in fact an option available tocontemporary great powers then whether or not they are even beginning toexercise that option is of great analytic interest when one attempts to measurethe current strength of impulses to balance the United States

International relations theorists have developed commonly accepted stan-dards for measuring traditional balancing behavior Fairly strictly deordfned andrelatively veriordfable criteria such as these have great value because they reveal


24 This estimate is calculated from individual country data on military expenditure in local cur-rency available from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute httpwwwsipriorgcontentsmilapmilexmex_database1html GDP for eurozone countries from Eurostat httpeppeurostatceceu and GDP for non-eurozone countries from UN Statistics Division ldquoNationalAccounts Main Aggregates Databaserdquo httpunstatsunorgunsdsnaamaIntroductionasp

Table 1 Military Spending as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product European NATOMembers 1985 and 2002

Country 1985 2002

Belgium 29 13Denmark 21 16France 39 25Germany 32 15Greece 70 44Italy 22 19Luxembourg 10 09Netherlands 29 16Norway 28 19Portugal 32 23Spain 24 12United Kingdom 52 24

SOURCE International Institute for Strategic Studies The Military Balance 2003ndash2004 (Lon-don IISS 2003) p 335

behaviormdashcostly behavior signifying actual intentmdashthat can be distinguishedfrom the diplomatic friction that routinely occurs between almost all countrieseven allies

We use conventional measurements for traditional balancing The most im-portant and widely used criteria concern internal and external balancing andthe establishment of diplomatic ldquored linesrdquo Internal balancing occurs whenstates invest heavily in defense by transforming their latent power (ie eco-nomic technological social and natural resources) into military capabilitiesExternal balancing occurs when states seek to form military alliances againstthe predominant power25 Diplomatic red lines send clear signals to the aggres-sor that states are willing to take costly actions to check the dominant power ifit does not respect certain boundaries of behavior26 Only the last of these mea-surements involves the emergence of open confrontation much less the out-break of hostilities The other two concern instead statesrsquo investments incoercive resources and the pooling of such resources

examining evidence of internal balancing

Since the end of the Cold War no major power in the international system ap-pears to be engaged in internal balancing against the United States with thepossible exception of China Such balancing would be marked by meaning-fully increased defense spending the implementation of conscription or othermeans of enlarging the ranks of people under arms or substantially expandedinvestment in military research and technology

To start consider the region best positioned economically for balancingEurope Estimates of military spending as a share of the overall economy varybecause they rely on legitimately disputable methods of calculation But recentestimates show that spending by most EU members fell after the Cold War torates one-half (or less) the US rate And unlike in the United States spendinghas not risen appreciably since September 11 and the lead-up to the Iraq warand in many cases it has continued to fall (see Table 2)

In the United Kingdom Italy Spain Greece and Sweden military spendinghas been substantially reduced even since September 11 and the lead-up to theinvasion of Iraq Several recent spending upticks are modest and predomi-


25 Waltz sums up the basic choice ldquoAs nature abhors a vacuum so international politics abhorsunbalanced power Faced with unbalanced power some states try to increase their own strengthor they ally with others to bring the international distribution of power into balancerdquo WaltzldquoStructural Realism after the Cold Warrdquo p 28 On internal and external balancing more generallysee Waltz Theory of International Politics p 11826 Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics pp 156ndash157

nantly designed to address in-country terrorism Long-standing EU plans todeploy a non-NATO rapid reaction force of 60000 troops do not underminethis analysis This light force is designed for quick deployment to local-conordmictzones such as the Balkans and Africa it is neither designed nor suited for con-tinental defense against a strategic competitor

In April 2003 Belgium France Luxembourg and Germany (the key playerin any potential European counterweight) announced an increase in coopera-tion in both military spending and coordination But since then Germanyrsquosgovernment has instead trimmed its already modest spending and in 2003ndash04cut its military acquisitions and participation in several joint European weap-ons programs Germany is now spending GDP on the military at a rate of un-der 15 percent (a rate that is declining) compared with around 4 percent bythe United States in 2003 a rate that is growing

Alternative explanations for this spending pattern only undercut the logicalbasis of balancing predictions For example might European defense spendingbe constrained by sizable welfare-state commitments and by budget deordfcitlimits related to the common European currency Both of these constraints areself-imposed and can easily be construed to reveal stronger commitments toentitlement programs and to technical aspects of a common currency than tothe priority of generating defenses against a supposed potential strategic


Table 2 Military Spending as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product 2000ndash03

Country 2000 2001 2002 2003

United States 310 312 344 411Austria 084 078 076 078Belgium 140 134 129 129Denmark 151 159 156 157France 258 252 253 258Germany 151 148 148 145Greece 487 457 431 414Italy 209 202 206 188Netherlands 161 162 161 160Portugal 207 211 214 214Spain 125 122 121 118Sweden 203 191 184 175United Kingdom 247 246 240 237

NOTE Percentages were calculated with individual country data on military expenditure inlocal currency at current prices taken from Stockholm International Peace ResearchInstitute httpwwwsipriorgcontentsmilapmilexmex_database1html and on grossdomestic product at current prices from UN Statistics Division ldquoNational Accounts MainAggregates Databaserdquo httpunstatsunorgunsdsnaamaIntroductionasp

threat27 This contrasts sharply with the United States which having unam-biguously perceived a serious threat has carried out a formidable militarybuildup since September 11 even at the expense of growing budget deordfcits

Some analysts also argue that any European buildup is hampered deliber-ately by the United States which encourages divisions among even traditionalallies and seeks to keep their militaries ldquodeformedrdquo as a means of thwarting ef-forts to form a balancing coalition For example Layne asserts that the UnitedStates is ldquoactively discouraging Europe from either collective or national ef-forts to acquire the full-spectrum of advanced military capabilities [and] isengaged in a game of divide and rule in a bid to thwart the EUrsquos politicaluniordfcation processrdquo28 But the fact remains that the United States could notprohibit Europeans or others from developing those capabilities if those coun-tries faced strong enough incentives to balance

Regions other than Europe do not clearly diverge from this pattern Defensespending as a share of GDP has on the whole fallen since the end of the ColdWar in sub-Saharan Africa Latin America Central and South Asia and theMiddle East and North Africa and it has remained broadly steady in mostcases in the past several years29 Russia has slightly increased its share of de-fense spending since 2001 (see Table 3) but this has nothing to do with an at-tempt to counterbalance the United States30 Instead the salient factors are thecontinuing campaign to subdue the insurgency in Chechnya and a dire need toforestall further military decline (made possible by a slightly improved overallbudgetary situation) That Russians are unwilling to incur signiordfcant costs tocounter US power is all the more telling given the expansion of NATO toRussiarsquos frontiers and the US decision to withdraw from the Antiballistic Mis-sile Treaty and deploy missile defenses

China on the other hand is engaged in a strategic military buildup Al-though military expenditures are notoriously difordfcult to calculate for thatcountry the best estimates suggest that China has slightly increased its shareof defense spending in recent years (see Table 3) This buildup however hasbeen going on for decades that is long before September 11 and the Bush ad-ministrationrsquos subsequent strategic response31 Moreover the growth in Chi-


27 Moreover neither constraint applies to Japan which enjoys the second-largest economy in theworld has been a relatively modest welfare state and since the mid-1990s has had extensive expe-rience with budget deordfcitsmdashand yet has not raised its military expenditures in recent years28 Layne ldquoAmerica as European Hegemonrdquo p 2529 IISS The Military Balance 2004ndash2005 (London IISS 2004)30 See William C Wohlforth ldquoRevisiting Balance of Power Theory in Central Eurasiardquo in PaulWirtz and Fortmann Balance of Power pp 214ndash23831 Measuring rates of military spending as a percentage of GDP as an indication of military

nese conventional capabilities is primarily driven by the Taiwan problem inthe short term China needs to maintain the status quo and prevent Taiwanfrom acquiring the relative power necessary to achieve full independence inthe long term China seeks uniordfcation of Taiwan with the mainland Chinaclearly would like to enhance its relative power vis-agrave-vis the United States andmay well have a long-term strategy to balance US power in the future32 ButChinarsquos defense buildup is not new nor is it as ambitious and assertive as itshould be if the United States posed a direct threat that required internal bal-ancing (For example the Chinese strategic nuclear modernization program isoften mentioned in the course of discussions of Chinese balancing behaviorbut the Chinese arsenal is about the same size as it was a decade ago33 More-over even if China is able to deploy new missiles in the next few years it is notclear whether it will possess a survivable nuclear retaliatory capability vis-agrave-


buildupsmdashwhich is the conventional practice and a good one in the case of stable economiesmdashcanbe deceptive for countries with fast-growing economies such as China Maintaining a steadyshare of GDP on military spending during a period in which GDP is rapidly growing essentiallymeans that a state is engaging in a military buildup Indeed China has not greatly increased itsmilitary spending as a share of GDP but it is conventional wisdom that the Chinese are moderniz-ing and expanding their military forces The point does not however undermine the fact that theChinese buildup predates the Bush administrationrsquos postndashSeptember 11 grand strategy32 See Robert S Ross ldquoBipolarity and Balancing in East Asiardquo in Paul Wirtz and Fortmann Bal-ance of Power pp 267ndash304 Although Ross believes the balance of power in East Asia will remainstable for a long time largely because the United States is expanding its degree of military superi-ority he characterizes Chinese behavior as internal (and external) balancing against the UnitedStates33 Jeffrey Lewis ldquoThe Ambiguous Arsenalrdquo Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol 61 No 3 (MayJune 2005) pp 52ndash59

Table 3 Military Spending as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product SelectedRegional Powers 2000ndash03

Country 2000 2001 2002 2003

Brazil 127 145 156 152China 204 224 240 235India 233 231 225 229Japan 096 098 099 099Russia 373 409 406 430


vis the United States) Thus Chinarsquos defense buildup is not a persuasive indi-cator of internal balancing against the postndashSeptember 11 United Statesspeciordfcally

In sum rather than the United Statesrsquo postndashSeptember 11 policies inducing anoticeable shift in the military expenditures of other countries the lattersrsquospending patterns are instead characterized by a striking degree of continuitybefore and after this supposed pivot point in US grand strategy

assessing evidence of external balancing

A similar pattern of continuity can be seen in the absence of new alliancesUsing widely accepted criteria experts agree that external balancing againstthe United States would be marked by the formation of alliances (includinglesser defense agreements) discussions concerning the formation of such alli-ances or at the least discussions about shared interests in defense cooperationagainst the United States

Instead of September 11 serving as a pivot point there is little visible changein the alliance patterns of the late 1990smdasheven with the presence of whatmight be called an ldquoalliance facilitatorrdquo in President Jacques Chiracrsquos FranceAt least for now diplomatic resistance to US actions is strictly at the level ofmaneuvering and talk indistinguishable from the friction routine to virtuallyall periods and countries even allies Resources have not been transferredfrom some great powers to others And the United Statesrsquo core alliancesNATO and the US-Japan alliance have both been reafordfrmed

Walt recognized in 2002 that Russian-Chinese relations fell ldquowell short offormal defense arrangementsrdquo and hence did not constitute external balanc-ing this continues to be the case34 Russian President Vladimir Putinrsquos ex-pressed hope that India becomes a great power to help re-create a multipolarworld hardly rises to the standard of external balancing Certainly few wouldsuggest that the Indo-Russian ldquostrategic pactrdquo of 2000 the Sino-Russianldquofriendship treatyrdquo of 2001 or media speculation of a Moscow-Beijing-Delhi ldquostrategic trianglerdquo in 2002 and 2003 are as consequential as say theFranco-Russian Alliance of 1894 or even the less-formal US-Chinese balanc-ing against the Soviet Union in the 1970s35 In 2002ndash03 Russia China and sev-eral EU members broadly coordinated diplomatically against granting


34 Walt ldquoKeeping the World lsquoOff-Balancersquordquo p 12635 Arguing that a ldquostrategic trianglerdquo between Russia China and India is unlikely in large partbecause US ties with each of these countries are stronger than any two of them have betweenthemselves is Harsh V Pant ldquoThe Moscow-Beijing-Delhi lsquoStrategic Trianglersquo An Idea Whose TimeMay Never Comerdquo Security Dialogue Vol 35 No 3 (September 2004) pp 311ndash328

international-institutional approval to the 2003 Iraq invasion but there is noevidence that this extended at the time or has extended since to anything be-yond that single goal The EUrsquos common defense policy is barely more devel-oped than it was before 2001 And although survey data suggest that manyEuropeans would like to see the EU become a superpower comparable to theUnited States most are unwilling to boost military spending to accomplishthat goal36 Even the institutional path toward Europe becoming a plausiblecounterweight to the United States appears to have suffered a major setbackby the decisive rejection of the proposed EU constitution in referenda in Franceand the Netherlands in the spring of 2005

Even states with predominantly Muslim populations do not reveal incipientenhanced coordination against the United States Regional states such as Jor-dan Kuwait and Saudi Arabia cooperated with the Iraq invasion more havesought to help stabilize postwar Iraq and key Muslim countries are cooperat-ing with the United States in the war against Islamist terrorists

Even the loosest criteria for external balancing are not being met For themoment at least no countries are known even to be discussing and debatinghow burdens could or should be distributed in any arrangement for coordinat-ing defenses against or confronting the United States For this reason the argu-ment (discussed further below) that external balancing may be absent becauseit is by nature slow and inefordfcient and fraught with buck-passing behavior isnot persuasive No friction exists in negotiations over who should lead or bearthe costs in a coalition because no such discussions appear to exist

evaluating evidence of diplomatic red lines

A ordfnal possible indicator of traditional balancing behavior would be statessending ldquoclear signals to the aggressor that they are ordfrmly committed tomaintaining the balance of power even if it means going to warrdquo37 This formof balancing has clearly been absent There has been extensive criticism of spe-ciordfc postndashSeptember 11 US policies especially criticism of the invasion of Iraqas unnecessary and unwise No states or collections of states however issuedan ultimatum in the mattermdashdrawing a line in the Persian Gulf sand andwarning the United States not to cross itmdashat the risk that confrontational stepswould be taken in response

Perhaps a more generous version of the red-lines criterion would see evi-


36 German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Compagnia di San Paolo TransatlanticTrends 2004 httpwwwtransatlantictrendsorg37 Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics p 156

dence of balancing in a consistent pattern of diplomatic resistance not concili-ation A recent spate of commentary about soft balancing does just this

Evidence of a Lack of Soft Balancing

In the absence of evidence of traditional balancing some scholars have ad-vanced the concept of soft balancing Instead of overtly challenging USpower which might be too costly or unappealing states are said to be able toundertake a host of lesser actions as a way of constraining and undermining itThe central claim is that the unilateralist and provocative behavior of theUnited States is generating unprecedented resentment that will make lifedifordfcult for Washington and may eventually evolve into traditional hard bal-ancing38 As Walt writes ldquoStates may not want to attract the lsquofocused enmityrsquoof the United States but they may be eager to limit its freedom of action com-plicate its diplomacy sap its strength and resolve maximize their own auton-omy and reafordfrm their own rights and generally make the United States workharder to achieve its objectivesrdquo39 For Josef Joffe ldquolsquoSoft balancingrsquo against MrBig has already set inrdquo40 Pape proclaims that ldquothe early stages of soft balanc-ing against American power have already startedrdquo and argues that ldquounlessthe United States radically changes course the use of international institu-tions economic leverage and diplomatic maneuvering to frustrate Americanintentions will only growrdquo41

We offer two critiques of these claims First if we consider the speciordfc pre-dictions suggested by these theorists on their own terms we do not ordfnd per-suasive evidence of soft balancing Second these criteria for detecting softbalancing are on reordmection inherently ordmawed because they do not (and possi-bly cannot) offer effective means for distinguishing soft balancing from routinediplomatic friction between countries These are in that sense nonfalsiordfableclaims


38 Layne writes ldquoBy facilitating lsquosoft balancingrsquo against the United States the Iraq crisis mayhave paved the way for lsquohardrsquo balancing as wellrdquo Layne ldquoAmerica as European Hegemonrdquo p 27See also Walt ldquoCan the United States Be Balancedrdquo p 18 and Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How StatesPursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo p 27 See also Paul ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Paul Wirtz andFortmann Balance of Power pp 2ndash4 11ndash1739 Walt ldquoKeeping the World lsquoOff-Balancersquordquo p 136 and Walt ldquoCan the United States BeBalancedrdquo40 Josef Joffe ldquoGulliver Unbound Can America Rule the Worldrdquo August 6 2003 httpwwwsmhcomauarticles200308051060064182993html41 Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo p 29 and Pape ldquoTheWorld Pushes Backrdquo

evaluating soft-balancing predictions

Theorists have offered several criteria for judging the presence of soft balanc-ing We consider four frequently invoked ones statesrsquo efforts (1) to entanglethe dominant state in international institutions (2) to exclude the dominantstate from regional economic cooperation (3) to undermine the dominantstatersquos ability to project military power by restricting or denying military bas-ing rights and (4) to provide relevant assistance to US adversaries such asrogue states42

entangling international institutions Are other states using interna-tional institutions to constrain or undermine US power The notion that theycould do so is based on faulty logic Because the most powerful states exercisethe most control in these institutions it is unreasonable to expect that theirrules and procedures can be used to shackle and restrain the worldrsquos mostpowerful state As Randall Schweller notes institutions cannot be simulta-neously autonomous and capable of binding strong states43 Certainly what re-sistance there was to endorsing the US-led action in Iraq did not stop ormeaningfully delay that action

Is there evidence however that other states are even trying to use a web ofglobal institutional rules and procedures or ad hoc diplomatic maneuvers toconstrain US behavior and delay or disrupt military actions No attempt wasmade to block the US campaign in Afghanistan and both the war and the en-suing stabilization there have been almost entirely conducted through an in-ternational institution NATO Although a number of countries refused toendorse the US-led invasion of Iraq none sought to use international institu-tions to block or declare illegal that invasion Logically such action should bethe benchmark for this aspect of soft balancing not whether states voted forthe invasion No evidence exists that such an effort was launched or that onewould have succeeded had it been Moreover since the Iraqi regime was top-pled the UN has endorsed and assisted the transition to Iraqi sovereignty44

If anything other statesrsquo ongoing cooperation with the United States ex-


42 These and other soft-balancing predictions can be found in Walt ldquoCan the United States BeBalancedrdquo Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo pp 27ndash29and Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How the World Will Respond to US Preventive War on Iraqrdquo43 Randall L Schweller ldquoThe Problem of International Order Revisited A Review Essayrdquo Inter-national Security Vol 26 No 1 (Summer 2001) p 18244 Before the invasion Pape predicted that ldquoafter the war Europe Russia and China could presshard for the United Nations rather than the United States to oversee a new Iraqi government Evenif they didnrsquot succeed this would reduce the freedom of action for the United States in Iraq andelsewhere in the regionrdquo See Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How the World Will Respond to US Preven-tive War on Iraqrdquo As we note above the transitional process was in fact endorsed by the Bush ad-ministration and if anything it has pressed for greater UN participation which China France

plains why international institutions continue to amplify American power andfacilitate the pursuit of its strategic objectives As we discuss below the war onterror is being pursued primarily through regional institutions bilateral ar-rangements and new multilateral institutions most obviously the Prolifera-tion Security and Container Security Initiatives both of which have attractednew adherents since they were launched45

economic statecraft Is postndashSeptember 11 regional economic coopera-tion increasingly seeking to exclude the United States so as to make the bal-ance of power less favorable to it The answer appears to be no The UnitedStates has been one of the primary drivers of trade regionalization not the ex-cluded party This is not surprising given that most states including thosewith the most power have good reason to want lower not higher trade barri-ers around the large and attractive US market

This rationale applies for instance to suits brought in the World Trade Or-ganization against certain US trade policies These suits are generally aimedat gaining access to US markets not sidelining them For example the suitschallenging agricultural subsidies are part of a general challenge by develop-ing countries to Western (including European) trade practices46 Moreovermany of these disputes predate September 11 therefore relabeling them aform of soft balancing in reaction to postndashSeptember 11 US strategy is notcredible For the moment there also does not appear to be any serious discus-sion of a coordinated decision to price oil in euros which might undercut theUnited Statesrsquo ability to run large trade and budget deordfcits without propor-tional increases in inordmation and interest rates47

restrictions on basing rightsterritorial denial The geographicalisolation of the United States could effectively diminish its relative power ad-vantage This prediction appears to be supported by Turkeyrsquos denial of theBush administrationrsquos request to provide coalition ground forces with transit


and Russia among others have resisted This constitutes resistance to US requests but it hardlyconstitutes use of institutions to constrain US action45 The Proliferation Security Initiativersquos initial members were Australia Britain Canada FranceGermany Italy Japan the Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Singapore Spain and theUnited States46 The resistance of France and others to agricultural trade liberalization could be interpreted asan attempt to limit US economic power by restricting access to their markets by highly competi-tive US agribusiness But then presumably contrasting support for liberalization by most devel-oping countries would have to be interpreted as expressing support for expanded US power47 For an insightful discussion of why this may well remain the case see Herman Schwartz ldquoTiesThat Bind Global Macroeconomic Flows and Americarsquos Financial Empirerdquo paper prepared for theannual meeting of the American Political Science Association Chicago Illinois September 2ndash52004

rights for the invasion of Iraq and possibly by diminished Saudi support forbases there In addition Pape suggests that countries such as Germany Japanand South Korea will likely impose new restrictions or reductions on USforces stationed on their soil

The overall US overseas basing picture however looks brighter today thanit did only a few years ago Since September 11 the United States has estab-lished new bases and negotiated landing rights across Africa Asia CentralAsia Europe and the Middle East All told it has built upgraded or ex-panded military facilities in Afghanistan Bulgaria Diego Garcia DjiboutiGeorgia Hungary Iraq Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Oman Pakistan the PhilippinesPoland Qatar Romania Tajikistan and Uzbekistan48

The diplomatic details of the basing issue also run contrary to soft-balancingpredictions Despite occasionally hostile domestic opinion surveys most hostcountries do not want to see the withdrawal of US forces The economic andstrategic beneordfts of hosting bases outweigh purported desires to make it moredifordfcult for the United States to exercise power For example the Philippinesasked the United States to leave Subic Bay in the 1990s (well before the emer-gence of the Bush Doctrine) but it has been angling ever since for a returnUS plans to withdraw troops from South Korea are facing local resistance andhave triggered widespread anxiety about the future of the United Statesrsquo secu-rity commitment to the peninsula49 German defense ofordfcials and businessesare displeased with the US plan to replace two army divisions in Germanywith a single light armored brigade and transfer a wing of F-16 ordfghter jets toIncirlik Air Base in Turkey50 (Indeed Turkey recently agreed to allow the


48 See James Sterngold ldquoAfter 911 US Policy Built on World Basesrdquo San Francisco ChronicleMarch 21 2004 httpwwwglobalsecurityorgorgnews2004040321-world-baseshtm DavidRennie ldquoAmericarsquos Growing Network of Basesrdquo Daily Telegraph September 11 2003 httpwwwglobalsecurityorgorgnews2003030911-deployments01htm and ldquoWorldwide Reorien-tation of US Military Basing in Prospectrdquo Center for Defense Information September 19 2003and ldquoWorldwide Reorientation of US Military Basing Part 2 Central Asia Southwest Asia andthe Paciordfcrdquo Center for Defense Information October 7 2003 httpwwwcdiorgprogramdocumentscfmProgramID-3749 Strategic and economic worries are easily intertwined In response to prospective changes inUS policy the South Korean defense ministry is seeking a 13 percent increase in its 2005 budgetrequest See ldquoUS Troop Withdrawals from South Koreardquo IISS Strategic Comments Vol 10 No 5(June 2004) Pape suggests both that Japan and South Korea could ask all US forces to leave theirterritory and that they do not want the United States to leave because it is a potentially indispens-able support for the status quo in the region See Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Secu-rity in a Unipolar Worldrdquo50 ldquoProposed US Base Closures Send a Shiver through a German Townrdquo New York Times Au-gust 22 2004

United States expanded use of the base as a major hub for deliveries to Iraqand Afghanistan)51

The recently announced plan to redeploy or withdraw up to 70000 UStroops from Cold War bases in Asia and Europe is not being driven by host-country rejection but by a reassessment of global threats to US interests andthe need to bolster American power-projection capabilities52 If anything theUnited States has the freedom to move forces out of certain countries becauseit has so many options about where else to send them in this case closer to theMiddle East and other regions crucial to the war on terror For example theUnited States is discussing plans to concentrate all special operations and anti-terrorist units in Europe in a single base in Spainmdasha country presumablyprimed for soft balancing against the United States given its newly electedprime ministerrsquos opposition to the war in Iraqmdashso as to facilitate an increasingnumber of military operations in sub-Saharan Africa53

the enemy of my enemy is my friend Finally as Pape asserts if ldquoEuropeRussia China and other important regional states were to offer economic andtechnological assistance to North Korea Iran and other lsquorogue statesrsquo thiswould strengthen these states run counter to key Bush administration poli-cies and demonstrate the resolve to oppose the United States by assisting itsenemiesrdquo54 Pape presumably has in mind Russian aid to Iran in building nu-clear power plants (with the passive acquiescence of Europeans) South Ko-rean economic assistance to North Korea previous French and Russianresistance to sanctions against Saddam Husseinrsquos Iraq and perhaps Pakistanrsquosweapons of mass destruction (WMD) assistance to North Korea Iraq andLibya

There are at least two reasons to question whether any of these actions is evi-dence of soft balancing First none of this so-called cooperation with US ad-versaries is unambiguously driven by a strategic logic of undermining USpower Instead other explanations are readily at hand South Korean economicaid to North Korea is better explained by purely local motivations commonethnic bonds in the face of famine and deprivation and Seoulrsquos fears of theconsequences of any abrupt collapse of the North Korean regime The other


51 ldquoTurkey OKs Expanded US Use of Key Air Baserdquo Los Angeles Times May 3 200552 Kurt Campbell and Celeste Johnson Ward ldquoNew Battle Stationsrdquo Foreign Affairs Vol 82 No 5(SeptemberOctober 2003) pp 95ndash10353 ldquoSpain US to Mull Single Europe Special Ops BasemdashReportrdquo Wall Street Journal May 2 200554 Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How the World Will Respond to US Preventive War on Iraqrdquo andPape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Security in a Unipolar Worldrdquo pp 31ndash32

cases of ldquocooperationrdquo appear to be driven by a common nonstrategic motiva-tion pecuniary gain Abdul Qadeer Khan the father of Pakistanrsquos nuclear pro-gram was apparently motivated by proordfts when he sold nuclear technologyand methods to several states And given its domestic economic problems andsevere troubles in Chechnya Russia appears far more interested in makingmoney from Iran than in helping to bring about an ldquoIslamic bombrdquo55 Thequest for lucrative contracts provides at least as plausible if banal an explana-tion for French cooperation with Saddam Hussein

Moreover this soft-balancing claim runs counter to diverse multilateralnonproliferation efforts aimed at Iran North Korea and Libya (before its deci-sion to abandon its nuclear program) The Europeans have been quite vocal intheir criticism of Iranian noncompliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty andInternational Atomic Energy Agency guidelines and the Chinese and Rus-sians are actively cooperating with the United States and others over NorthKorea The EUrsquos 2003 European security strategy document declares thatrogue states ldquoshould understand that there is a price to be paidrdquo for their be-havior ldquoincluding in their relationshiprdquo with the EU56 These major powershave a declared disinterest in aiding rogue states above and beyond what theymight have to lose by attracting the focused enmity of the United States

In sum the evidence for claims and predictions of soft balancing is poor

distinguishing soft balancing from traditional diplomatic friction

There is a second more important reason to be skeptical of soft-balancingclaims The criteria they offer for detecting the presence of soft balancing areconceptually ordmawed Walt deordfnes soft balancing as ldquoconscious coordination ofdiplomatic action in order to obtain outcomes contrary to US preferencesoutcomes that could not be gained if the balancers did not give each othersome degree of mutual supportrdquo57 This and other accounts are problematic ina crucial way Conceptually seeking outcomes that a state (such as the UnitedStates) does not prefer does not necessarily or convincingly reveal a desire tobalance that state geostrategically For example one trading partner oftenseeks outcomes that the other does not prefer without balancing being rele-vant to the discussion Thus empirically the types of events used to


55 The importance of the sums Russia is earning compared to its military spending and arms ex-ports is suggested in IISS Military Balance 2003ndash2004 pp 270ndash271 27356 European Union ldquoA Secure Europe in a Better World European Security Strategyrdquo BrusselsDecember 12 2003 httpueeuintuedocscmsUpload78367pdf57 Walt ldquoCan the United States Be Balancedrdquo p 14

operationalize deordfnitions such as Waltrsquos do not clearly establish the crucialclaim of soft-balancing theorists statesrsquo desires to balance the United StatesWidespread anti-Americanism can be present (and currently seems to be)without that fact persuasively revealing impulses to balance the United States

The events used to detect the presence of soft balancing are so typical in his-tory that they are not and perhaps cannot be distinguished from routine dip-lomatic friction between countries even between allies Traditional balancingcriteria are useful because they can reasonably though surely not perfectlyhelp distinguish between real balancing behavior and policies or diplomaticactions that may look and sound like an effort to check the power of the domi-nant state but that in actuality reordmect only cheap talk domestic politics otherinternational goals not related to balances of power or the resentment of par-ticular leaders The current formulation of the concept of soft balancing is notdistinguished from such behavior Even if the predictions were correct theywould not unambiguously or even persuasively reveal balancing behaviorsoft or otherwise

Our criticism is validated by the long list of events from 1945 to 2001 that aredirectly comparable to those that are today coded as soft balancing Theseevents include diplomatic maneuvering by US allies and nonaligned coun-tries against the United States in international institutions (particularly theUN) economic statecraft aimed against the United States resistance to USmilitary basing criticism of US military interventions and waves of anti-Americanism

In the 1950s a West Europendashonly bloc was formed designed partly as a polit-ical and economic counterweight to the United States within the so-called freeworld and France created an independent nuclear capability In the 1960s acluster of mostly developing countries organized the Nonaligned Movementdeordfning itself against both superpowers France pulled out of NATOrsquos mili-tary structure Huge demonstrations worldwide protested the US war in Viet-nam and other US Cold War policies In the 1970s the Organization ofPetroleum Exporting Countries wielded its oil weapon to punish US policiesin the Middle East and transfer substantial wealth from the West Waves of ex-tensive anti-Americanism were pervasive in Latin America in the 1950s and1960s and Europe and elsewhere in the late 1960s and early 1970s and again inthe early-to-mid 1980s Especially prominent protests and harsh criticism fromintellectuals and local media were mounted against US policies toward Cen-tral America under President Ronald Reagan the deployment of theater nu-clear weapons in Europe and the very idea of missile defense In the Reagan


era many states coordinated to protect existing UN practices promote the1982 Law of the Sea treaty and oppose aid to the Nicaraguan Contras In the1990s the Philippines asked the United States to leave its Subic Bay militarybase China continued a long-standing military buildup and China Franceand Russia coordinated to resist UN-sanctioned uses of force against IraqChina and Russia declared a strategic partnership in 1996 In 1998 the ldquoEuro-pean troikardquo meetings and agreements began between France Germany andRussia and the EU announced the creation of an independent uniordfed Euro-pean military force In many of these years the United States was engaged innumerous trade clashes including with close EU allies Given all this it isnot surprising that contemporary scholars and commentators periodic-ally identiordfed ldquocrisesrdquo in US relations with the world including within theAtlantic Alliance58

These events all rival in seriousness the categories of events that some schol-ars today identify as soft balancing Indeed they are not merely difordfcult to dis-tinguish conceptually from those later events in many cases they areimpossible to distinguish empirically being literally the same events or trendsthat are currently labeled soft balancing Yet they all occurred in years in whicheven soft-balancing theorists agree that the United States was not being bal-anced against59 It is thus unclear whether accounts of soft balancing have pro-vided criteria for crisply and rigorously distinguishing that concept from theseand similar manifestations of diplomatic friction routine to many periods ofhistory even in relations between countries that remain allies rather than stra-tegic competitors For example these accounts provide no method for judgingwhether postndashSeptember 11 international events constitute soft balancingwhereas similar phenomena during Reaganrsquos presidencymdashthe spread of anti-Americanism coordination against the United States in international institu-tions criticism of interventions in the developing countries and so onmdashdonot Without effective criteria for making such distinctions current claims ofsoft balancing risk blunting rather than advancing knowledge about interna-tional political dynamics

In sum we detect no persuasive evidence that US policy is provoking the


58 See for example Eliot A Cohen ldquoThe Long-Term Crisis of the Alliancerdquo Foreign Affairs Vol61 No 2 (Winter 198283) pp 325ndash343 Sanford J Ungar ed Estrangement America and the World(New York Oxford University Press 1985) and Stephen M Walt ldquoThe Ties That Fray Why Eu-rope and America Are Drifting Apartrdquo National Interest No 54 (Winter 1998ndash99) pp 3ndash1159 Walt ldquoKeeping the World lsquoOff-Balancersquordquo and Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How States Pursue Secu-rity in a Unipolar Worldrdquo p 13

seismic shift in other statesrsquo strategies toward the United States that theoristsof balancing identify

Why Countries Are Not Balancing against the United States

The major powers are not balancing against the United States because of thenature of US grand strategy in the postndashSeptember 11 world There is nodoubt that this strategy is ambitious assertive and backed by tremendous of-fensive military capability But it is also highly selective and not broadlythreatening Speciordfcally the United States is focusing these means on thegreatest threats to its interestsmdashthat is the threats emanating from nuclearproliferator states and global terrorist organizations Other major powers arenot balancing US power because they want the United States to succeed indefeating these shared threats or are ambivalent yet understand they are not inits crosshairs In many cases the diplomatic friction identiordfed by proponentsof the concept of soft balancing instead reordmects disagreement about tactics notgoals which is nothing new in history

To be sure our analysis cannot claim to rule out other theories of greatpower behavior that also do not expect balancing against the United StatesWhether the United States is not seen as a threat worth balancing because ofshared interests in nonproliferation and the war on terror (as we argue) be-cause of geography and capability limitations that render US global hege-mony impossible (as some offensive realists argue) or because transnationaldemocratic values binding international institutions and economic interde-pendence obviate the need to balance (as many liberals argue) is a task for fur-ther theorizing and empirical analysis Nor are we claiming that balancingagainst the United States will never happen Rather there is no persuasive evi-dence that US policy is provoking the kind of balancing behavior that theBush administrationrsquos critics suggest In the meantime analysts should con-tinue to use credible indicators of balancing behavior in their search for signsthat US strategy is having a counterproductive effect on US security

Below we discuss why the United States is not seen by other major powersas a threat worth balancing Next we argue that the impact of the US-led in-vasion of Iraq on international relations has been exaggerated and needs to beseen in a broader context that reveals far more cooperation with the UnitedStates than many analysts acknowledge Finally we note that something akinto balancing is taking place among would-be nuclear proliferators and Islamistextremists which makes sense given that these are the threats targeted by theUnited States


the united statesrsquo focused enmity

Great powers seek to organize the world according to their own preferenceslooking for opportunities to expand and consolidate their economic and mili-tary power positions Our analysis does not assume that the United States is anexception It can fairly be seen to be pursuing a hegemonic grand strategy andhas repeatedly acted in ways that undermine notions of deeply rooted sharedvalues and interests US objectives and the current world order however areunusual in several respects First unlike previous states with preponderantpower the United States has little incentive to seek to physically control for-eign territory It is secure from foreign invasion and apparently sees littlebeneordft in launching costly wars to obtain additional material resources More-over the bulk of the current international order suits the United States wellDemocracy is ascendant foreign markets continue to liberalize and no majorrevisionist powers seem poised to challenge US primacy

This does not mean that the United States is a status quo power as typicallydeordfned The United States seeks to further expand and consolidate its powerposition even if not through territorial conquest Rather US leaders aim tobolster their power by promoting economic growth spending lavishly on mili-tary forces and research and development and dissuading the rise of any peercompetitor on the international stage Just as important the conordmuence of theproliferation of WMD and the rise of Islamist radicalism poses an acute dangerto US interests This means that US grand strategy targets its assertive en-mity only at circumscribed quarters ones that do not include other greatpowers

The great powers as well as most other states either share the US interestin eliminating the threats from terrorism and WMD or do not feel that theyhave a signiordfcant direct stake in the matter Regardless they understand thatthe United States does not have offensive designs on them Consistent withthis proposition the United States has improved its relations with almost all ofthe major powers in the postndashSeptember 11 world This is in no small part be-cause these governmentsmdashnot to mention those in key countries in the MiddleEast and Southwest Asia such as Egypt Jordan Pakistan and Saudi Arabiamdashare willing partners in the war on terror because they see Islamist radicalism asa genuine threat to them as well US relations with China India and Russiain particular are better than ever in large part because these countries similarlyhave acute reasons to fear transnational Islamist terrorist groups The EUrsquosofordfcial grand strategy echoes that of the United States The 2003 European se-curity strategy document which appeared months after the US-led invasion


of Iraq identiordfes terrorism by religious extremists and the proliferation ofWMD as the two greatest threats to European security In language familiar tostudents of the Bush administration it declares that Europersquos ldquomost frighten-ing scenario is one in which terrorist groups acquire weapons of mass destruc-tionrdquo60 It is thus not surprising that the major European states includingFrance and Germany are partners of the United States in the ProliferationSecurity Initiative

Certain EU members are not engaged in as wide an array of policies towardthese threats as the United States and other of its allies European criticism ofthe Iraq war is the preeminent example But sharp differences over tacticsshould not be confused with disagreement over broad goals After all compa-rable disagreements as well as incentives to free ride on US efforts werecommon among several West European states during the Cold War when theynonetheless shared with their allies the goal of containing the Soviet Union61

In neither word nor deed then do these states manifest the degree or natureof disagreement contained in the images of strategic rivalry on which balanc-ing claims are based Some other countries are bystanders As discussedabove free-riding and differences over tactics form part of the explanation forthis behavior And some of these states simply feel less threatened by terroristorganizations and WMD proliferators than the United States and others doThe decision of these states to remain on the sidelines however and not seekopportunities to balance is crucial There is no good evidence that these statesfeel threatened by US grand strategy

In brief other great powers appear to lack the motivation to compete strate-gically with the United States under current conditions Other major powersmight prefer a more generally constrained America or to be sure a worldwhere the United States was not as dominant but this yearning is a long wayfrom active cooperation to undermine US power or goals

reductio ad iraq

Many accounts portray the US-led invasion of Iraq as virtually of world-historical importance as an event that will mark ldquoa fundamental transforma-tion in how major states react to American powerrdquo62 If the Iraq war is placed


60 European Union ldquoA Secure Europe in a Better Worldrdquo p 461 This was exempliordfed in highly uneven defense spending across NATO members and in Euro-pean criticism of the Vietnam War and US nuclear policy toward the Soviet Union62 Pape ldquoSoft Balancing How the World Will Respond to US Preventive War on Iraqrdquo p 1 See

in its broader context however the picture looks very different That context isprovided when one considers the Iraq war within the scope of US strategy inthe Middle East the use of force within the context of the war on terror morebroadly and the war on terror within US foreign policy in general

September 11 2001 was the culmination of a series of terrorist attacksagainst US sites soldiers and assets in the Middle East Africa and NorthAmerica by al-Qaida an organization that drew on resources of recruitsordfnancing and substantial (though apparently not majoritarian) mass-levelsupport from more than a dozen countries across North and East Africa theArabian Peninsula and Central and Southwest Asia The political leadershipof the United States (as well as many others) perceived this as an acceleratingthreat emerging from extremist subcultures and organizations in those coun-tries These groupings triggered fears of potentially catastrophic possessionand use of weapons of mass destruction which have been gradually spreadingto more countries including several with substantial historic ties to terroristgroups Just as important US leaders also traced these groupings backwardalong the causal chain to diverse possible underlying economic cultural andpolitical conditions63 The result is perception of a threat of an unusually widegeographical area

Yet the US response thus far has involved the use of military force againstonly two regimes the Taliban which allowed al-Qaida to establish its mainheadquarters in Afghanistan and the Baathists in Iraq who were in long-standing deordfance of UN demands concerning WMD programs and had a his-tory of both connections to diverse terrorist groups and a distinctive hostilityto the United States US policy toward other states even in the Middle Easthas not been especially threatening The United States has increased militaryaid and other security assistance to several states including Jordan Moroccoand Pakistan bolstering their military capabilities rather than eroding themAnd the United States has not systematically intervened in the domestic poli-tics of states in the region The ldquogreater Middle East initiativerdquo which wasordmoated by the White House early in 2004 originally aimed at profound eco-nomic and political reforms but it has since been trimmed in accordance with


also Layne ldquoThe War on Terrorism and the Balance of Powerrdquo and Paul Wirtz and FortmannBalance of Power p 11963 See for example The 911 Commission Report Final Report of the National Commission on TerroristAttacks upon the United States (New York WW Norton 2004) pp 52ndash55

the wishes of diverse states including many in the Middle East Bigger bud-gets for the National Endowment for Democracy the main US entity chargedwith democratization abroad are being spent in largely nonprovocative waysand heavily disproportionately inside Iraq In addition Washington hasproved more than willing to work closely with authoritarian regimes in Ku-wait Pakistan Saudi Arabia and elsewhere

Further US policy toward the Middle East and North Africa since Septem-ber 11 must be placed in the larger context of the war on terror more broadlyconstrued The United States is conducting that war virtually globally but ithas not used force outside the Middle EastSouthwest Asia region The pri-mary US responses to September 11 in the Mideast and especially elsewherehave been stepped-up diplomacy and stricter law enforcement pursued pri-marily bilaterally and through regional organizations The main emphasis hasbeen on law enforcement the tracing of terrorist ordfnancing intelligence gather-ing criminal-law surveillance of suspects and arrests and trials in a number ofcountries The United States has also pursued a variety of multilateralist ef-forts Dealings with North Korea have been consistently multilateralist forsome time the United States has primarily relied on the International AtomicEnergy Agency and the British-French-German troika for confronting Iranover its nuclear program and the Proliferation and Container Security Initia-tives are new international organizations obviously born of US convictionsthat unilateral action in these matters was inadequate

Finally US policy in the war on terror must be placed in the larger contextof US foreign policy more generally In matters of trade bilateral and multi-lateral economic development assistance environmental issues economicallydriven immigration and many other areas US policy was characterized bybroad continuity before September 11 and it remains so today Governmentpolicies on such issues form the core of the United Statesrsquo workaday interac-tions with many states It is difordfcult to portray US policy toward these statesas revisionist in any classical meaning of that term Some who identify a revo-lutionary shift in US foreign policy risk badly exaggerating the signiordfcance ofthe Iraq war and are not paying sufordfcient attention to many other importanttrends and developments64


64 See for example Ivo H Daalder and James M Lindsay America Unbound The Bush Revolutionin Foreign Policy (Washington DC Brookings 2003)

ldquoasymmetric balancingrdquo

Very different US policies and very different local behavior are of course vis-ible for a small minority of states US policy toward terrorist organizationsand rogue states is confrontational and often explicitly contains threats of mili-tary force One might describe the behavior of these states and groups as formsof ldquoasymmetric balancingrdquo against the United States65 They wish to bringabout a retraction of US power around the globe unlike most states they arespending prodigiously on military capabilities and they periodically seek al-lies to frustrate US goals Given their limited means for engaging in tradi-tional balancing the options for these actors are to engage in terrorism to bringabout a collapse of support among the American citizenry for a US militaryand political presence abroad or to acquire nuclear weapons to deter theUnited States Al-Qaida and afordfliated groups are pursuing the former optionIran and North Korea the latter

Is this balancing On the one hand the attempt to check and roll back USpowermdashbe it through formal alliances terrorist attacks or the acquisition of anuclear deterrentmdashis what balancing is essentially about If balancing is drivenby defensive motives one might argue that the United States endangers al-Qaidarsquos efforts to propagate radical Islamism and North Korearsquos and Iranrsquos at-tempts to acquire nuclear weapons On the other hand the notion that theseactors are status quo oriented and simply reacting to an increasingly powerfulUnited States is difordfcult to sustain Ultimately the label ldquoasymmetric balanc-ingrdquo does not capture the kind of behavior that international relations scholarshave in mind when they predict and describe balancing against the UnitedStates in the wake of September 11 and the Iraq war

Ironically broadening the concept of balancing to include the behavior ofterrorist organizations and nuclear proliferators highlights several additionalproblems for the larger balancing prediction thesis First the decisions by Iranand North Korea to devote major resources to their individual military capa-bilities despite limited means only strengthens our interpretation that majorpowers with much vaster resources are abstaining from balancing because ofa lack of motivation not a lack of latent power resources Second the radicalIslamist campaign against the United States and its allies is more than a decadeold and the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs began well beforethat reinforcing our argument that the Bush administrationrsquos grand strategyand invasion of Iraq are far from the catalytic event for balancing that some an-


65 See Paul ldquoIntroductionrdquo in Paul Wirtz and Fortmann Balance of Power p 3

alysts have portrayed it to be Finally much of the criticism that current USstrategy is generating counterbalancing yields few policy options that wouldactually eliminate or reduce asymmetric balancing

Conclusion

Major powers have not engaged in traditional balancing against the UnitedStates since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the lead-up to the Iraq wareither in the form of domestic military mobilization antihegemonic alliancesor the laying-down of diplomatic red lines Indeed several major powers in-cluding those best positioned to mobilize coercive resources are continuing toreduce rather than augment their levels of resource mobilization This evi-dence runs counter to ad hoc predictions and international relations scholar-ship that would lead one to expect such balancing under current conditions Inthat sense this ordfnding has implications not simply for current policymakingbut also for ongoing scholarly consideration of competing international rela-tions theories and the plausibility of their underlying assumptions

Current trends also do not conordfrm recent claims of soft balancing againstthe United States And when these trends are placed in historical perspectiveit is unclear whether the categories of behaviors labeled ldquosoft balancingrdquo can(ever) be rigorously distinguished from the types of diplomatic friction routineto virtually all periods of history even between allies Indeed some of the be-havior currently labeled ldquosoft balancingrdquo is the same behavior that occurred inearlier periods when it is generally agreed the United States was not beingbalanced against

The lack of an underlying motivation to compete strategically with theUnited States under current conditions not the lack of latent power potentiali-ties best explains this lack of balancing behavior whether hard or soft This isthe case in turn because most states are not threatened by a postndashSeptember11 US foreign policy that is despite commentary to the contrary highly selec-tive in its use of force and multilateralist in many regards In sum the salientdynamic in international politics today does not concern the way that majorpowers are responding to the United Statesrsquo preponderance of power but in-stead concerns the relationship between the United States (and its allies) onthe one hand and terrorists and nuclear proliferators on the other So long asthat remains the case anything akin to balancing behavior is likely onlyamong the narrowly circumscribed list of states and nonstate groups that aredirectly threatened by the United States


the United States for its allies to substantially boost their military spendingand capabilities requests that so far have gone unordflled Moreover US rela-tions with regional powers such as China Russia India and other key states(eg Egypt Jordan Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) have improved in recentyears These revealing events and trends are underappreciated by many per-haps most analyses in search of balancing

The lack of balancing behavior against the United States constitutes a genu-ine puzzle for many observers with serious implications both for theorizingand for US foreign policy making and so is a puzzle worth explaining Thenext section of this article reviews approaches that predict balancing undercurrent conditions The second section presents evidence that classic forms ofbalancing are not occurring The third section argues that claims of soft balanc-ing are unpersuasive because evidence for them is poor especially becausethey rely on criteria that cannot effectively distinguish between soft balancingand routine diplomatic friction These claims are in that sense nonfalsiordfableThe fourth section proposes that balancing against the United States is not oc-curring because the postndashSeptember 11 grand strategy designed by the GeorgeW Bush administration despite widespread criticism poses a threat only to avery limited number of regimes and terrorist groups As a result most coun-tries either do not have a direct stake in the ldquowar on terrorrdquo or often share theUS interest in the reduction of threats from rogue states and terrorist groupsThis line of argument refocuses analytic attention away from US relationswith the entire world as a disaggregated whole and toward a sharp distinctionbetween on the one hand US policy toward rogue states and transnationalterrorist organizations and on the other US relations with other states

Predictions of Balancing International Relations Theory andUS Foreign Policy

The study of balancing behavior in international relations has deep roots but itremains fraught with conceptual ambiguities and competing theoretical andempirical claims1 Rather than offer a review of the relevant debates we focushere on a speciordfc set of realist and liberal predictions that states will balance


1 Recent surveys of balance of power theory that also include discussions of contemporary inter-national politics include G John Ikenberry ed America Unrivaled The Future of the Balance of Power(Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 2002) John A Vasquez and Colin Elman eds Realism andthe Balancing of Power A New Debate (Englewood Cliffs NJ Prentice Hall 2002) and TV PaulJames J Wirtz and Michel Fortmann eds Balance of Power Theory and Practice in the 21st Century(Stanford Calif Stanford University Press 2004)














































Country 1985 2002
















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Conclusion


















































Country 1985 2002
















Country 2000 2001 2002 2003













Country 2000 2001 2002 2003

















































































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Conclusion


















Country 2000 2001 2002 2003













Country 2000 2001 2002 2003

















































































reductio ad iraq





















Conclusion















Country 2000 2001 2002 2003

















































































reductio ad iraq





















Conclusion



















































































reductio ad iraq





















Conclusion






















Conclusion





Waiting for Balancing Gerard Alexander Why the World Is...

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Transcript of Waiting for Balancing Gerard Alexander Why the World Is...