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Soft Balancing, Institutions, and Peaceful Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Anders Wivel Open the ORCID record for Anders Wivel [Opens in a new window]  and
T. V. Paul
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Abstract

As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay examines the role of institutional soft balancing in bringing forth peaceful change in international relations. Soft balancing is understood as attempts at restraining a threatening power through institutional delegitimization, as opposed to hard balancing, which relies on arms buildup and formal alignments. We argue that soft balancing through international institutions can be an effective means to peaceful change, spanning minimalist goals, which aim at incremental change without the use of military force and war, and maximalist goals, which seek more profound change and transformation in the form of continuous interstate cooperation aimed at a more peaceful and just world order. However, the success of soft-balancing strategies in fostering peaceful change varies widely, even in today's globalized and institutionalized international environment. We explore these variations and identify three conditions for success that can inform both academic analysis and political practice: inclusion, commitment, and status recognition. We draw lessons from two historical examples: the Concert of Europe in the early nineteenth century and the League of Nations in the early twentieth century, and discuss how current threats to the liberal international order challenge soft balancing for peaceful change.

Keywords

soft balancinginstitutionspeaceful changestatuscommitmentinclusion
Type
Roundtable: International Institutions and Peaceful Change
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 2020 , pp. 473 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 See Paul, T. V., Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018), pp. 15–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 20.

3 Finnemore, Martha, “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity: Why Being a Unipole Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be,” World Politics 61, no. 1, (January 2009), p. 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Reus-Smit, Christian, American Power and World Order (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity), pp. 43–44Google Scholar.

4 Bailes, Alyson J. K. and Thorhallsson, Baldur, “Instrumentalizing the European Union in Small State Strategies,” Journal of European Integration 35, no. 2 (2013), pp. 99–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See the discussion in T. V. Paul, “The Study of Peaceful Change in World Politics,” introduction to T. V. Paul, Deborah Welch Larson, Harold Trinkunas, Anders Wivel, and Ralf Emmers, eds., Oxford Handbook on Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

6 Our discussion of these two institutions builds primarily on the general discussion of soft balancing in the Concert of Europe and the League of Nations in Paul, Restraining Great Powers, pp. 46–56 and 48–62.

7 Friedrich V. Kratochwil, “Politics, Norms and Peaceful Change,” Review of International Studies 24, no. 5 (December 1998), p. 206.

8 Paul, Restraining Great Powers, p. 59. The political elite in the United States were divided on how to best meet the challenges in Europe.

9 For the general argument, see Patricia A. Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 42.

10 Alexander Thompson, Channels of Power: The UN Security Council and U.S. Statecraft in Iraq (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 19.

11 On a similar role of coalitions for economic sanctions, see Edward D. Mansfield, “International Institutions and Economic Sanctions,” World Politics 47, no. 4 (July 1995), pp. 575–605.

12 Anders Wivel and Ole Wæver, “The Power of Peaceful Change: The Crisis of the European Union and the Rebalancing of Europe's Regional Order,” International Studies Review 20, no. 2 (June 2018), pp. 317–25.

13 Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on Iran” (White House, January 8, 2020), www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-iran/.

14 Wivel, Anders and Paul, T. V., “Exploring International Institutions and Power Politics,” in Wivel, Anders and Paul, T. V., eds., International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2019), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.

15 Hurrell, Andrew, “Kissinger and World Order,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44, no. 1 (September 2015), pp. 165–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Robbie Gramer and Keith Johnson, “Tillerson Praises Monroe Doctrine, Warns Latin America of ‘Imperial’ Chinese Ambitions,” Foreign Policy, February 2, 2018. See also Nathan Gardels, “Trump Is Not the Leader of the U.S.—Just of His Base,” “Opinion,” Washington Post, July 19, 2018, foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/02/tillerson-praises-monroe-doctrine-warns-latin-america-off-imperial-chinese-ambitions-mexico-south-america-nafta-diplomacy-trump-trade-venezuela-maduro/.

17 Andersen, Louise Riis, “Curb Your Enthusiasm: Middle-Power Liberal Internationalism and the Future of the United Nations,” International Journal: Canada's Journal of Global Policy Analysis 74, no. 1 (March 2019), pp. 47–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Saltzman, Ilai Z., “Soft Balancing as Foreign Policy: Assessing American Strategy toward Japan in the Interwar Period,” Foreign Policy Analysis 8, no. 2 (April 2012), p. 133CrossRefGoogle Scholar.