A ‘Balance of Power’?

Abstract

During the initial euphoria that accompanied the end of Cold War, serious thought was given to the idea that international relations no longer needed to be governed by a balance of power. For the previous 40 years, such a notion was widely regarded as heretical. It was often taken as axiomatic that it was neither possible nor desirable to move away from the nuclear balance that structured the international system. But the speed with which the nuclear balance collapsed, along with the failure to anticipate either the end of the Cold War or the demise of the Soviet Union, encouraged the belief that the balance of power and the associated realist approach provided an inaccurate or, at best, incomplete guide to world politics. Indeed, Fukuyama (1992, pp. 245–53) insisted that although it had been sensible to think in balance of power terms during the Cold War, such an approach was completely inappropriate in the emerging ‘post-historical’ world.