Contending Perspectives on Managing Insecurity 301we observe in interstate politics. It can provide an effective guide to policies aimed at
preserving a status quo short of war. However, realist security- management strategies
depend on the notion that adversaries share definitions of relevant costs and benefits
and that they assign roughly equal values to both. When they do not, a realist strategy
for security management can easily go awry, making warfare more rather than less
likely, and more rather than less destructive.
BalanCe of Power
In Chapter 4, we saw that a balance of power is a par tic u lar configuration of a multi-
polar international system. But theorists use the terms in other ways as well. So bal-
ance of power may refer to an equilibrium between any two parties, and balancing power
may describe an approach to managing power and insecurity. The latter usage is rele-
vant here.
Balance- of- power theorists posit that to manage insecurity, states make rational and
calculated evaluations of the costs and benefits of par tic u lar policies that determine
the state’s role in a balance of power. All states in the system are continually making
choices to maintain their position vis- à- vis their adversaries, thereby maintaining a
balance of power. When that balance of power is jeopardized, as it was by the rise of
German power in the early 1900s, insecurity leads states to pursue countervailing alli-
ances or policies.^28 More recently, in October 2015, the United States sent warships to
within 12 miles of a Chinese man- made island in the Spratly Island chain to demon-
strate its ongoing commitment to the princi ples of the UN convention on the laws of
the sea (UNCLOS), and, at the same time, reassure U.S. allies such as the Philippines
and Japan that the United States would not permit unilateral territorial claims or the
abrigment of the right of free transit through these contested waters, or unilateral claims
to the wealth in mineral resources thought to lie under the sea bed nearby. In this con-
text, the United States is attempting to balance against growing Chinese power in the
Pacific by supporting the status quo and the princi ple that disputes over territory should
be resolved through multilateral negotiations.
Alliances are the most impor tant institutional tool for enhancing one’s own secu-
rity and balancing the perceived power potential of one’s opponent. If an expanding
state seems poised to achieve a dominant position, threatened states can join with
others against the expanding state. This action is called external balancing. Formal and
institutionalized military alliances play a key role in maintaining a balance of power,
as the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances did in the post– World War II world. States
may also engage in internal balancing, increasing their own military and economic
capabilities to counter potential threatening enemies.
Balancing power can be applied at both international and regional levels. At the
international level during the Cold War, for instance, the United States and the Soviet