Unipolarity and Its Consequences - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 88

and secondary states will seek to protect themselves from domination by the leading state by
balancing against it. In this classic view, concentrated power tends to be threatening to oth-
er states and the most effective way to check this power is by counterbalancing it. Balance
of power is the most enduring mechanism to restrain power because it is the most reliable;
power checks power. The realist expectation is that the rise of unipolarity—and the move-
ment toward greater concentration of power capabilities in the hands of one state—should
invite a power-balancing response. 2
In a unipolar distribution of power, balance-of-power realism makes a clear prediction:
weaker and secondary states will resist and balance against the predominant state. Secur-
ity—indeed survival—is the fundamental goal of states, and because they cannot ultimately
rely on the commitments or guarantees of other states to ensure their security, states will be
very sensitive to their relative power position. When powerful states emerge, secondary states
will seek protection in countervailing coalitions of weaker states.
The strategy of counterbalancing is to generate sufficient material capabilities to impose
constraints on the most powerful state. This could happen through the efforts of a single state
or coalition of states taking steps to generate additional power capacities and deploying them
in a way to block or thwart the advances of the lead state. One expects to see a rival state
rise up and seek to become a peer competitor, or a coalition of states band together to match
and offset the capacities of the leading state. In terms of American unipolarity, the expecta-
tion is that traditional allies will distance themselves from the United States and expand their
autonomous defense capacities. Waltz suggests that the logic of balance will again take hold
as the great powers—including China and Russia—expand their defense capacities and loose
alliances of states appear to undercut the global power position of the United States. 3 Chris-
topher Layne suggests that unipolarity is unstable precisely because concentrated American
power is threatening to the other major states. He foresees a return to a global system based
on an equilibrium of power among traditional and rising great powers. 4
It remains an interesting puzzle that the rise of American unipolarity has not in fact gen-
erated a counterbalancing response, at least as counterbalancing is envisaged in realist the-
ory. A debate continues on what actually constitutes balancing. Some scholars do anticip-
ate a return to traditional security counterbalancing, while others argue that a new form of
counter-balancing—or so-called soft balancing—is emerging that conforms to new circum-
stances while also validating the basic tenets of the theory. 5 But even if soft balancing is oc-
curring, it suggests a very different array of responses to concentrated power than has been
seen in the past. 6 Well into the period of American unipolarity, most of the world's major
states sought to get closer to the United States—and not to distance themselves. Trade and
cooperation among the advanced industrial countries expanded in the post-Cold War 1990s.
The United States maintained—and in various ways deepened—its alliance ties to Western
Europe and Japan. 7 At least until the crisis triggered by America's military invention of Iraq