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notion of balance of power that they suggest to ensure stable world
order also includes discussions about the international system(s) as
being spaces of interactions functioning within anarchic structures.
Within these anarchic structures, as they claim, the main actors, that
is to say, states are assumed to retain sovereignty and the distribution
of capabilities, resources, and stability on a healthier level of power
equilibrium, which will in turn help to maintain cohesion of the orders
and systems, while preventing any cataclysmic destruction.
This realist school based balance of power theory argues that modern
global politics is characterized by shifting coalitions and alliances aimed
at preventing an unequal distribution of power in the global arena
and that such a balance is the best guarantee for world order 27 and its
constituent systems. To conirm this notion, Europe’s various shifting
alliances that have been seen in history are being taken as evidence
of proof. Modern thinkers of this school such as Kissinger argue that
countries fear and loathe hegemons and that it is better to have a balance
of power to stabilize the system. 28 Also, this balance of power notion has
been utilized, recently, to explain the alliance of France, Russia, and China,
when these actors intended to counter-balance the US unilateral actions
against Iraq in 2003. 29 Most balance of power theorists claim hegemons
always fail and that the history of modern world orders runs in cycles
illuminating the rise and fall of great powers. In an attempt to adjust the
drawback of the realist school, neorealism sees the notion of hegemonic
stability as a viable circumstance to perpetuate state based and solely
Western dominated order and systems that have been maintained since
Westphalia. Neorealism assumes that history is subject to continuity and
repetitive cycles of hegemonies, thus inadequate to explain international
relations more generally. Its most fundamental limitation is its insistence
that international politics cannot be understood without a reference to
27 COX, K. R., SINCLAIR, T. J.: Approaches to World Order. Cambridge U. K. :
Cambridge University Press,1996, see chapters 2-3. This has also been
cited in Moselle, The Concept of World Order, 2008, p. 4.
28 KISSINGER, H.: Diplomacy. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1995, p. 17-28,
mainly see the introduction and conclusion.
29 BOOTH, K., DUNNE, T. (eds.): Worlds in collision: terror and the future of
global order. Houndmills, 2002, 360 p. In Particular, see Part II. Order,
p. 141-354.
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