IV. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
1. The Eighteenth-Century Theory of International
Politics.
The general treaties of Westphalia (1648) and
Utrecht (1713) had made
it more easy, and more a
matter of habit, to see a considerable part of
Europe
as an integrated system. These were days when the
parallel
ideas of a balance of trade and the equipoise
of the English constitution
had already been gaining
currency. The world had become familiar with paral-
lelograms of forces, and in various
human studies, as
well as in different branches of science (zoology,
for
example), the mind seemed to be taking a mechanistic
turn. Henry
Brougham pointed out in the Edinburgh
Review in
1802-03 that the theory of the balance of
power had been unknown to the
ancient Greeks and
had arisen from the progress of science and the
peculiar
circumstances of modern Europe. The development of
a Baconian
kind of reflection amongst even the practi-
tioners of diplomacy, as well as the incidental com-
ments of international lawyers like Grotius, had
brought out more sophisticated ideas, some of which
came together in the
work of Fénelon. And the ideas
of Fénelon helped to give
a moral basis to the resulting
combination; for if the virtue of
governments depended
somewhat on the distribution of power, it followed
that
in a well-balanced Europe the ambitions of all rulers
would be
moderate, for all would grow accustomed
to feeling that only marginal
aggressions were feasible.
In the last struggles with Louis XIV the balance
of
power became a system fully conscious of itself and
“quite as comprehensively and carefully worked out
as the
mercantilism of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries”
(Gulick, p. 299). It now graduated as a
general theory of international
politics.
On this mature theory, Europe was seen as almost
a parallel to the system of
Newtonian astronomy. The
various states—whether great or
small—exerted a pull
or a pressure on one another, and this bore
some rela-
tionship to their respective
masses and to their dis-
tances from one
another. If the mass of any one of
them was substantially altered, this
would be likely to
destroy the equipoise unless the distances were cor-
rected, the alliances changed, the states
regrouped. In
a world in which governments could recognize their
real interests, or could envisage long-term results in-
stead of being governed by momentary desires
and
prejudices, the readjustments would be rapid and might
be regarded
as automatic. But since states could be
shortsighted, the idea of the
balance of power might
not always be a theory of what actually happens.
It
might become a policy that governments were urged
to pursue; and so
it might be turned into a matter of
precept.
The object of the system was to prevent the emer-
gence of a power so predominant that it could miscon-
duct itself with impunity and march to something
like
“universal dominion.” It was assumed that all
states
had the latent desire for aggression, even the small ones
indulging in conquest if local circumstances provided
the opportunity. So
long as they were powerless, the
tendency to this would be merely latent,
and, where
there was an equilibrium, it would become second
nature to
keep one's ambitions at a moderate level.
It was not held that under the
system of the balance
of power the tendency to aggression would be abol-
ished altogether, however. On the contrary
it was
assumed that once a state found that the way was open
for such
a thing, it would move forward to “universal
dominion.”
The great requirement was that the others should
see the danger, and adjust
their alliances in time, so
that vigilance and farsightedness were
necessary. It
might be too late if one awoke only when the aggressor
had already made a great advance—too late if one even
waited for
him to show his hand. It had already been
a matter of controversy as to
whether it was permis-
sible to attack a
state merely because it was a potential
menace—i.e., before it
had committed any actual
offence. Some writers were in favor of even this
pre-
ventive policy, though Grotius had
disapproved of the
idea.
An objector might argue that it was better to allow
a hegemony to be
established—better to have some-
thing like a Roman Empire which would secure peace
throughout the
system. Before the end of the eight-
eenth
century the writers on the balance of power were
addressing themselves to
this argument. They claimed
that here were the only two
alternatives—either a
states-system which made the map of Europe
look like
a patchwork quilt, or a “universal
dominion” that
embraced the whole continent.
They were well aware that when a supremacy of
power has been conceded, the
beneficiary can do any-
thing that he likes
with it—the chance of controlling
him, or making him keep any
promise that he has
made, is lost. But they were prepared to confront
the
problem at a higher level still. Against the idea of a
universal
empire, which would end by producing a
widespread uniformity, they pressed the case for a
European
civilization enriched by the variety of its
national manifestations. If
initially they needed a con-
geries of states
because they insisted on having a distri-
bution of power, they proceeded to advance further
still, and argue
that small states had in fact an intrinsic
value. The system was claimed to
be the only one
which (in a world that was somewhat at the mercy
of
force) could secure the actual existence of small
states.
The balance in fact secured not only their existence
but also their
autonomy, their power of independent
action. Any defect in the balance
would tend at least
to deprive them of a genuine foreign policy,
reducing
them to the position of satellites. Richelieu had once
complained that, in his own day, small states were able
to have greater
freedom of action than the larger ones,
and we in the latter half of the
twentieth century can
see how this might be the case. In a certain sense
the
system of balance itself might depend on the small
states, who
could shift their allegiance if a power which
had been their friend was
turning into a general men-
ace. The system was
capable of providing, therefore,
something like an actual diplomatic role
for smaller
states.
Indeed, before the end of the century, it had come
to be realized that the
system of the balance of power
was directed to the maintenance of liberty
rather than
to the prevention of wars. It assumed (or enjoined) the
adoption of the view that the ultimate object of a state
was its survival
or its independence; and sometimes
this was taken to imply that survival
was the constant
motive, that all conflicts should be treated as a
question
of survival—in other words, all policy should be subor-
dinated to the issue of the
distribution of power. This
was perhaps an abuse of the theory, since it
was suffi-
cient to say that the question of
survival, the question
of the distribution of power, should never be
allowed
to fall out of sight. The effect of the abuse was to turn
policy sometimes into an arid kind of raison
d'état.
The really important thing, as the Edinburgh Review
repeated in 1802, was that there should be unremitting
vigilance, for
danger might arise from changes taking
place at the other end of the map.
The point was made,
however, that the acquisition of territory by one
power
did not mean that others must make a similar expansion
or that
actual war would be necessary to restore the
balance. The more mature
theory recognized that, at
the heart of the whole argument, was the idea
of
restoring the equilibrium by readjustments in alliances.
It was
realized that an internal development—a great
economic
advance—might alter the power of a state
as much as the
acquisition of territory, and this was
to be counterbalanced in the same
way.
It came to be seen, therefore, that the whole system
assumed or acquired a
high degree of flexibility, and
that traditional alliances, sentimental
associations,
dynastic marriages, and established commercial chan-
nels might obstruct the response to
changing situations,
and clog the whole machine. Above all, the
apostles
of the balance of power feared anything like what
we should
call “ideological” diplomacy and “ideologi-
cal” war. There was a
further thing which they repeat-
edly said
must never be allowed to happen again; and
that was the fanatical
“wars of religion.”
As the century proceeded, the theorists tended more
and more to exalt
equilibrium as such, and to make
it the highest objective of foreign
policy, insisting that
the egotism of advancing states, or even the punish-
ment of a defeated aggressor, should
not be carried
to the point at which the international system itself
was overthrown. And if it was sometimes said that the
balance of power,
while assisting the cause of liberty,
tended to make conflicts more
numerous (tended even
to make them general), the same teaching did
imply
at least a doctrine of warfare for limited purposes, and
a
preference for the kind of peace treaty that produced
only marginal
cessions for the adjustment of the bal-
ance. An
essential feature of the system was the real-
ization that the enemy of today may be required as
an ally
tomorrow and that excessive concessions made
to a monarch who happens to be
virtuous may benefit
his successor, who will make an evil use of them.
In any case, war for the actual destruction of a state
was anathema, for it
meant the creation of a vacuum
which would serve the purpose of a potential
aggressor
better than anything else.
The “war of religion” (or the
“ideological” war) was
recognized to be the extreme
antithesis to the system.
It ignored the balance of power, and it rendered
a
policy of compromise too difficult. It came to be un-
derstood that the system of states depended in fact on
an underlying unity of culture, a common sense of
values and a preexisting
community of tradition and
custom. The international order itself, and the
balance
within it, depended on the assumption that all the
participants were like members of the same club. A
theory that was far from
denying the egotism of states,
called at times therefore for loyalty to the
club itself
and asked that egotism should stop short of any threat
to
the international order.
2. The Operation of the Balance.
In the first half
of the eighteenth century the Continent was not
yet
integrated and it was customary to say that there were
two
systems—a more southern or “European” one,
and
another which was described as “Northern.” In
1709
there was a momentary fear that they might come
together—the War of the Spanish Succession combin-
ing with the Great Northern War in a struggle that
would be
really general. England had separate Secre-
taries of State for the North and the South, and when
A. H. L.
Heeren produced his
Handbuch on the
European
states-system in 1809, he devoted a long
narrative to “the
balance of the South,” and a separate
one to “the
balance of the North.” After this the two
came to be combined,
for, after 1763, Russia had be-
come more
definitely a part of the European system,
though France was still disposed
to regard not only
Russia but also Britain as an outsider. It was
held,
however, that, within the general equilibrium of
Europe, there
were also local or regional balances—
one in the north, one in
the south, and perhaps a
separate one for Germany. Also, there were some
peo-
ple who thought that overseas colonies
might affect
the calculation of the balance.
Down to 1789 people were able to pride themselves
that neither in the main
part of the Continent nor in
the Baltic was there a power capable of making
a bid
for “universal dominion.” This might be
attributed to
the fact that power itself was fairly evenly
distributed;
but both F. von Gentz and Talleyrand (Charles Mauriel
de
Talleyrand-Périgord) insisted that the balance of
power did not
require nations to be roughly equal in
size—in their view the
equilibrium might be more
difficult to achieve if one had a world of
exactly equal
states. Frederick the Great and Edmund Burke noted
that
the effect of the system was to make wars general,
and they, along with
Edward Gibbon, held that it made
a plan of large-scale conquest no longer
feasible. In
the Seven Years' War, the enemies of Frederick the
Great
planned the destruction of Prussia as a power,
but the representatives of
Louis XV's “secret” diplo-
matic system—the ablest school of diplomats that the
century produced—made this an additional reproach
against the
alliance with Austria in 1756. They com-
plained that such a war objective was a breach of the
code and that
a victory in the war would have been
worse than the defeat that was
actually suffered. The
destruction of Prussia, they said, would have
restored
the Habsburgs to their former predominance.
The career of Napoleon produced, amongst his ene-
mies, a further insistence on the theory of balance, and
in 1809
Heeren suggested that, in the long run, the
system might become a global
affair. The peace treaties
with France at the end of the wars were an
excellent
demonstration of the effects of the theory. And, in the
crucial cases, the Congress of Vienna showed that it
was more attached to
the balance of power than either
to dynastic rights or to nationalism.
It has often been asserted that the balance of power
was responsible for the
partition of Poland; but it has
been said equally often that it was responsible for the
preservation of the Ottoman Empire. This raises the
issue of the local
versus the continental balance; and
there has, never been a more intensive
application of
the balance than between Russia, Prussia, and Austria
in eastern Europe after 1763. Perhaps it has always
been true that where
these bitterly rival powers could
come to an agreement about anything,
there existed
no counterpoise in Europe that could hold them in
check
in their own region. At any rate, France and
England could not have stopped
the partition of
Poland, and this might be imputed to the lack of a
wider “general balance” at that moment. France and
England were able to defend the Ottoman Empire
against Russia
because—partly through their maritime
opportunities—they were in a position to make the
general
balance effective.
