Balancing on land and at sea: Do states ally against the leading global power?

International Security

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 7-43

  Levy, Jack S ^a   Thompson, William R ^b  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77956236278     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/ISEC_a_00001     Document Type: Article

References (181)

1. David Hume, "Of the Balance of Power," in Paul Seabury, ed., Balance of Power (San Francisco, Calif.: Chandler, 1965 [1752]), pp. 32-36.
2. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).
3. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
4. Paul Kennedy, "The Greatest Superpower Ever," New Perspectives Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 8-18.
5. See also Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 1.
6. Recently, the anticipated rise of new regional and global powers, growing U.S. deficits and their implications for the long-term viability of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and other structural changes in the global economy have led to increasing questions about the persistence of U.S. dominance.
7. See Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (New York: Random House, 2008).
8. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends, 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008).
9. Kishore Mahbubani, The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008).
10. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009).
11. Christopher Layne, "The Waning of U.S. Hegemony-Myth or Reality? A Review Essay," International Security, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009), pp. 147-172.
12. Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (New York: Penguin, 2009).
13. Fareed Zakaria, "America's New Balancing Act," Newsweek, August 6, 2001, p. 37.
14. G. John Ikenberry, "Introduction," in Ikenberry, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 3.
15. Others suggesting that neorealist or realist theory predicts balancing against the United States include Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Fall 1993), pp. 44-79.
16. Randall L. Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 2.
17. Stephen M. Walt, Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), p. 121.
18. An autonomous system is characterized by the absence of external actors with the power and incentives to significantly influence security behavior and outcomes in the system.
19. Although "soft balancing" is certainly worthy of study, it is analytically distinct from traditional "hard balancing" through alliances or internal military buildups, and the two should not be confounded.
20. See Robert A. Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 7-45.
21. T.V. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 46-71.
22. Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 126-132.
23. Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).
24. For critiques, see Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 109-139.
25. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, chap. 2.
26. For a useful exchange, see Robert J. Art, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, and Keir A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, "Correspondence: Striking the Balance," International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Winter 2005/06), pp. 177-196.
27. Coalitional balancing is the predominant form of "external balancing." On internal and external balancing, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics.
28. On China, see Robert S. Ross, "China's Naval Nationalism: Sources, Prospects, and the U.S. Response," International Security, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 46-81.
29. The absence of balancing should in principle be less of a puzzle for liberals, who argue that democracy, economic interdependence, and international institutions minimize aggressive behavior and consequently reduce incentives for balancing.
30. Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics".
31. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Structural Realism after the Cold War," International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), pp. 5-41.
32. Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise," International Security, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-51.
33. Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States' Unipolar Moment," International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006), pp. 7-41.
34. Layne argues that the United States is pursuing a strategy of extra-regional hegemony. Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited.".
35. Layne has repeatedly argued that new great powers will rise and recently suggested that economic power and political influence have begun to shift away from the United States.
36. If Layne is correct, the logic of balance of power theory would imply that other leading states would have fewer incentives to balance against the United States, refuting his own prediction that it is just a matter of time until other leading states will balancing against it.
37. System-level balances can emerge without national-level balancing strategies.
38. Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited".
39. Layne, "The Waning of U.S. Hegemony," pp. 151-159.
40. Pape, "Soft Balancing against the United States".
41. Paul, "Soft Balancing in the Age of U.S. Primacy".
42. Lieber and Alexander ("Waiting for Balancing," p. 133) argue that U.S. aggressive behavior is directed selectively toward nuclear proliferator states and global terrorist organizations and is "not broadly threatening.".
43. For other useful discussions of the dynamics of unipolarity under the United States, see G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno, and William C. Wohlforth, "Introduction: Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 1-27.
44. Robert Jervis, "Unipolarity: A Structural Perspective," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 188-213.
45. Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987).
46. Charles L. Glaser, "Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help," Security Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 122-163.
47. Charles S. Maier speaks of "consensual hegemony," and Geir Lundestad speaks of an American "empire by invitation.".
48. Maier, In Search of Stability: Explorations in Historical Political Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
49. Lundestad, "Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945-1952," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 23, No. 3 (September 1986), pp. 263-177.
50. Barry R. Posen, "Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony," International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Summer 2003), pp. 5-46.
51. Stephen M. Walt, "Alliances in a Unipolar World," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 86-120 at p. 97.
52. Robert Jervis, "Theories of War in an Era of Leading-Power Peace," American Political Science Review, Vol. 96, No. 1 (March 2002), pp. 1-14.
53. Walt, Taming American Power, pp. 187-191.
54. Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005).
55. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).
56. John M. Owen IV, "Transnational Liberalism and U.S. Primacy," International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), pp. 117-152.
57. Martha Finnemore, "Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity: Why Being a Unipole Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 58-85.
58. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
59. John J. Mearsheimer, "The Future of the American Pacifier," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 5 (September/October 2001), pp. 46-61 at p. 49.
60. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, p. 35.
61. Ernst B. Haas, "The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda?" World Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4 (July 1953), pp. 442-477.
62. Inis L. Claude Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962).
63. Jack S. Levy, "Balances and Balancing: Concepts, Propositions, and Research Design," in John A. Vasquez and Colin Elman, eds., Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003), pp. 128-153.
64. Jack S. Levy and William R. Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe, 1495-1999," Security Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1 (January-March 2005), pp. 1-33.
65. Here we define balance of power theory broadly to include both balance of power theory per se and balance of threat theory.
66. These two theories converge on the counterhegemonic balancing proposition, because if a state is strong enough to threaten hegemony, it will usually constitute a significant threat to the interests of all other great powers.
67. R. Harrison Wagner, "Peace, War, and the Balance of Power," American Political Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 3 (September 1994), pp. 593-607.
68. The great power orientation of traditional balance of power theory is widely recognized by diplomatic historians and political scientists.
69. Leopold von Ranke, "The Great Powers," in von Ranke, The Theory and Practice of History, ed. Georg G. Iggers and Konrad von Moltke (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, [1833] 1973), pp. 65-101.
70. A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954).
71. Inis L. Claude Jr., "The Balance of Power Revisited," Review of International Studies," Vol. 15, No. 2 (April 1989), pp. 77-85 at p. 78.
72. On the historical development of balance of power theory beginning in the late fifteenth century Italian city-state system and progressing through David Hume, Emerich de Vattel, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, see Moorhead Wright, ed., Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power, 1486-1914: Selected European Writings (London: Dent, 1975).
73. Michael Sheehan, The Balance of Power: History and Theory (London: Routledge, 1996).
74. Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths, and Models (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
75. More recent work includes Morgenthau, Politics among Nations.
76. Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York: W.W. Norton, 1955).
77. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: The Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977).
78. By arguing that global hegemony is out of reach, that states strive for regional hegemony where land power is dominant, and that global powers often act as offshore balancers, Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) is an important exception to the universalizing tendency of most balance of power theorists.
79. Key assumptions are that the system is anarchic, autonomous, and not significantly influenced by powers outside the system.
80. These assumptions are not problematic for Europe, but they can be problematic for other regional systems. Recent attempts to apply balance of power theories to regional systems include Walt, The Origins of Alliances.
81. T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michel Fortmann, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004).
82. For a plea for more attention to the rhetorical uses of the balance of power concept, see Daniel H. Nexon, "The Balance of Power in the Balance," World Politics, Vol. 61, No. 2 (April 2009), pp. 330-359 at p. 355.
83. By "Eurocentric bias," we mean a preoccupation not only with European powers but also with their behavior and outcomes on the European continent. Leading European states have also played a central role in the global system for the last five centuries, and any global perspective on the great powers would have to emphasize the European powers.
84. See Jeremy Black, Great Powers and the Quest for Hegemony: The World Order since 1500 (London: New York: Routledge, 2007).
85. Quincy Wright, A Study of War, 2d rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 750.
86. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. xix.
87. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987), chap. 2.
88. Kenneth N. Waltz, "Evaluating Theories," American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (December 1997), pp. 913-917 at p. 914.
89. Kennedy and Waltz include the Habsburgs under Charles V in their respective lists of hegemonic threats, whereas Wright and Taylor exclude them.
90. We agree with Kennedy and Waltz. Our data show that by 1550 the Habsburgs controlled 53 percent of great power military capabilities in Europe.
91. Morgenthau was not puzzled by either British dominance or the absence of balancing against it in the nineteenth century, and he would not have been puzzled by the absence of balancing against the United States after the end of the Cold War. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations.
92. Paul Schroeder, "Historical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 108-148.
93. Randall L. Schweller, "Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In," International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 72-107.
94. Richard Rosecrance and Chih-Cheng Lo, "Balancing, Stability, and War: The Mysterious Case of the Napoleonic International System," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (December 1996), pp. 479-500.
95. John A. Vasquez, "The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz's Balancing Proposition," American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (December 1997), pp. 899-912.
96. Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (London: Routledge, 1992).
97. Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
98. Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little, and William C. Wohlforth, eds., The Balance of Power in World History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
99. Philip Streich, "The Failure of the Balance of Power: Warring States Japan, 1467-1590," Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University, 2010.
100. Schroeder, "Historical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory".
101. Rosecrance and Lo, "Balancing, Stability, and War".
102. Vasquez, "The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs".
103. Norman Angell, The World's Highway: Some Notes on America's Relation to Sea Power and Non-Military Sanctions for the Law of Nations (New York: George H. Doran, 1915), p. 2.
104. Captain A.T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (New York: Dover, [1890] 1987).
105. This shift in the nature of capabilities does not detract from the need to distinguish global from regional systems, or to distinguish between powers that emphasize land and non-land capabilities (which we denote as maritime for convenience hereafter).
106. For a comparison of major-power naval-capability shares with shares of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and military satellites since World War I, see Michael Lee and William R. Thompson, "Measuring Command of the Commons and Global Capability Reach," Indiana University, 2010.
107. Ronald E. Robinson and John A. Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1981).
108. Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle (New York: Random House, 1962).
109. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
110. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
111. William R. Thompson and Gary Zuk, "World Power and the Strategic Trap of Territorial Commitments," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (September 1986), pp. 249-267.
112. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe.".
113. The second finding is as important as the first: there is only a weak tendency for great powers to balance against the leading European state independently of the magnitude of its advantage, even if it is increasing in strength.
114. A state with a modest advantage does not necessarily pose the most significant immediate threat to other great powers, which may be preoccupied with their own traditional rivals, specific threats from neighboring states, and domestic problems.
115. Stacie E. Goddard may be right that Prussia's legitimation strategies helped to prevent the formation of a balancing coalition in response to its expansion during the 1860s, but our data show that Prussia controlled only about 22 percent of the European system's military capabilities in the 1860s, and historically there is only a weak tendency for great powers to balance in such situations.
116. Goddard, "When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the European Balance of Power," International Security, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Winter 2008/09), pp. 110-142.
117. Our finding is consistent with Patricia A. Weitsman's argument that different levels of threat produce different alliance behaviors.
118. Weitsman, Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004).
119. We concluded that although these results provided substantial support for the core counter-hegemonic balancing proposition for the last five centuries of the European system, the "best case" nature of that system precludes us from generalizing our findings to other autonomous continental systems.
120. At the same time, weak support for the hypothesis that great powers balance against any leading state, regardless of the magnitude of its advantage, significantly undercuts our confidence that such balancing occurs in other systems.
121. On "most likely" and "least likely" logics of inference, see Jack S. Levy, "Case Studies: Types, Designs, and Logics of Inference," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 1-18.
122. Historically, this implies that this argument is more applicable to periods of British and U.S. predominance in the last three centuries than to earlier centuries, where the leading sea power (Portugal, England, Spain, the Netherlands, and France) had a less dominant position in the global economy.
123. A secondary factor that might affect decisions on balancing is that engagements at sea are more decisive and therefore riskier than are engagements on land. Battles at sea involve a higher proportion of a state's war-making capabilities than do battles on land, and because navies are more capital intensive than armies, it takes longer to rebuild after a major defeat at sea than on land.
124. Winston S. Churchill, explaining the absence of a major fleet confrontation in World War I, noted that Jellicoe (commander of the Grand Fleet at the beginning the war) was "the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.
125. Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol. 3: 1916-1918, Pt. 1 (New York: Scribner's, 1927), p. 106.
126. This is illustrated by the balancing coalitions against the Habsburgs, France under Louis XIV and then Napoleon, and Germany under Wilhelm II and then the Nazis.
127. Most historians define 1500 as the beginning of the "modern" period.
128. Benjamin A. Most and Randolph M. Siverson, "Substituting Arms and Alliances, 1870-1914: An Exploration in Comparative Foreign Policy," in Charles F. Hermann, Charles W. Kegley Jr., and James N. Rosenau, eds., New Directions in the Study of Foreign Policy (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), pp. 131-157.
129. For a discussion of this and other methodological problems associated with the analysis of internal balancing, see Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe." True, not all alliance formation constitutes external balancing, as states often have domestic motivations for balancing, but this is less a problem for the study of great powers than small powers.
130. Michael N. Barnett and Jack S. Levy, "Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962-73," International Organization, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Summer 1991), pp. 369-395.
131. Many great powers are both land powers and sea powers (e.g., Spain and France). Specifying whether a particular state is more of a land power or a sea power raises difficult analytic questions, but our analyses do not require us to do this. In our analysis of balancing against the leading sea power, we identify the state with the greatest naval capabilities (regardless of whether it also has substantial land-based military capabilities), and then determine how many other great powers (land or sea) balance against it. We followed a comparable approach to the analysis of balancing against the leading land power.
132. This follows Jack S. Levy, War in the Modern Great Power System, 1495-1975 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983).
133. Spain and Austria were joined under the rule of Charles V from 1519 to 1556, and we treat the "United Habsburgs" as a single great power during that period. Russia includes the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991.
134. Prussia/Germany includes the Federal Republic of Germany from 1945 to 1989.
135. For the last two centuries, see also Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816-1980 (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980).
136. George Modelski and William R. Thompson, Seapower in Global Politics, 1494-1993 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988).
137. These dates for the United States and Japan as global powers are much earlier than the mid-to-late 1890s used by Small and Singer and by Levy for great power status. The sea power shares of the United States and Japan are relatively small prior to the late 1890s, however, and they join few alliances in this period, so the precise timing of U.S. and Japanese entry into the system has minimal impact on our empirical results. Although there is some disagreement about when a state acquires and loses elite power status, there is little disagreement as to the identities of those states.
138. This is reflected not only in the NATO alliance of the leading European states against the Soviet Union as the strongest land-based military power on the continent (and not against the United States, the leading global power), but also in the comment of Lord Ismay (NATO's first secretarygeneral) that the aim of NATO was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.".
139. Although Britain, France, and West Germany may not have been global powers throughout most of the post-1945 period, they were the leading powers in the European system (along with the Soviet Union and the United States).
140. We include West Germany because the future of Germany was the central issue in the Cold War within the West as well as between West and East, and because the West German army was the foundation of NATO's conventional defense in Europe.
141. Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999).
142. Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson, The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994).
143. We focus on ships in being, not on ship-building capacity, the effectiveness of naval doctrine, or the quality or training of sailors.
144. This raises interesting questions about the conditions under which states develop war-making capabilities both on land and at sea, how they prioritize their efforts, and whether other great powers feel most threatened by the leading state's land power, sea power, or their combination.
145. States have only rarely controlled more than 50 percent of European military capabilities.
146. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe," p. 20.
147. A 10 percent increase in relative capabilities would be too high a threshold for establishing minimal significance.
148. Among other things, formal alliances send a relatively credible signal of a state's intent to come to the aid of its alliance partner.
149. James D. Morrow, "Alliances: Why Write Them Down?" Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 3 (2000), pp. 63-83.
150. For further justification of these operational decisions, see Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe.".
151. Melvin Small and J. David Singer, "Formal Alliances, 1816-1965: An Extension of the Basic Data," Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1969), pp. 257-282.
152. Jack S. Levy, "Alliance Formation and War Behavior: An Analysis of the Great Powers, 1494-1975," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 1981), pp. 581-613.
153. Douglas M. Gibler, "An Extension of the Correlates of War Formal Alliance Data Set, 1648-1815," International Interactions, Vol. 25, No. 1 (April 1999), pp. 1-28.
154. For updated alliance data, see http://www.correlatesofwar.org/Datasets.htm.
155. A complete list of historical sources is available from the authors
156. Evidence that nearly all great power alliances during the last five centuries were followed by a great power war within five years (the nineteenth century being an exception) suggests that the time lapse between alliance formation and war was relatively short. Levy, "Alliance Formation and War Behavior.".
157. For further details, see Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe.".
158. This is the rationale that leads most scholars to distinguish hard balancing from soft balancing.
159. Similarly, the exclusion of informal alignments with the leading power on land favors our hypothesis about the low probability of such behavior, but because leading land powers offer far fewer benefits than do leading sea powers, this bias is relatively small.
160. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe," p. 23.
161. The two variables are significant at the 0.067 level. In an alternative test of hypothesis 2, we operationalize the leading power's relative capability position in terms of the gap between the naval strengths of the number-one and number-two sea powers rather than the proportion of the naval resources in the system controlled by the leading power.
162. A logistic regression analysis reveals a negative relationship between this alternative indicator of the relative strength of the lead power and the propensity to balance against it, though not a statistically significant one.
163. As noted, balancing coalitions form against the leading sea power only 16 percent of the time.
164. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe," p. 26.
165. Recall that given the different strategic implications of concentrations of power in land-based systems and in maritime systems, we have defined dominance in terms of 33 percent of the system's military resources in the former and 50 percent of the naval resources in the latter.
166. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe.".
167. The only formal great-power alliance against the United States since 1945 was the Sino-Soviet alliance of 1950-1961.
168. Weaker states are vulnerable to both land powers and sea powers.
169. Mearsheimer recognizes the greater threat posed by armies than by navies. His "stopping power of water" concept fails to recognize, however, that water provides an efficient means of transport and power projection as well as a barrier, as Angell recognized in his analysis in The World's Highway.
170. The problem is not so much the stopping power of water as the stopping power of land after traversing water. Sea powers can travel great distances, but they have always had difficulties in conquering distant but powerful peoples once they reach their destination.
171. Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).
172. Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Coté Jr., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., Offense, Defense, and War (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).
173. The less-threatening nature of sea power is undoubtedly related to the tendency of global sea powers to be more liberal in their economic and political ideologies and institutions, which lessens the threats posed to other great powers.
174. Liberal ideology promotes trade and finance and the political conditions under which they prosper, and liberal regimes' concerns for domestic liberty leads them to prefer strong navies over standing armies.
175. These factors are difficult to tease out, and this question deserves more analysis. It is interesting, however, that fewer coalitions formed against nonliberal Portugal in the sixteenth century or against the quasi-liberal Netherlands in the seven-teenth century (when the latter controlled more than 45 percent of the systems' naval resources) than against more liberal Britain during its period of global dominance in the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries.
176. True, multiple coalitions formed against sixteen-century Spain and seventeenth-century France, but many of those occurred when one of the two states was simultaneously the leading land power and the leading sea power.
177. Jack S. Levy, "What Do Great Powers Balance against and When?" in Paul, Wirtz, and Fortmann, Balance of Power, pp. 29-51 at p. 45.
178. On ancient and non-Western systems, see Watson, The Evolution of International Society.
179. Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe.
180. Kaufman, Little, and Wohlforth, Balance of Power in World History.
181. Levy and Thompson, "Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe.".