Balance of Power (doctrine)

This article or section was due to content flaws on the quality assurance side of the editorial history entered. This is done in order to bring the quality of the articles in the field of history to an acceptable level. Articles that cannot be significantly improved are deleted. Please help fix the shortcomings in this article and please join the discussion !

Balance of Power ( Engl. : Balance of power ) refers to a basic principle of English or British foreign policy since the late Middle Ages until the end of World War II . In essence, it meant that Britain was doing its best to prevent dominance in mainland Europe by a single power (or alliance of powers). If such a supremacy threatened, an alliance should be entered into with the second most powerful nation in order to restore the balance of power, whether through war.

Theory / doctrine

The theory of a foreign policy balance of power , like other theories in international relations, claims to be able to explain it.

Examples from the history of Great Britain

Examples from UK history of attempts to maintain the balance of power:

Middle Ages to early modern times

1386: In the Treaty of Windsor , England and Portugal form a permanent alliance against Spanish hegemony. With English help, Johann von Avis succeeds in repelling the Spaniards in the battle of Aljubarrota .

1701–1714 and 1740–1748: In the War of the Spanish and Austrian Succession , England and the United Kingdom allied with Austria and the Netherlands to prevent France from gaining power.

1756–1763: During the Seven Years' War Prussia was threatened with annihilation by an alliance of powers consisting of France , Austria and Russia . In this situation, only Great Britain held on to Prussia (while Austria allied itself with its centuries-old opponent France, "diplomatic revolution of the 18th century") and supported it with monetary payments. The defeat of Prussia could finally be averted by a surprising change of the throne in Russia ( miracle of the House of Brandenburg ).

As a result of the rise of Prussia to a great power under Frederick the Great , a pentarchy arose, especially after the Vienna Congress of 1815, a compensatory system of the supremacy of the five great powers Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia in Europe, which spanned the continent Was to shape for a century.

Napoleonic Wars 1798–1815

During this time Napoleon showed himself to be a superior general and statesman and temporarily led France to domination in Europe. After the Battle of the Three Emperors , Austria was defeated and Russia was neutral. Only Britain opposed nor France and was for 1806 with a continental blockade occupied, d. H. no one was allowed to trade with Great Britain anymore. This was the worst case scenario for Great Britain, and the independence of the kingdom was directly threatened, as it was very dependent on food imports and needed outlets for its industrial products (e.g. textiles, machines).

Nevertheless, Great Britain held out and was finally able to defeat Napoleon together with the Prussians at the Battle of Waterloo . After the victory, however, Great Britain was not interested in permanently weakening France, but rather in reintegrating the country into the system of great powers, nor did it participate in the Holy Alliance between Austria, Prussia and Russia.

Franco-German War 1870/71

In the Franco-German War remained neutral United Kingdom, as well as Russia and Austria-Hungary , which is probably due to several factors:

In Otto von Bismarck, Prussia was headed by a diplomatically skilled realpolitician who had isolated France.

This France maneuvered further into a situation in which the declaration of war came from the French.

Before the war, France was a nation state , but the German territory was a fragmented structure of independent states with Austria-Hungary and Prussia as the most powerful parts. In a purely Franco-Prussian war, the cards would have been distributed relatively evenly. Power-political intervention in the sense of the Balance of Power was obviously not seen in London as necessary. Perhaps Austria-Hungary was also expected to intervene in favor of the French as a revenge for the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 .

France and Great Britain were competitors in the colonies, Prussia did not participate in this at the time.

The unification to the German Empire only happened in the course of or after the war.

First World War

After the Franco-Prussian War, the German Empire under Prussian leadership became the dominant power in continental Europe and remained so until the outbreak of the First World War . After some diplomatic and strategic awkwardness on the part of the German Reich, such as the naval battle and the establishment of its own colonies, Great Britain pursued its traditional policy of balance of power again , gave up its neutrality ( splendid isolation ) and allied itself with the now weaker France in the Entente Cordiale in 1904 As a result, the German Empire, which under Wilhelm II was striving for international status and a "place in the sun", i.e. colonies overseas, was suddenly largely isolated.

In the First World War, the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France and Russia fought against the Central Powers Germany and Austria-Hungary for supremacy in Europe and the world.

Between the wars 1921–1935

After the First World War and after the Paris Suburb Treaties came into effect in 1920, France became the most influential continental power. Paris dominated the cordon sanitaire , the military alliance with Poland , Czechoslovakia , Romania and Yugoslavia . Soviet Russia, the second major power on the continent, suffered a defeat in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920 off Warsaw .

The British dispute with France, which was still weakened, was limited to the diplomatic level: no participation in the Ruhr occupation 1923–1925, moderate reluctance to answer the question of German reparations ( Dawesplan 1924, Youngplan 1929, discontinuation in 1932), diplomatic advocacy for a proper League of Nations vote in the Saar area 1935, conclusion of the bilateral fleet agreement with Germany in 1935.

Appeasement and World War II

After secret armament, one-sided remilitarization of the Rhineland by Germany and the predominance of authoritarian systems of government in Europe as a result of the Spanish Civil War , Whitehall classified the German Empire as a future hegemonic power and threat on the continent, but influential parts of British politics continued to pursue politics until 1939 des Appeasement : By granting National Socialist Germany its legitimate territorial demands, it was hoped to be able to prevent another world war, for which the politically weakened Great Britain was not prepared for its colonial policy. A classic example of this policy is Neville Chamberlain's behavior at the Munich Conference in 1938, when Hitler was given the Sudetenland without the consent of Czechoslovakia .

During the Second World War , Great Britain, according to its doctrine, stood from the beginning on the side of the politically weakened France, whose rapid defeat and occupation by Germany could not be prevented. When Soviet armed forces occupied the eastern parts of the allied Poland on September 17, 1939, just two weeks after the outbreak of the World War (in accordance with the secret additional protocol of the Hitler-Stalin Pact ), no war was declared on the Soviet Union . After the victory in 1945, however , the Red Army dominated large parts of the continent.

Cold war after 1945

According to the doctrine, Great Britain turned against Soviet hegemony during the Cold War and joined NATO in response to the Warsaw Pact of 1955 by the Eastern Bloc countries .

However, as a result of the two world wars, the disintegration of the British Empire reduced the scope for foreign policy considerably. After the Suez Crisis in 1956, which showed that the major European powers France and Great Britain could no longer act alone, close coordination with US foreign policy followed.

British Foreign Policy Today

Great Britain is now only surrounded by friendly states. Instead of the balance of power the idea of today's Special Relationship (Engl. For Special relationship ) with the US, the defining feature of foreign policy, the independence and freedom to guarantee the United Kingdom.

Great Britain's policy was mostly cautious about further European integration (→ EU skepticism ). Some Brits see the EU as an instrument for Germany or France that endangers Great Britain's independence. Great Britain is not a member of the euro zone . Great Britain is also opposed to a stronger military integration of the EU outside of NATO . In the EU membership referendum in 2016 , a majority of the population decided to leave the EU , the "Brexit".

literature

Winfried Baumgart , 2007: Handbook of the History of International Relations . Volume 6, European Concert and National Movement. International relations 1830-1878 . 2nd edition, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, ISBN 978-3-506-73726-7 .
Heinz Duchhardt , 1997: Handbook of the History of International Relations . Volume 4, "Balance of Power" and Pentarchy. International Relations 1700–1785 . Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, ISBN 978-3-506-73724-3 .
Michael Erbe, 2004: Handbook of the History of International Relations . Volume 5, Revolutionary Shaking and Restoring Balance. International Relations 1785–1830 . Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, ISBN 978-3-506-73725-0 .
Evan Luard, 1992: The Balance of Power. The System of International Relations 1648--1815 . New York, ISBN 0-312-06208-7 .
Konrad Repgen , 1988: The Peace of Westphalia and the origins of the European equilibrium . In: Ders., From the Reformation to the Present. Contributions to basic questions of modern history, ed. by Klaus Gotto / Hans Günter Hockerts, Paderborn / Munich / Vienna / Zurich, pages 53-66, ISBN 3-506-77207-4 .
Michael Sheehan, 1996: The Balance of Power. History and Theory . London / New York, ISBN 0-415-11931-6 .
Paul W. Schroeder, 1994: The Transformation of European Politics 1763 - 1848 . [Oxford History of Modern Europe series], Oxford, ISBN 0-19-822119-3 .
Arno Strohmeyer, 1994: Theory of Interaction. The European Balance of Power in the Early Modern Age . Vienna / Cologne / Weimar, ISBN 3-205-98216-9 .
Arno Strohmeyer, 2006: Balance of Forces . In: Friedrich Jaeger (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Modern Times, Volume 4, Friede - Gutsherrschaft, Stuttgart / Weimar, Pages 925-931, ISBN 978-3-476-01994-3 .