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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2020
As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay examines the role of institutional soft balancing in bringing forth peaceful change in international relations. Soft balancing is understood as attempts at restraining a threatening power through institutional delegitimization, as opposed to hard balancing, which relies on arms buildup and formal alignments. We argue that soft balancing through international institutions can be an effective means to peaceful change, spanning minimalist goals, which aim at incremental change without the use of military force and war, and maximalist goals, which seek more profound change and transformation in the form of continuous interstate cooperation aimed at a more peaceful and just world order. However, the success of soft-balancing strategies in fostering peaceful change varies widely, even in today's globalized and institutionalized international environment. We explore these variations and identify three conditions for success that can inform both academic analysis and political practice: inclusion, commitment, and status recognition. We draw lessons from two historical examples: the Concert of Europe in the early nineteenth century and the League of Nations in the early twentieth century, and discuss how current threats to the liberal international order challenge soft balancing for peaceful change.
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6 Our discussion of these two institutions builds primarily on the general discussion of soft balancing in the Concert of Europe and the League of Nations in Paul, Restraining Great Powers, pp. 46–56 and 48–62.
7 Friedrich V. Kratochwil, “Politics, Norms and Peaceful Change,” Review of International Studies 24, no. 5 (December 1998), p. 206.
8 Paul, Restraining Great Powers, p. 59. The political elite in the United States were divided on how to best meet the challenges in Europe.
9 For the general argument, see Patricia A. Weitsman, Waging War: Alliances, Coalitions, and Institutions of Interstate Violence (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 42.
10 Alexander Thompson, Channels of Power: The UN Security Council and U.S. Statecraft in Iraq (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 19.
11 On a similar role of coalitions for economic sanctions, see Edward D. Mansfield, “International Institutions and Economic Sanctions,” World Politics 47, no. 4 (July 1995), pp. 575–605.
12 Anders Wivel and Ole Wæver, “The Power of Peaceful Change: The Crisis of the European Union and the Rebalancing of Europe's Regional Order,” International Studies Review 20, no. 2 (June 2018), pp. 317–25.
13 Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on Iran” (White House, January 8, 2020), www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-iran/.
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