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The Balance of Power: Growth of an Idea
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 July 2011
Extract
Twice within 25 years, in 1919 and again in 1944–5, the idea of the balance of power hasbeen pronounced dead, and twice it has arisen from its seeming demise soon after such funereal exercises. Foremost among the obituaries were those of American statesmen, like Woodrow Wilson and Cordell Hull. When the latter returned from conferences in Moscow in the autumn of 1943, he stated, as if he were the true heir of Wilsonism, that “as the provisionsof the fournations declarations are carried into effect, there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security.”
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References
1 Dr. Karl A. Menninger discussing causes of high blood pressure before a conference of physicians. On this occasion “primal fear” was indicated as a clue (New York Times, April 20, 1948). Should not the historian of diplomacy in a deeper, more searching analysis of the fear of “encirclement” make use of this clue?
2 New York Times, April 23, 1948.
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7 Question and answer were promptly relayed to the Germans. German ambassador in Moscow toGerman Foreign Office, July 13, 1940, Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939–1941, Washington, D. C, Government Printing Office, 1948, p. 167.
8 Did the United States and the New World go to war to redress the balance of the Old? It ought not to be considered election year maliciousness to refer for one of the first steps in this direction to statements by Henry Wallace, Democratic candidate for the Vice- Presidency in 1940, during that campaign. He told California audiences at that time that Japan's accession to the Axis meant “that the old balance of power upon which the U. S. relied for safety is now gone.Only if we are speedy and efficient in our defense can we keep aggressor nations, or any combination of them, from coming to this country … The old balance of power under which the Monroe Doctrine was easily defended is gone. We must look to our own defenses, relying on ourselves to repel any aggression.” UP dispatch from Los Angeles, September, 1940.
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34 A history in nuce of Edward Grey's diplomacy could be written in terms of the balance of power. His diplomacy was guided by that very idea, but the radicals within his own party, the heirs of Cobden and Bright, with their dislike of what went with the phrase balance of power, kept it from appearing in his parliamentary speeches and memoirs, both of which were designed to defend his diplomacy and the after all disastrous entry of England into the war in 1914.
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