The IPN Headquarters in Warsaw co-ordinates the operations of eleven Branch Offices and their Delegations
The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, abbreviated IPN)
is a Polish state research institute in charge of education and
archives which also includes two public prosecution service components
exercising investigative, prosecution and lustration powers. The IPN was established by the Polish parliament by the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance of 18 December 1998 through reforming and expanding the earlier Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation of 1991, which itself had replaced a body on Nazi crimes established in 1945. In 2018, IPN's mission statement was amended by the controversial Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance to include "protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Nation". The IPN investigates and prosecutes Nazi and Communist crimes committed between 1917 and 1990, documents its findings, and disseminates them to the public. Some scholars have criticized the IPN for politicization, especially under Law and Justice governments.
The IPN began its activities on 1 July 2000. The IPN is a founding member of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience. Since 2020, the IPN headquarters have been located at Postępu 18 Street in Warsaw. The IPN has eleven branches in other cities and seven delegation offices.
Purpose
Main entrance
The IPN's main areas of activity, in line with its original mission statement, include researching and documenting the losses which were suffered by the Polish Nation as a result of World War II and during the post-war totalitarian period. The IPN informs about the patriotic traditions of resistance against the occupational forces,
and the Polish citizens' fight for sovereignty of the nation, including
their efforts in defence of freedom and human dignity in general.
According to the IPN, it is its duty to prosecute crimes against peace and humanity, as much as war crimes.
Its mission includes the need to compensate for damages which were
suffered by the repressed and harmed people at a time when human rights
were disobeyed by the state, and educate the public about recent history of Poland.
IPN collects, organises and archives all documents about the Polish
Communist security apparatus active from 22 July 1944 to 31 December
1989.
Following the election of the Law and Justice
party, the government formulated in 2016 a new IPN law. The 2016 law
stipulated that the IPN should oppose publications of false information
that dishonors or harms the Polish nation. It also called for
popularizing history as part of "an element of patriotic education". The
new law also removed the influence of academia and the judiciary on the
IPN.
A 2018 amendment to the law, added article 55a that attempts to defend the "good name" of Poland.
Initially conceived as a criminal offense (3 years of jail) with an
exemption for arts and research, following an international outcry, the
article was modified to a civil offense that may be tried in civil
courts and the exemption was deleted. Defamation charges under the act may be made by the IPN as well as by accredited NGOs such as the Polish League Against Defamation.
By the same law, the institution's mission statement was changed to
include "protecting the reputation of the Republic of Poland and the
Polish Nation".
Organisation
IPN was created by special legislation on 18 December 1998. The IPN is divided into:
Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu)
Bureau of Provision and Archivization of Documents (Biuro Udostępniania i Archiwizacji Dokumentów)
Bureau of Public Education (or Public Education Office, Biuro Edukacji Publicznej)
Lustration Bureau (Biuro Lustracyjne) (new bureau, since October 2006)
local chapters.
On 29 April 2010, acting president Bronislaw Komorowski signed into law a parliamentary act that reformed the Institute of National Remembrance.
Director
IPN is governed by the director, who has a sovereign position that is
independent of the Polish state hierarchy. The director may not be
dismissed during his term unless he commits a harmful act. Prior to
2016, the election of the director was a complex procedure, which
involves the selection of a panel of candidates by the IPN Collegium
(members appointed by the Polish Parliament and judiciary). The Polish
Parliament (Sejm) then elects one of the candidates, with a required supermajority (60%). The director has a 5-year term of office.
Following 2016 legislation in the PiS controlled parliament, the former
pluralist Collegium was replaced with a nine-member Collegium composed
of PiS supporters, and the Sejm appoints the director after consulting
with the College without an election between candidates.
Leon Kieres
Leon Kieres
The first director of the IPN was Leon Kieres, elected by the Sejm
for five years on 8 June 2000 (term 30 June 2000 – 29 December 2005).
The IPN granted some 6,500 people the "victim of communism" status and
gathered significant archive material. The IPN faced difficulties since
it was new and also since the Democratic Left Alliance (containing former communists) attempted to close the IPN. The publication of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland by Jan T. Gross, proved to be a lifeline for the IPN as Polish president Aleksander Kwaśniewski
intervened to save the IPN since he deemed the IPN's research to be
important as part of Jewish-Polish reconciliation and "apology
diplomacy".
Janusz Kurtyka
Janusz Kurtyka
The second director was Janusz Kurtyka, elected on 9 December 2005 with a term that started 29 December 2005 until his death in the Smolensk airplane crash on 10 April 2010. The elections were controversial, as during the elections a leak against Andrzej Przewoźnik accusing him of collaboration with Służba Bezpieczeństwa caused him to withdraw his candidacy.Przewoźnik was cleared of the accusations only after he had lost the election.
In 2006, the IPN opened a "Lustration Bureau" that increased the
director's power. The bureau was assigned the task of examining the past
of all candidates to public office. Kurtyka widened archive access to
the public and shifted focus from compensating victims to researching
collaboration.
Franciszek Gryciuk
Franciszek Gryciuk
In 1999, historian Franciszek Gryciuk
was appointed to the Collegium of the IPN, which he chaired 2003–2004.
From June 2008 to June 2011, he was vice president of the IPN. He was
acting director 2010–2011, between the death of the IPN's second
president, Janusz Kurtyka, in the 2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash and the election of Łukasz Kamiński by the Polish Parliament as the third director.
Łukasz Kamiński
Łukasz Kamiński
Łukasz Kamiński,
was elected by the Sejm in 2011 following the death of his predecessor.
Kamiński headed the Wroclaw Regional Bureau of Public Education prior
to his election. During his term, the IPN faced a wide array of
criticism calling for an overhaul or even replacement. Critics founds
fault in the IPN being a state institution, the lack of historical
knowledge of its prosecutors, a relatively high number of microhistories
with a debatable methodology, overuse of the martyrology motif,
research methodology, and isolationism from the wider research
community. In response, Kamiński implemented several changes, including
organizing public debates with outside historians to counter the charge
of isolationism and has suggested refocusing on victims as opposed to
agents.
Jarosław Szarek
Jarosław Szarek
On 22 July 2016 Jarosław Szarek was appointed to head IPN. He dismissed Krzysztof Persak, co-author of the 2002 two-volume IPN study on the Jedwabne pogrom. In subsequent months, IPN featured in media headlines for releasing controversial documents, including some relating to Lech Wałęsa, for memory politics conducted in schools, for efforts to change Communist street names, and for legislation efforts. According to historian Idesbald Goddeeris, this marks a return of politics to the IPN.
Karol Nawrocki
Karol Nawrocki
On 23 July 2021 Karol Nawrocki was appointed to head IPN.
Public prosecutors in the IPN
Two components of the IPN are specialized parts of the Public
Prosecution Service of Poland, namely the Main Commission for the
Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation and the Lustration
Bureau. Each of these two components exercises its activities
autonomically from other components of the Institute and is headed by a
director who is ex officio Deputy Public Prosecutor General of Poland,
while role of the IPN Director is in their case purely accessory and
includes no powers regarding conducted investigations, being limited
only to providing supporting apparatus and, when vacated, presenting
candidates for the offices of the two directors to the Prosecutor
General who as their superior has the discretionary power to appoint or
reject them.
Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation
The Main Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Główna Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu)
is the oldest component of the IPN tracing its origins to 1945. It
investigates and prosecutes crimes committed on Polish soil against
Polish citizens as well as people of other citizenships wronged in the
country. War crimes which are not affected by statute of limitations according to Polish law include:
On 15 March 2007, an amendment to the Polish law regulating the IPN
(enacted on 18 December 2006) came into effect. The change gave the IPN
new lustration powers and expanded IPN's file access. The change was enacted by Law and Justice government in a series of legislative amendments during 2006 and the beginning of 2007. However, several articles of the 2006-7 amendments were held unconstitutional by Poland's Constitutional Court on 11 May 2007,
though the IPN's lustration power was still wider than under the
original 1997 law. These powers include loss of position for those who
submitted false lustration declarations as well as a lustration process
of candidates for senior office.
Other activities
Research
Archive at the former IPN headquarters at 28 Towarowa Street in Warsaw
The research conducted by IPN from December 2000 falls into four main topic areas:
Security Apparatus and Civil Resistance (with separate
sub-projects devoted to Political Processes and Prisoners 1944–1956,
Soviet Repressions and Crimes committed against Polish Citizens and
Martial Law: a Glance after Twenty Years);
Functioning of the repression apparatus (state security and
justice organs) – its organizational structure, cadres and relations
with other state authority and party organs
Activities of the repression apparatus directed against particular selected social groups and organizations
Structure and methods of functioning of the People's Poland security apparatus
Security apparatus in combat with the political and military underground 1944–1956
Activities of the security apparatus against political emigreés
Security apparatus in combat with the Church and freedom of belief
Authorities dealing with social crises and democratic opposition in
the years 1956–1989 f) List of those repressed and sentenced to death
Bibliography of the conspiracy, resistance and repression 1944–1989
War, Occupation and the Polish Underground;
deepening of knowledge about the structures and activities of the Polish Underground State
examination of the human fates in the territories occupied by the Soviet regime and of Poles displaced into the Soviet Union
assessment of sources on the living conditions under the Soviet and German Nazi occupations
evaluation of the state of research concerning the victims of the
war activities and extermination policy of the Soviet and German Nazi
occupiers
examining the Holocaust (Extermination of Jews) conducted by Nazis in the Polish territories
Response of the Polish Underground State to the extermination of Jewish population
The Polish Underground press and the Jewish question during the German Nazi occupation
Poles and Other Nations in the Years 1939–1989 (with a part on Poles and Ukrainians);
Poles and Ukrainians
Poles and Lithuanians
Poles and Germans
Communist authorities – Belarusians – Underground
Fate of Jewish people in the People's Republic of Poland
Gypsies in Poland
Peasants and the People's Authority 1944–1989 (on the situation of peasants and the rural policy in the years 1944–1989)
inhabitants of the rural areas during the creation of the totalitarian regime in Poland;
peasant life during the Sovietisation of Poland in the years 1948–1956;
attitudes of the inhabitants of rural areas towards the state-Church conflict in the years 1956–1970;
the role of peasants in the anti-Communist opposition of the 1970s and 1980s.
Education
The IPN's Public Education Office (BEP) vaguely defined role in the
IPN act is to inform society of Communist and Nazi crimes and
institutions. This vaguely defined role allowed Paweł Machcewicz, BEP's director in 2000, freedom to create a wide range of activities.
Researchers at the IPN conduct not only research but are required to take part in public outreach. BEP has published music CDs,
DVDs, and serials. It has founded "historical clubs" for debates and
lectures. It has also organized outdoor historical fairs, picnic, and
games.
The IPN Bulletin [pl] (Polish: Biuletyn IPN) is a high circulation popular-scientific journal, intended for lay readers and youth. Some 12,000 of 15,000 copies of the Bulletin are distributed free of charge to secondary schools in Poland, and the rest are sold in bookstores. The Bulletin
contains: popular-scientific and academic articles, polemics,
manifestos, appeals to readers, promotional material on the IPN and BEP,
denials and commentary on reports in the news, as well as multimedia
supplements.
Kolejka – a game about being forced to queue for basic household products during the Communist era.
Naming of monuments
In 2008, the chairman of the IPN wrote to local administrations,
calling for the addition of the word "German" before "Nazi" to all
monuments and tablets commemorating Germany's victims, stating that
"Nazis" is not always understood to relate specifically to Germans.
Several scenes of atrocities conducted by Germany were duly updated with
commemorative plaques
clearly indicating the nationality of the perpetrators. The IPN also
requested better documentation and commemoration of crimes that had been
perpetrated by the Soviet Union.
The Polish government also asked UNESCO
to officially change the name "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" to "Former
Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau", to clarify that the
camp had been built and operated by Nazi Germany. In 2007, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee changed the camp's name to "Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945)." Previously some German media, including Der Spiegel, had called the camp "Polish".
According to Georges Mink [fr],
common criticisms of the IPN include its dominance in the Polish
research field, which is guaranteed by a budget that far supersedes that
of any similar academic institution; the "thematic monotony ... of
micro-historical studies ... of no real scientific interest" of its
research; its focus on "martyrology"; and various criticisms of methodology and ethics. Some of these criticisms have been addressed by Director Łukasz Kamiński
during his tenure and who according to Mink "has made significant
changes"; however, Minsk, writing in 2017, was also concerned with the
recent administrative and personnel changes in IPN, including the
election of Jarosław Szarek as director, which he posits are likely to result in further the politicization of the IPN.
According to Valentin Behr, IPN research into the Communist era is
valuable, positing that "the resources at its disposal have made it
unrivalled as a research centre in the academic world"; at the same
time, he said that the research is mostly focused on the era's negative
aspects, and that it "is far from producing a critical approach to
history, one that asks its own questions and is methodologically
pluralistic." He added that in recent years that problem is being
ameliorated as the IPN's work "has somewhat diversified as its
administration has taken note of criticism on the part of academics."
According to Robert Traba,
"under the ... IPN, tasks related to the 'national politics of memory'
were – unfortunately – merged with the mission of independent academic
research. In the public mind, there could be only one message flowing
from the institute's name: memory and history as a science are one. The
problem is that nothing could be further from the truth, and nothing
could be more misleading. What the IPN’s message presents, in fact, is
the danger that Polish history will be grossly over-simplified."
Traba states that "at the heart of debate today is a confrontation
between those who support traditional methods and categories of
research, and those who support newly defined methods and categories.
... Broadening the research perspective means the enrichment of the
historian's instrumentarium.'" He puts the IPN research, in a broad
sense, in the former; he states that "[a] solid, workshop-oriented,
traditional, and positivist historiography ... which defends itself by
the integrity of its analysis and its diversified source base" but
criticizes its approach for leading to a "falsely conceived mission to
find 'objective truth' at the expense of 'serious study of event
history', and a 'simplified claim that only 'secret' sources, not
accessible to ordinary mortals', can lead to that objective truth."
Traba quotes historian Wiktoria Śliwowska,
who wrote: "The historian must strive not only to reconstruct a given
reality, but also to understand the background of events, the
circumstances in which people acted. It is easy to condemn, but
difficult to understand a complicated past. ... [Meanwhile, in the IPN]
thick volumes are being produced, into which are being thrown, with no
real consideration, further evidence in criminating various persons now
deceased (and therefore not able to defend themselves), and elderly
people still alive – known and unknown."
Traba posits that "there is ... a need for genuine debate that does not
revolve around [the files] in the IPN archives, 'lustration,' or
short-term and politically inspired discussions designed to establish
the 'only real' truth", and suggests that adopting varied perspectives
and diverse methodologies might contribute to such debate.
During PiS's control of the government between 2005 and 2007, the
IPN was the focus of heated public controversies, in particular in
regard to the pasts of Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa and PZPR secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski. As a result, the IPN has been referred to as "a political institution at the centre of 'memory games'".
In 2018, the IPN hired Tomasz Greniuch, a historian who in his youth was associated with a far-right group.
When he was promoted to a regional director of the Wrocław branch in
February 2021, his past came to media attention and resulted in
criticism of Greniuch and IPN. Greniuch issued an apology for his past
behavior and resigned within weeks.
Organizational and methodological concerns
Valentin Behr writes that the IPN is most "concerned with the
production of an official narrative about Poland's recent past" and
therefore lacks innovation in its research, while noting that situation
is being remedied under recent leadership. He writes that the IPN "has
mainly taken in historians from the fringes of the academic field" who
were either unable to obtain a prominent academic position or
ideologically drawn to the IPN's approach, and that "in the academic
field, being an 'IPN historian' can be a stigma"; Behr explains this by
pointing to a generational divide in Polish academia, visible when
comparing IPN to other Polish research outlets, and claims: "Hiring
young historians was done deliberately to give the IPN greater autonomy
from the academic world, considered as too leftist to describe the dark
sides of the communist regime." He says that the IPN has created
opportunities for many history specialists who can carry dedicated
research there without the need for an appointment at another
institution, and for training young historians, noting that "the IPN is
now the leading employer of young PhD students and PhDs in history
specialized in contemporary history, ahead of Polish universities".
Historian Dariusz Stola
states that the IPN is very bureaucratic in nature, comparing it to a
"regular continental European bureaucracy, with usual deficiencies of
its kind", and posits that in this aspect the IPN resembles the former
Communist institutions it is supposed to deal with, equally
"bureaucratic, centralist, heavy, inclined to extensive growth and
quantity rather than quality of production".
An incident which caused controversy involved the "Wildstein list",
a partial list of persons who allegedly worked for the communist-era
Polish intelligence service, copied in 2004 from IPN archives (without
IPN permission) by journalist Bronisław Wildstein
and published on the Internet in 2005. The list gained much attention
in Polish media and politics, and IPN security procedures and handling
of the matter came under criticism.
The term white savior is a critical description of a white person who is depicted as liberating, rescuing or uplifting non-white people; it is critical in the sense that it describes a pattern in which people of color in economically under-developed nations that are majority non-white are denied agency and are seen as passive recipients of white benevolence. The role is considered a modern-day version of what is expressed in the poem The White Man's Burden (1899) by Rudyard Kipling. The term has been associated with Africa, and certain characters in film and television have been critiqued as white savior figures. Writer Teju Cole combined the term with "industrial complex" (derived from military–industrial complex and similarly applied elsewhere) to coin "White Savior Industrial Complex".
Usage
The concept of the white savior originates from the poem "The White Man's Burden" (1899) by Rudyard Kipling. Its original usage was in the context of the Philippines, but the term has since become associated primarily with Africa, as well as with other regions of the world.
Association with Africa
Africa has a history of slavery and of colonization. Damian Zane of BBC News
said due to the history, Africans find the "white savior" attitude to
help them "deeply patronising and offensive". Zane said, "Some argue
that aid can be counter-productive, as it means African countries will
continue to rely on outside help." Bhakti Shringarpure, writing for The Guardian,
said, "Westerners trying to help poor, suffering countries have often
been accused of having a 'white saviour complex': a term tied up in
colonial history where Europeans descended to 'civilise' the African
continent." The Washington Post's Karen Attiah said the white savior framework in Africa "follows the venerable tradition" of the novella Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad and that the tradition included the film Machine Gun Preacher (2011), the public relations campaign related to the documentary Kony 2012 (2012), and the writings of journalist Nicholas Kristof.
For example, actor and producer Louise Linton wrote a memoir about her gap year in Zambia, In Congo's Shadow, and wrote an article for The Telegraph, "How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare", to promote the book. Michael Schaub of Los Angeles Times
said, "The reaction to Linton's article was swift and negative,
accusing her of using clichés and misrepresentations... Several people
have described Linton's memoir as a 'white savior' fantasy." Zambians and other Africans negatively criticized the article on social media. Attiah said the popular Instagram account "BarbieSavior" was inspired by the backlash to Linton's words. Special Broadcasting Service's Amal Awad said the Instagram account parodied "a reckless trend" of voluntourism
(volunteering and touring) in which "'white saviours' use the less
fortunate like props in their social media profiles". Awad said the
interest in volunteering encouraged a business model that leverages a
country's existing social issues and charges tourists for volunteering
to be a "saviour".
Baaz, Gondola, Marijnen, and Verweijen, writing in Foreign Affairs, were critical of the "white savior complex" in the 2014 documentary Virunga, which features the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Virunga National Park and the conservation work of its park rangers.
They said, "The movie features endless footage of a park guard hugging
and playing with the gorillas, evoking the notion of the 'noble savage'
who is close to nature, honest and naive, and dependent on the white man
for his salvation. Rarely do we see the Congolese exercising political
agency, even though there are numerous civil society activists in the
region, often working at great personal risk."
For decades, the British charity Comic Relief
sent white celebrities to African countries in order to film their
emotional reactions to impoverished conditions as part of asking the
public for money. In 2020, they suspended the practice after criticism
that it perpetuated white-savior stereotypes. One of the key critics was British Labour Party politician David Lammy, who in 2019 criticized the charity for "white savior" media in its African campaign. Reuters
reported, "Lammy, who is of Guyanese descent, said online photos...
evoked negative stereotypes about Africa and its reliance on Western
white people for help." The charity and its presenter Stacey Dooley initially argued against the criticism. The Uganda-based campaign group No White Saviors
said of the controversy, "There are levels to the white savior complex.
You can mean well, do some good along the way and actively be
perpetuating the (white savior complex)." NBC News
said No White Saviors "tries to raise awareness about the negative
impact many 'mainly white' aid workers have had on 'black and brown
communities in the name of charity or mission work'".
Association with the Middle East
The term has been used to refer to white Americans and Europeans that independently partake or assist in Middle Eastern wars. T. E. Lawrence,
"Lawrence of Arabia", can be seen as the prototypical white savior
figure. Similar accusations have been made against white European men
that traveled to fight alongside pro-democracy rebels in the Syrian civil war.
Protection of Muslim women
White feminists are sometimes categorized as white saviors when supporting causes relating to the protection of Muslim women, especially as the implication of Muslim men as oppressors is seen as Islamophobic. The case of Malala Yousafzai has been criticized as advancing white saviorism in Pakistan, due to her high approval in the West and her life having been saved by white doctors.
In film, the white savior is a cinematic trope in which a white character rescues people of color
from their plight. The white savior is portrayed as messianic and often
learns something about themselves in the process of rescuing. The trope reflects how media represents race relations by racializing concepts like morality as identifiable with white people over nonwhite people. White saviors are often male and are sometimes out of place in their own society until they lead minorities or foreigners. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness
labels the stories as fantasies that "are essentially grandiose,
exhibitionistic, and narcissistic". Types of stories include white
travels to "exotic" Asian locations, white defense against racism in the
American South, or white protagonists having "racially diverse" helpers.
The white lead character is often delegated the role of racial
leader in films, taking it upon themselves to save non-white minorities
and immigrants from their struggles. The 2011 film The Help
is about the mistreatment of Black Americans but offers only a white
perspective. The movie, based on a book by a white author, was directed
by a white person.
The primary white character is portrayed as a heroine for empowering
people of color, though often in minuscule ways. Similar criticisms can
be made of popular films like Dangerous Minds, The Blind Side, and Remember the Titans.
Appearance in television
Stephanie Greco Larson, writing in Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and Entertainment, said Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986) and Webster
(1983–1987) were "shows in which white families adopt black children"
and represented versions of "the white man's burden theme on
television".
Robin R. Means Coleman said, "In these comedies, Black children are
rescued from their dysfunctional families or communities by Whites." In particular, Diff'rent Strokes featured the white millionaire character Philip Drummond. Film historian Donald Bogle said, "The millionaire Drummond becomes a great white father figure,
able to provide the material comforts (as well as the subliminal
emotional ones) and the cultural milieu that the Black community
supposedly could never hope to match." Dustin Tahmahkera writes that
Coleman labeled Drummond a "white savior" type who uses "his
representational power to save the day by determining a conflict
resolution that appeases all parties" including the indigenous
representative Longwalker in the episode "Burial Ground". Tahmahkera
also said a 1985 episode of Punky Brewster
featured the girl protagonist telling a ghost story about her alter-ego
Princess Moon helping "ancient Indians [who] suddenly appear... as cave
dwellers who need a white savior... to defeat an evil spirit and help
keep their Last of the Dogmen-like secret existence intact."
Larson said, "Inner-city schools have been the site of white
man's burden dramas on television for decades" with TV series featuring
white savior teachers. Larson identified the following series with such
teachers: Room 222 (1969–1974), Welcome Back, Kotter (1975–1979), The White Shadow (1978–1981), and Boston Public (2000–2004). Larson said while Room 222 and Boston Public
also had black teachers that "challenge the assumption that blacks are
inherently inferior... these shows continue to avoid laying blame on
social institutions for the status of blacks by showing the success of
the individual black teachers."
Appearance in comic books
The Marvel Comics character Iron Fist has been criticized as a white savior character. When the character was adapted in the TV series Iron Fist (2017–2018), The New York Times reported before the show premiered that the casting had received criticism for not changing the character to be Asian-American. The newspaper quoted arguments put forward by Keith Chow, editor-in-chief of The Nerds of Color pop culture blog, "If you’re going to have all these trappings of Orientalism on top of a white savior trope, why not upend both of those things by casting an Asian-American to play the role?" Iron Fist actor Finn Jones denied that Danny Rand would be a white savior figure and said that the series would address critics' concerns. In 2021, Marvel responded by having Rand retire the mantle and introducing a Chinese successor, Lin Lie.
Celebrity humanitarianism and adoption
High-profile Hollywoodcelebrities
have taken on humanitarian roles, and also been criticized for
embodying the white savior complex, particularly those who have adopted
children from economically underdeveloped environment or countries, or
have undertaken publicized trips to underdeveloped countries. Figures
such as Bono, Bob Geldof, George Clooney, Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Bill Gates and Lady Gaga have become associated with initiatives to alleviate poverty, combat conflict, and support disaster-struck areas in Africa, South Sudan, Malawi, and Haiti respectively.
"White Savior Industrial Complex"
Writer Teju Cole, who coined the term "White Savior Industrial Complex"
Writer Teju Cole coined the term "White Savior Industrial Complex" following the release of the documentary Kony 2012 in March 2012, extrapolating the term in a seven-part response on Twitter. He later wrote an article for The Atlantic about the term.
From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest
growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality.
The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
This world exists simply to satisfy the needs--including, importantly, the sentimental needs--of white people and Oprah.
The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is
about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5
million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a
wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
Cole's response became a viral phenomenon, and The Guardian's Bhakti Shringarpure reflected on the supportive Internet response to the Kony 2012
political campaign, "With the prevalence of campaigns, apps and games
calling on us to help without really putting ourselves out, it seems
that the white saviour idea is still alive and well – but now, the mode
is digital." Heather Laine Talley, writing in Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance,
said of the response to Cole coining the term, "The very idea of the
white savior industrial complex was met with both celebration and rage.
Cole was alternately described as a truth teller and as a racist."
Talley summarized Cole's response to his critics, "Ultimately, Cole
implores Western (white) do-gooders to rethink doing good in two ways.
First, own up to the motives that drive philanthropic interventions, so
that personal catharsis does not subsume the real need of others.
Second, consider the structural underpinnings and historical legacies
that together sustain the very infrastructure of the problems that
captivate our activist hearts."
Tim Engles, writing in Rhetorics of Whiteness: Postracial Hauntings in Popular Culture, Social Media, and Education,
concurred with Cole's assessment, "The lack of real-world efficacy of
their efforts, and the apparent unwillingness of most to go any further
than such limited and self-aggrandizing steps, suggests that mere
validation of white racial privilege was indeed the most significant
outcome."
In essence, Cole's concept of the "White Savior Industrial
Complex" refers explicitly to the damaging effects of white saviors who
prioritize a "big emotional experience" achieved through minor acts of
charity or activism over tackling larger issues like systematic
oppression and corruption that plague many nations around the world –
notably, issues that are often directly caused or perpetuated by the
United States.
1866 cartoon by Daumier, L’Equilibre Européen, representing the balance of power as soldiers of different nations teeter the earth on bayonets
The balance of power theory in international relations suggests that states may secure their survival by preventing any one state from gaining enough military power to dominate all others.
If one state becomes much stronger, the theory predicts it will take
advantage of its weaker neighbors, thereby driving them to unite in a
defensive coalition. Some realists
maintain that a balance-of-power system is more stable than one with a
dominant state, as aggression is unprofitable when there is equilibrium of power between rival coalitions.
When threatened, states may seek safety either by balancing, allying with others against the prevailing threat; or bandwagoning, aligning themselves with the threatening power. Other alliance tactics include buck-passing and chain-ganging. Realists have long debated how the polarity of a system impacts the choice of tactics; however, it is generally agreed that in bipolar systems, each great power has no choice but to directly confront the other.
Along with debates between realists about the prevalence of balancing
in alliance patterns, other schools of international relations, such as constructivists,
are also critical of the balance of power theory, disputing core
realist assumptions regarding the international system and the behavior
of states.
The principle involved in preserving the balance of power as a conscious goal of foreign policy, as David Hume pointed out in his Essay on the Balance of Power, is as old as history, and was used by Greeks such as Thucydides both as political theorists and as practical statesmen. A 2018 study in International Studies Quarterly
confirmed that "the speeches of the Corinthians from prior to the
Persian Wars to the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War reveal an
enduring thesis of their foreign policy: that imperial ambitions and
leveling tendencies, such as those of Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, should be countered in order to prevent a tyrant city from emerging within the society of Greek city-states."
It resurfaced among the Renaissance Italian city-states in the 15th century. Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence, were the first rulers to actively pursue such a policy, with the Italic League, though historians have generally attributed the innovation to the Medici rulers of Florence. Discussion of Florence's policy can be found in De Bello Italico, by Bernardo Rucellai, a Medici son-in-law. This was a history of the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII of France, and introduced the phrase balance of power to historical analysis.
Internationalism, which was the dominant direction of European international relations prior to the Peace of Westphalia,
gave way to the doctrine of the balance of power. While the balance of
power was not explicitly mentioned in the Peace of Westphalia, it was
referenced during the negotiations. Subsequent behavior by states reflected the balance of power. In the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the doctrine was explicitly referenced multiple times.
It was not until the beginning of the 17th century, when Grotius
and his successors developed the idea of international law, that the
balance of power was formulated as a fundamental principle of diplomacy,
although this formulation must have reflected existing practices. In
accordance with this new discipline, the European states formed a sort
of federal community,
the fundamental condition of which was the preservation of a balance of
power, i.e., such a disposition of things that no one state, or
potentate, should be able absolutely to predominate and prescribe laws
to the rest. And, since all were equally interested in this settlement,
it was held to be the interest, the right, and the duty
of every power to interfere, even by force of arms, when any of the
conditions of this settlement were infringed upon, or assailed by, any
other member of the community.
This balance-of-power principle, once formulated, became an axiom of political science. Fénelon, in his Instructions, impressed the axiom upon the young French Dauphin. Frederick the Great, in his Anti-Machiavel, proclaimed the principle to the world. In 1806, Friedrich von Gentz re-stated it with admirable clarity, in Fragments on the Balance of Power. The principle formed the basis of the coalitions against Louis XIV and Napoleon, and the occasion (or excuse) for most of the European wars between the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the Congress of Vienna (1814). It was especially championed by Great Britain, even up to World War I, as it sought to prevent a European land power from rivaling its naval supremacy.
During the greater part of the 19th century, the series of national
upheavals which remodeled the map of Europe obscured the balance of
power. Yet, it underlaid all the efforts of diplomacy to tame the forces
of nationalism let loose by the French Revolution.
In the revolution's aftermath, with the restoration of comparative
calm, the principle once more emerged as the operative motive for the
various political alliances, of which the ostensible object was the
preservation of peace. Regarding the era 1848–1914, English diplomatic historian A.J.P. Taylor argued:
Europe
has known almost as much peace as war; and it has owed these periods of
peace to the Balance of Power. No one state has ever been strong enough
to eat up all the rest, and the mutual jealousy of the Great Powers has
preserved even the small states, which could not have preserved
themselves.
Regarding the last quarter-century of the period outlined by Taylor, his American colleague, diplomatic historian Edward Mead Earle,
argued: "During the quarter-century beginning about 1890, Europe and
the Far East lived under a precarious balance of power with the result …
that the world moved crazily from one crisis to another and finally to
catastrophe". Earle concludes: "The balance of power may well land us
all in crematory". The balance of power theory prepared catastrophe in 1939 as in 1914, wrote Clarence Streit in his famous Union Now. There is "no more sterile, illusory, fantastic, exploded and explosive peace policy than the balance of power."
In 1953, Ernst B. Haas
criticized balance of power theory, arguing that international
relations works that used the concept were plagued with "philological,
semantic, and theoretical confusion."
Since 1945, the arguments of Streit and Earle has prevailed over
that of Taylor. Atomic scientists launched an all-out attack on the
balance-of-power concept:
The balance-of-power system is discredited today. References to it, even
by professional historians and international lawyers, commonly imply
either that it was a system for war which repeatedly failed or that it
was a system for making war which often succeeded in its purpose …
During the period of its dominance as a European system, say, 1648 to
1918, its record in preventing war was certainly not striking. Indeed,
it probably was itself responsible for starting more wars than it
prevented.
Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
interpreted the core of the concept of Europe after 1945 as the
rejection of the European balance-of-power principle and the hegemonic
ambitions of individual states that had emerged following the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648: "European integration was the response to centuries of a
precarious balance of powers on this continent which again and again
resulted in terrible hegemonic wars and culminated in the two World Wars
between 1914 and 1945." Former US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney
expressed the same for Europe and other democracies: "It is not in our
interest or those of the other democracies to return to earlier periods
in which multiple military powers balanced one against another in what
passed for security structures, while regional, or even global peace
hung in the balance." NATO Secretary General, Manfred Wörner, outlined the European alternative at the end of the Cold War:
Europe has a basic choice: either it lapses back into the old power
politics and balance of power diplomacy of past centuries or it moves
ahead along the road leading to a new order of peace and freedom,
whether this be based on multinational or supranational cooperation. Our
choice is clear: we are going forward.
According to historian Sverre Bagge,
a balance of power logic may have prevented unification of the three
Scandinavian kingdoms (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), as balancing
coalitions formed to prevent one kingdom from conquering the other
kingdoms.
England
It
has been argued by historians that, in the sixteenth century, England
came to pursue a foreign policy which would preserve the equilibrium
between Spain and France, which evolved into a balance-of-power policy:
The continental policy of England
[after 1525] was fixed. It was to be pacific, mediating European
affairs, favorable to a balance which should prevent any power from
having a hegemony on the continent or controlling the Channel coasts.
The naval security of England and the balance of power in Europe were
the two great political principles which appeared in the reign of Henry VIII and which, pursued unwaveringly, were to create the greatness of England.
In 1579, the first English translation of Francesco Guicciardini's Storia d'Italia ("History of Italy") popularised the Italian balance of power theory in England. This translation was dedicated to Elizabeth I of England
and claimed that "God has put into your hand the balance of power and
justice, to poise and counterpoise at your will the actions and counsels
of all the Christian kings of your time".
Thomas Carlyle
referred to statesmen "in shadow-hunting, shadow-hunted hour ...
looking with intense anxiety into a certain spectral something the call
the Balance of Power."
Statesman Richard Cobden
labeled the balance of power "a chimera" due to its unclear meaning:
"It is not a fallacy, a mistake, an imposture—it is an undescribed,
indescribable, incomprehensible nothing." The only point on which
writers on the balance of power agree "is in the fundamental delusion
that such a system was ever acceded to by the nations of Europe." They
imply long, uninterrupted, peaceful and prosperous co-existence.
Instead, for centuries "Europe has (with only just sufficient intervals
to enable the combatants to recruit their wasted energies) been one vast
and continued battle-field…" He criticized Lord Bacon for his adherence to the balance of power as a universal rule:
As for the rule of Lord Bacon: were the great enemy of mankind
himself to summon a council, to devise a law of nations which should
convert this fair earth, with all its capacity for life, enjoyment, and
goodness, into vast theater of death and misery, more dismal than his
own Pandemonium,
the very words of the philosopher would compose that law! It would
reduce us even below the level of animals… [T]his rule would, if acted
upon universally, plunged us into a war of annihilation … nor would the
leveling strife cease until either the rule were abrogated, or mankind
had been reduced to the only pristine possessions—teeth and nails!
[Under such grounds] the question of the balance of power might be
dismissed from further considerations.
Sir Esme Howard
wrote that England adopted the balance of power as "a cornerstone of
English policy, unconsciously during the sixteenth, subconsciously
during the seventeenth, and consciously during the eighteenth,
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, because for England it represented
the only plan of preserving her own independence, political and
economic". With the coming of World War II, however, Edward Carr found that today the balance of power badly preserves the independence of England:
The size of the units which count effectively in international politics
grows steadily larger. There is no longer room in Europe today for those
three or four important and strong countries whose more or less equal
rivalries enabled Great Britain in the past to secure herself through
the policy of the balance of power. Much nonsense has been talked in
recent years about the balance of power. But the confusion of thought
resulting from the attempt to brand it as a morally reprehensive policy
has been less serious than the confusion resulting from the assumption
that it is a policy which can be applied at all times and in all
circumstances. The principal military reason why … is that the balance
of power in Europe has hopelessly broken down... The possibility of
restoring the balance did not exist after 1919; and British policy,
based on a false premise, ended in disaster.
Churchill is a man with an out-of-date political idea—that of the
European balance of power. It no longer belongs to the sphere of
realities. And yet it's because of this superstition that Churchill
stirred England up to war.
On another occasion he added: Without the Wehrmacht,
a "wave would have swept over Europe that would have taken no care of
the ridiculous British idea of the balance of power in Europe in all its
banality and stupid tradition—once and for all."
In fact, Churchill shortly adopted a similar view: Our Russian
friends and Allies, he spoke in 1946, most admire strength and least
respect military weakness. "For that reason the old doctrine of a
balance of power is unsound. We cannot afford … to work on narrow
margins, offering temptations to a trial of strength." If the Western
Democracies do not stand together "then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm
us all." If, however, "the population of the English-speaking
Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such
co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in
science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering,
precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or
adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of
security."
Historical evidence against balance of power theory
A
2021 assessment by Morten Skumsrud Andersen and William C. Wohlforth
concluded that "balance of power is not a universal empirical law" and
that it does not merit explanatory precedence" in international
relations research.
In an attempt to disprove the balance of power theory, some
realists have pointed to cases in international systems other than
modern Europe where balancing failed and a hegemon arose. A
collaboration between nine scholars (William Wohlforth, Richard Little, Stuart J. Kaufman, David Kang, Charles A. Jones, Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, Arthur Eckstein, Daniel Deudney, and William L. Brenner) pointed to the failure of state-like units to balance against Assyria in the first millennium BCE; the Hellenic successor states of Alexander the Great to balance against Rome; the Warring States to balance against the Qin dynasty in ancient China and five other cases. This cross-cultural research concludes:
Given that the version of the theory we are testing is universalistic in
its claims – that 'hegemony leads to balance … through all of the
centuries we can contemplate' – case selection is unimportant. Any
significant counterexample falsifies the universal claim; eight such
examples demolish it.
Wohlforth et al. state that systemic hegemony is likely under two
historically common conditions: First when the rising hegemon develops
the ability to incorporate and effectively administer conquered
territories. And second, when the boundaries of the international system
remain stable, and no new major powers emerge from outside the system.
When the leading power can administer conquests effectively so they add
to its power and when the system's borders are rigid, the probability of
hegemony is high.
The argument of universal reproduction of anarchy can be correct in the
European context, "whereas a systematic survey of world history reveals
that multipolarity has frequently given way to unipolarity or
hegemony." Henry Kissinger,
Historian by profession, noted that "theories of the balance of power
often leave the impression that it is the natural form of international
relations. In fact, balance-of-power systems have existed only rarely in
history." Yet based on these rare occurrences, many realists "elevate a
fact of life … into a guiding principle of world order." Earlier, political scientist Martin Wight had drawn a conclusion with unambiguous implication for the modern world:
Most states systems have ended in the universal empire, which has
swallowed all the states of the system. The examples are so abundant
that we must ask two questions: Is there any states system which has not
led fairly directly to the establishment of a world empire? Does the
evidence rather suggest that we should expect any states system to
culminate in this way? …It might be argued that every state system can
only maintain its existence on the balance of power, that the later is
inherently unstable, and that sooner or later its tensions and conflicts
will be resolved into a monopoly of power.
The predominance of the balance of power in the practice of statesmen
for three centuries … should not obscure the fact that throughout world
history periods dominated by the balance-of-power policies have not been
the rule. The balance of power scarcely existed anywhere as a conscious
principle of international politics before 1500…
Evoking examples of the ancient Chinese and Roman civilizations, Quincy Wright added:
Balance of power systems have in the past tended, through the process of
conquest of lesser states by greater states, towards reduction in the
number of states involved, and towards less frequent but more
devastating wars, until eventually a universal empire has been
established through the conquest by one of all those remaining.
The post-Cold War period represents an anomaly to the balance of power theory too. Rousseau
defined the theoretical limit how far balance of power can be altered:
"Will it be supposed that two or three potentates might enter into an
agreement to subdue the rest? Be it so. These three potentates, whoever
they may be, will not possess half the power of all Europe."
"Within two-and-a-half centuries, only one potentate possessed half the
power of all the world, including Europe. In 2008, US military
expenditures, including supplemental spending, exceeded those of the
rest of the world combined."
Since 2000, the founder of Neorealism, Kenneth Waltz, confessed that "the present condition of international politics is unnatural." "Clearly something has changed."
Wohlforth, Little and Kaufman undertook the above-mentioned historical
study after they had coped with what they called the "puzzle" of the
unipolar stability. Elsewhere, Richard Little wrote: Events since the
end of the Cold War "create a potential anomaly" for the theory because
the outcome has "left the United States as the sole superpower in a
unipolar world ... A major puzzle for realists ... is the fact that
unipolarity has not provoked a global alarm to restore a balance of
power." The same anomaly stressed seventeen other experts on alliances, Stephen Walt, Randall Schweller, Xiaoyu Pu, John Ikenberry, Robert Pape, T. V. Paul, Jack S. Levy, William R. Thompson, John Lewis Gaddis, David A. Lake, Campbell Craig, Fareed Zakaria, John M., Owen, Michael Mastanduno, Thomas S. Mowle, David H. Sacko and Terry Narramore:
To date, at least, there is little sign of a serious effort to forge a
meaningful anti-American alliance ... From the traditional perspective
of balance-of-power theory, this situation is surely an anomaly. Power
in the international system is about as unbalanced as it has ever been,
yet balancing tendencies are remarkably mild. It is possible to find
them, but one has to squint pretty hard to do it.
[N]o peer competitor has yet emerged more than a decade after the end of
US-Soviet bipolarity to balance against the United States. Contrary to
realist predictions, unipolarity has not provided the global alarm to
restore a balance of power.
Resistance has in fact appeared and may be growing. But it is remarkable
that despite the sharp shifts in the distribution of power, the other
great powers have not yet responded in a way anticipated by
balance-of-power theory.
Historically, major powers have rarely balanced against the United
States and not at all since the 1990s when it has become the sole
superpower.
Traditional balance of power theory … fails to explain state behavior in
the post-Cold War era. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States
has been expanding its economic and political power. More recently, it
has begun to engage in increasingly unilateralist military policy… [Y]et
despite these growing material capabilities, major powers such as
China, France, Germany, India, and Russia have not responded with
significant increases in their defense spending. Nor have they formed
military coalitions to countervail US power, as the traditional balance
of power theory would predict.
The end of the Cold War and the emergence of the "unipolar moment" have
generated considerable debate about how to explain the absence of a
great-power balancing coalition against the United States… That the
United States, which is generally regarded as the "greatest superpower
ever", has not provoked such a balancing coalition is widely regarded as
a puzzle for the balance of power theory.
Whether or not realists got the Cold War right, they have most certainly
got the warm peace wrong. A decade after the Berlin Wall collapsed…
their dark vision of the future has not come to pass. The United States
remains the world’s only superpower; unipolarity was not a fleeting
moment ... Most importantly, despite its continued predominance and
political activism, and the first rumbling of international opposition
in response to missteps in Kosovo, no coalition has emerged to balance
against it … [T]he United States today defies the supposedly immutable
laws of realpolitik".
The persistence of American unipolar predominance in the international
system since the end of the Cold War has caused a rupture in the
American school of Realist … theory ... Yet the ongoing failure of
potential rivals to the US, such as China, Russia, or the EU to develop
military capabilities that come anywhere close to those of the US seems
to have defied this prediction. Despite the apparently radical imbalance
of the international political system, smaller states are not trying to
build up their military power to match that of the US or forming formal
alliance systems to oppose it… The absence of balancing against the US
constitutes a serious anomaly for neorealist theory.
Fareed Zakaria asks, "Why is no one ganging up against the United States?" And John Ikenberry and John M. Owen ask the same question. Prominent Historian of the Cold War, John Lewis Gaddis,
poses a more general question and replies: Do the weak always unite
against the strong? "In theory, yes, but in practice and in history, not
necessarily." One of the issues the discipline of political science
"has been wrestling with recently is why there is still no anti-American
coalition despite the overwhelming dominance of the United States since
the end of the Cold War."
French or Chinese officials publicly denounce "hyperpower" and aspire
for "multipolarity" but refrain from forming a counterbalancing
coalition. "Rhetorically, leaders and public want the United States to be balanced" but "we find very little balancing." French academic Michel Winock said: "Before we could say we were on American side. Not Now. There is no counterbalance." Two American Neoconservative thinkers, Robert Kagan and William Kristol, completely agree: "Today’s international system is built not around a balance of power but around American hegemony."
Christopher Layne published two articles on the post-Cold War case, "The Unipolar Illusion…" (1993) and "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited" (2006).
The former predicted imminent anti-American balancing as the balance of
power theorists expected; the latter explains "why balance of power
theorists got it wrong."
Finally, Dall'Agnol
analyzes, through a critical bias, the implications of unipolarity for
balancing behavior. In order to do so, he discusses the dynamics of
balance of power theory, assumed to be inoperative in the post-Cold War
period by main academic debates over unipolarity: i) unipolar stability;
ii) balance of threats; iii) soft balancing; iv) liberal
institutionalism. He then argues that these approaches, including the
unipolar illusion view, tied to the balance of power theory,
overestimate the effects of unipolarity on balancing behavior of other
states. Concluding that balance of power dynamics, especially those of
hard balancing, are still observed in the post-Cold War era, he
criticizes two main conclusions from the literature: i) that balancing
became inoperative and; ii) that the only available strategies to other
states are soft balancing and bandwagoning. In sum, this conclusion has
directly implication on strategies available both to the United States
and to its main competitors.
The balance of power theory is a core tenet of both classical and neorealist theory and seeks to explain alliance formation. Due to the neorealist idea of anarchism
as a result of the international system, states must ensure their
survival through maintaining or increasing their power in a self-help
world. With no authority above the state to come to its rescue in the
event of an attack by a hegemon, states attempt to prevent a potential hegemon from arising by balancing against it.
According to Kenneth Waltz,
founder of neorealism, "balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two,
and only two requirements are met: that the order be anarchic and that
it be populated by units wishing to survive".
They can do this either through "internal balancing" , where a state
uses internal efforts such as moving to increase economic capability,
developing clever strategies and increasing military strength,
or through "external balancing", which occurs when states take external
measures to increase their security by forming allies. As states are
assumed to be skeptical of the intentions of other states, neorealists
primarily hold that states balance through "self-help", as they expand
their military capabilities and copy military innovations of
competitors.
States happy with their place in the system are known as "status
quo" states, while those seeking to alter the balance of power in their
favor are generally referred to as "revisionist states" and aspire for
hegemony, thus repairing the balance.
States choose to balance for two reasons. First, they place their
survival at risk if they fail to curb a potential hegemon before it
becomes too strong; to ally with the dominant power means placing one's
trust in its continued benevolence. Secondly, joining the weaker side
increases the likelihood that the new member will be influential within
the alliance.
States choose to bandwagon because it may be a form of appeasement
as the bandwagoner may hope to avoid an attack by diverting it
elsewhere—a defensive reason—or because it may align with the dominant
side in wartime to share the spoils of victory—an offensive reason.
Realists claim that balancing is when states ally against the
prevailing threat and results in a more secure world whereas in a
bandwagoning world security is scarce as rising hegemons are not kept in
check.
With bandwagoning, the threatened state abandons hope of preventing the
aggressor from gaining power at its expense and instead joins forces
with its dangerous foe to get at least some small portion of the spoils
of war.
The weaker the state the more likely it is to bandwagon than to
balance as they do little to affect the outcome and thus must choose the
winning side. Strong states may change a losing side into a winning
side and thus are more likely to balance. States will be tempted to
bandwagon when allies are unavailable, however excessive confidence in
allied support encourages weak states to free ride relying on the
efforts of others to provide security. Since bandwagoning "requires
placing trust in the aggressors continued forbearance" some realists
believe balancing is preferred to bandwagoning.
According to Stephen Walt, states are more likely to balance in
peacetime but if they are on the losing side of a war they may defect
and bandwagon in the hopes that they will "share the fruits of victory".
Chain-ganging occurs when a state sees its own security tied to the security of its alliance partner.
It chains itself by deeming any attack on its ally the equivalent of an
attack on itself. That is another aspect of the balance of power
theory, whereby the smaller states could drag their chained states into
wars that they have no desire to fight. A key example was the
chain-ganging between states prior to World War I, dragging most of Europe to war over a dispute between the relatively major power of Austria-Hungary and the minor power of Serbia.
Thus, states "may chain themselves unconditionally to reckless allies
whose survival is seen to be indispensable to the maintenance of the
balance".
Balancing and buck passing are the main strategies for preserving the
balance of power and preventing a potential hegemon's rise.
Instead of balancing against an aggressor, some states instead choose
to "pass the buck" whereby instead of taking action to prevent a
potential rise, it will pass the responsibility on to another state. John Mearsheimer, a prominent offensive realist,
claims that threatened states can take four measures to facilitate buck
passing, including: seeking good diplomatic relations with the
aggressor in the hope that it will divert its attention to the
"buck-catcher"; maintaining cool relations with the buck-catcher so as
not to get dragged into the war with the buck-catcher and as a result
possibly increase positive relations with the aggressor; increasing
military strength to deter the aggressive state and help it focus on the
buck-catcher; and facilitating the growth in power of the intended
buck-catcher.
In the case that a state is an enemy with both the aggressor and the intended buck-catcher, a buck-passer can implement a bait and bleed strategy whereby the state causes two rivals to engage in a protracted war while the baiter remains on the sideline. This form of buck passing enables the state to increase in relative strength at the expense of the two rivals. Bloodletting,
a further variant whereby a state does what it can to increase the cost
duration of the conflict can further increase the buck-passer's
relative power.
Thus, threatened states usually prefer buck-passing to balancing as the
buck-passer avoids the costs of fighting the aggressor in the event of
war.
Some realists believe there is a strong tendency to buck-pass or free-ride
within balancing coalitions themselves, usually leaving their alliance
partners to assume the heavy burden of wearing down the enemy, leaving
the free-riders military fresh to win the final battles of the war and
thus be in a better position to dictate the peace, such as the UK's
light involvement in the early stages of World War I.
Likewise, buck-passers can enter wars late after both sides have been
worn down, allowing the buck-passer to dominate the post-war world.
A potential drawback of the strategy occurs if the buck-catcher
fails to check the aggressor, as the buck-passer will be in a much more
vulnerable situation. Proponents of the theory point to the Soviet Union's role in World War II whereby it passed the buck to the UK and France through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. After eliminating France the Germans had no Western front to divide their forces, allowing them to concentrate their forces against the USSR.
According to a 2015 study, "the diplomatic record yields almost
no examples of firm peacetime balancing coalitions over the past 200
years. When alliances have formed, great powers have generally doubted
the reliability of their allies and of their opponents' allies."
Defensive realists emphasize that if any state becomes too powerful,
balancing will occur as other powers would build up their forces and
form a balancing coalition.
Because this resulting security dilemma would leave the aspiring
hegemon less secure, defensive realists maintain that it is in a state's
interest to maintain the status quo rather than maximize its power.
Offensive realists accept that threatened states usually balance
against dangerous foes, however, they maintain that balancing is often
inefficient and that this inefficiency provides opportunities for a
clever aggressor to take advantage of its adversaries. Buck passing,
rather than joining a balancing coalition, is another tactic offensive
realists point to when disputing the balance of power theory.
Offensive realists believe that internal balancing measures such
as increasing defense spending, implementing conscription, are only
effective to a certain extent as there are usually significant limits on
how many additional resources a threatened state can muster against an
aggressor.
However, since offensive realists theorize that states are always
seeking to maximize their power, states are "effectively engaged in
internal balancing all the time".
The balance of threat theory is an offshoot of neorealism, coined in 1985 by Stephen M. Walt
in an attempt to explain why balancing against rising hegemons has not
always been consistent in history. In contrast to traditional balance of
power theorists, Walt suggests that states balance against threats,
rather than against power alone.
The "balance-of-power theory is not wrong; it is merely incomplete.
Power is one of the factors that affect the propensity to balance,
although it is not the only one nor always the most important."
The theory acknowledges that power is an extremely important factor in
the level of threat posed by a state, but also includes geographic
proximity, offensive capabilities, and perceived intentions.
Balance of threat theory is an interesting adjunct to neorealism,
because as a structural theory, neorealism only predicts that balances
of power will form, not whether a particular state will balance or
bandwagon (inter alia), or which state it might balance with. As Waltz
put it:
"balance of power theory is often criticized because it does not explain
the particular policies of states. True, the theory does not tell us
why state X made a certain move last Tuesday. To expect it to do so
would be like expecting the theory of universal gravitation to explain
the wayward pattern of a falling leaf. A theory a one level of
generality cannot answer questions about matters at a different level of
generality."
Walt's balance of threat formulation allows neorealism to serve as the
foundation for a theory of foreign policy, thus allowing it to explain
or predict which potential threats a state is most likely to balance
against.
Soft balancing was developed in the 2000s to account for the contemporary anomaly of the unipolar unbalanced world.
Thomas Mowle and David Sacko describe "soft balancing" as
"balancing that does not balance at all." These theoretical efforts are
counter-productive, since Realism and unipolarity are compatible and
structural realism should rather develop a set of hypotheses for a
unipolar world: "Scholars do not need to desperately search for signs of
balancing, they do not need to soften balancing beyond recognition, and
they do not need to stand to watch for the first glimmering of a new
multipolar dawn."
Campbell Craig explained the development of soft balancing theory on the Thomas Kuhn's
three-stage model how scholarly communities respond to anomalies that
seem clearly to defy their core theoretical predictions:
1. Leading theorists wedded to the
standard interpretations that allow them to dominate their field, tend
first to deny that the anomaly exists; at most, it is a 'blip', an
unimportant or transient factor. Initially, structural Realists sought
to deny that unipolarity was enduring or important, and predicted its
quick demise. Waltz, Mearsheimer, and Layne all predicted in the early
1990s that other powers would soon emerge to balance the US.
2.
As the salience of the anomaly becomes undeniable, theoreticians
redefine or shift their theoretical expectations, so as to contend that
the anomaly can indeed be explained by their original theory even if
their earlier writings ruled it out. More recently, many structural
Realists have acknowledged the existence of unipolarity, or at least
have acknowledged the absence of traditional balancing against the US,
but have altered standard definitions of balancing behavior in order to
reconcile this with balance-of-power theory. Thus, Mearsheimer
suggested that Iran and North Korea are balancing, even though the "balance" is not in sight.
3.
Finally, a band of younger scholars, less invested professionally in
the old theory, develops a new interpretation that not only explains the
anomaly but places it at its theoretical center. This new theoretical
interpretation supersedes the old one and becomes the new 'paradigm' for
successive inquiry. In this manner, Robert Pape, T. V. Paul,
and Stephen Walt concede that traditional balancing is not occurring,
but argue nevertheless that rivals to the US are engaging in 'soft
balancing.'
More
recent scholarly work has engaged the debate on soft balancing. Kai He
suggested a new analytical framework, a negative balancing model, to
explain why states do not form alliances or conduct arms races to
balance against power or threats as they may have done in the past.
He describes negative balancing as any strategy or diplomatic efforts
aimed to undermine a rival's power. In contrast, positive balancing is
actions or policies designed to strengthen a state's own power in world
politics.
Preponderance of power
The
preponderance of power has been suggested as an alternative to the
balance of power since World War II. In his 1940 article, "War, Peace
and the Balance of Power", Frederick L. Schuman included a chapter titled "Necessity for Preponderance of Power". It argued:
[A]n overwhelming preponderance of power [...] will remain wholly
unattainable unless the Allies win the present war and the United States
assumes responsibilities commensurate with its power—in the war, in the
peace after the war and in the maintenance and improvement of the new
order after the peace. The necessary preponderance of power is unlikely
to emerge from any international combination other than a permanent
alliance of the United States, the British Commonwealth of Nations, and
the French Republic, with the addition of such Latin American states and
such European democracies as may care to join. Such a coalition, if
stable and permanent, could put an end to the world balance of power and
oblige outside powers to abandon the game of power politics. No other
coalition presently in prospect would seem to offer any comparable hope.
In 1941, Alfred Vagts wrote an article, titled "The United States and the Balance of Power," in which he recalled the words of Thomas Jefferson:
I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that
those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measure of power,
that a salutary balance may ever be maintained among nations and that
our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by
all.... Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over
the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble.
In 1942, Robert Strausz-Hupé
found that it "is in the interests of the United States no less than
that of humanity" that the United States should be the only one
"geographical power nucleus" from which a "balancing and stabilizing"
power of arbiter be exercised. This "will pave the way for a new and
universal order." Writing the same year in Life
magazine, Joseph Thorndike tells about "many observers" seeking
"preponderant power in the postwar world" to replace balance of power:
The balance of power is indeed the time-honored (or dishonored) policy
of the European states. But it is not the only policy which has been
historically successful. Rome was not a balance of power. It was a
preponderant power. There are many observers who think the US and the
British Empire, acting together, can hold preponderant power in the
postwar world. At the time of the peace conference, this may well be the
case.
However, Thorndike added in the same 1942 article, many may wonder
whether, over the years, Russia and China "will not rival
Anglo-America". The following year, the founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi,
also invoked the example of the two-centuries-long "Pax Romana" which,
he suggested, could be repeated if based on the preponderant US air
power and inter-regional organization:
At the end of the war the crushing superiority of American plane
production will be an established fact… The solution of the problem … is
by no means ideal, nor even satisfactory. But it is a minor evil,
compared with the alternative of several competing air forces fighting
each other… [in wars] aimed not at the conquest but at the utter
annihilation of all enemy towns and lands… This danger can … only be
prevented by the air superiority of a single power … This is the only
realistic hope for a lasting peace … The peaceful organization of the
postwar world would rest on a double basis: on the working Commonwealth
of the World, established on regional grounds, and on the American
supremacy in the skies, making international wars almost impossible…
This double-method … can lead to a long period of peace and prosperity
throughout the globe…
The same year, Nathaniel Peffer criticized the idea of the preponderance of power:
Whatever may be the tendencies and inclinations, it must be emphasized
that if America seeks to dictate to other powers their actions and
policies, it can do so only by maintaining a preponderance of power
manifested in an extension of political and economic control … But in
the light of all recent history he who would consciously, deliberately
elect that course is either unread, incapable of deductions from his
reading or perverse.
In self-contradiction, Peffer ended the article recommending for the
postwar period a preponderance of power of offensive kind backed by
total national effort: The United States will need "a larger permanent
military establishment," alliances with other powers having common
interests and an alliance with Great Britain that would be not only
defensive but also "outright, unconditional offensive." It means
full-scale power politics and to it "must be accommodated and sometimes
subordinated everything else in the nation’s life."
On 24 September 1946, Truman's Special Counsel Clark M. Clifford submitted a report "American Relations with the Soviet Union…" advocating a preponderant power:
It must be made apparent to the Soviet Government that our strength will
be sufficient to repel any attack and sufficient to defeat the USSR
decisively if a war should start. The prospect of defeat is the only
sure means of deterring the Soviet Union.
In the early Cold War, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson
combined the concepts of preponderance and bandwagoning. As he put it,
the United States was going to have to be "the locomotive at the head of
mankind," while the rest of the world was going to be "the caboose."
While arguing that equilibrium was essential to justice, Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that "nothing but the preponderance of power in the non-Communist world can preserve the peace."
Melvyn Leffler
describes the US strategy throughout the Cold War as a strategy of
preponderance. In its last year, he summarized: Backed by strategic
preponderance, the United States integrated and rearmed the Eurasian
industrial areas, shored up the Eurasian periphery and rolled back the
Iron Curtain.
Already during the Cold War, some scholars stressed that the
pattern accords the preponderance of power rather than balance of power.
The balance of power presupposes such a distribution of power in the
system that no single state is preponderant. In this sense, during the
period 1945–1965 if "there was any threat to the general balance of
power [...] it was from the United States rather than from the Soviet
Union that this came."
Stephen Walt observed in the 1980s that most states, including
all developed states, ally with, rather than balance against, the
preponderant power. Noting this "anomaly", Walt suggested his balance of
threat hypothesis:
At first glance, this result would seem to contradict the assertion that
states choose alliance partners in order to balance against the
strongest. Focusing solely on aggregate power would lead us to expect
more states to ally with the Soviet Union, in order to prevent the
United States from using its superior overall resources in harmful ways.
Judging from the preponderance of aggregate power favoring the West,
many states appear to have 'bandwagoned' rather than balanced by
aligning with the United States. This is even more striking when one
remembers that the United States was overwhelmingly the world's most
powerful country in the immediate postwar period, yet was able to bring
most of the other industrial powers into alignment with rather than
against it.
In 1986, still not envisaging the end of the Cold War in sight, Zbigniew Brzezinski
emphasized the historical uniqueness of the current period regarding
the preponderance of power: "[N]ever before would the eclipse of one of
the major rival powers have given to the other effective global
preponderance."
Shortly after one of the rival superpowers eclipsed, the Pentagon
Regional Defense Strategy (1992) formulized: "It is not in our interest …
to return to earlier periods in which multiple military powers balanced
one against another in what passed for security structures, while
regional or even global peace hang in the balance."
In the first post-Cold War year, Leffler advocated for the United States to continue its strategy of "preponderance of power". Christopher Layne
claims that the preponderance of power has been the dominant US
strategy during both the Cold War and the post-Cold War periods.
"Preponderance's strategic imperatives are the same as they were during
the post-World War II era: pacification and reassurance in Europe and
East Asia, and protection of these regions from instability in the
periphery."
The post-Cold War strategy of preponderance holds that "only a
preponderance of US power ensures peace" which is "the result of an
imbalance of power in which US capabilities are sufficient, operating on
their own, to cow all potential challengers and to comfort all
coalition partners. It is not enough consequently to be primus inter pares [...] One must be primus solus."
Layne since the beginning of the post-Cold war period expects the
preponderance of power to trigger counterbalancing. He finds that "it
was the bipolar structure of the postwar system that allowed Washington
to pursue a strategy of preponderance successfully" and thereby smother
the emergence of other great powers. But the preponderance of power
which "others found merely irritating in a bipolar world may seem quite
threatening in a unipolar world."
Because of these structural factors, "an American strategy of
preponderance [...] is doomed to failure"; it will "cause other states
to balance against the United States".
Overturning the scholarly conventional wisdom, however, the
current preponderant power seems to render inoperative the
counterbalancing long central to research in international relations. By the preponderance of American power and the absence of balance of power William Wohlforth explains the peacefulness and stability of the present world order.
No distribution of power rules out war. "The greater the preponderance
of power, however, the more extreme the values of other variables must
be to produce war [...]"
Campbell Craig believes that "Power Preponderance theory" will become
one of the dominant American IR schools of the post-Cold War era:
...Power Preponderance is going to replace balance-of-power neorealism and become the dominant brand of American Realism
for the foreseeable future. Unipolarity is too central of a problem for
neorealism to finesse, especially as confident predictions of its early
demise have been proven wrong and the gap between the US and other
rivals continues to grow.
Expecting anti-American balancing, Waltz drew a much-cited analogy:
"As nature abhors vacuum, so international politics abhors unbalanced
power." Craig paraphrased:
Theory abhors an explanatory vacuum, and Power Preponderance is filling
it. The essence of Power Preponderance is its claim that would-be rivals
have strong incentives to accept the status quo of American primacy
rather than to attempt to overturn the unipolar order… The argument …
distinguishes itself from deterministic claims made by some structural
realists that a balance of power is certain to recur...
US National Security Strategy of 2002 uses repeatedly the term 'balance of power' favoring freedom. The author of the Preponderance of Power… (1992), Melvyn Leffler,
was puzzled: A balance of power is linked historically to the evolution
of the Westphalian state system and "envisions equilibrium, while the
Bush administration yearns for hegemony." When they invoke the language
of power balancing, Bush's advisers obfuscate more than they clarify:
Whose power is to be balanced? Today, no nation or group challenges
American power … In fact, should the balance of power operate in its
classical form, it would trigger countermoves by states seeking to pose a
counterweight to America's expressed ambitions.
According to Leffler's exegesis, Bush has invoked a balance of power
vocabulary in purpose to integrate the tradition with the hegemonic
dilemma. British Orwell Prize-winning policy analyst, Anatol Lieven,
comments: In this conception, however, a phrase "was a form of
Orwellian doublespeak. The clear intention actually was to be so strong
that other countries had no choice but to rally to the side of the
United States, concentrating all real power and freedom of action in the
hands of America."
The surprising rehabilitation of the balance-of-power term in the 2002
NSS "can be accounted for in terms of mythopoetic function that the
terminology serves in the document." It keeps alive the traditional
concept in a new unipolar world.
Eventually, explanation what implies "the balance of power
favoring freedom" was dropped by "US National Security and Defense
Strategies" of 2018: The Pentagon will ensure that the United States
remain the "preeminent military power in the world," and the regional
"balances of power remain in our favor." [Emphasis added] The "balance of power favoring freedom" appeared identical with the balance of power favoring "us."
Russian President Vladimir Putin
complained: "Instead of establishing a new balance of power … they [the
United States] took steps that threw the [international] system into
sharp and deep imbalance."
In 1826, George Canning "called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old". In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt found that the United States had become "more and more the balance of power of the whole globe."
In 1941, a New Deal Economist with the National Resources Planning
Board, Otto T. Mallery, averred that "destiny offers to the United
States the ultimate balance of power and of resources in the world after
the war." Colin Gray
titled his 2005 chapter by question, "Where Is the Balance of Power?"
The chapter opens: "The short answer is that the United States is the
balance of power."
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