ABSTRACT
Although it was not until the beginning of the Renaissance in Europe that there is clear evidence of the emergence of both balance of power policies and a balance of power system in operation, it is possible to go further back in time and find evidence of unsystematic balance of power thinking. Certainly, on occasion states and alliances attempted to match the power of their opponents or combined against a powerful third party. States also on occasion attempted to remain aloof from the struggles of two closely matched rivals, so as to gain the advantages of balancing, without such behaviour being described as balance of power. According to Evan Luard ‘a true balance of power policy occurs only when a state allies itself with the weaker of two possible partners, because it recognises that the other may finally prove the greater menace’ (Luard 1992:1; emphasis in original). The Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume argued that interstate politics in the classical age of ancient Greece was governed by balance of power thinking. To Hume the policy of preserving a balance was such an obvious one that ‘it is
impossible it could altogether have escaped antiquity, where we find, in other particulars, so many marks of deep penetration and discernment’ (Wright, 1975:63).
