ABSTRACT
This chapter studies both conflictual and cooperational balancing metaphors for international relations: everything from descriptions portraying international relations as mechanical steadying of physical objects to descriptions of international relations as delicate efforts to achieve mental poise or ethical fairness. After sketching associations that we attach to balancing in general, it gives examples of expert usage relating to international relations: excerpts from IR theories, speeches of foreign policy leaders and media coverage of world news operating with the terms and logic of balancing activities. In addition to demonstrating how balancing metaphors work in practice, it analyzes recommendations that these metaphors carry with them. It outlines policy choices that seem appropriate in the context of international weighing and stabilizing – both along the conflictual lines of counterbalancing an aggressive state and in the cooperational version of seeking an equilibrium between sovereignty and security, for instance.
