Land Powers, Sea Powers, and the Evolution of Balancing.

Our earlier research on great power balancing behavior emphasized the different kinds of threats posed by land powers and sea powers and their consequences for balances and balancing. We demonstrated that while great powers have systematically balanced against land powers that approached a position of hegemony in Europe (but not against weaker leading land powers), great powers have not balanced against sea powers posing comparable threats of dominance in the global system. This paper builds on our earlier work. We examine the evolution of balancing strategies over the last five centuries of the European system and the global system. We emphasize the importance of particular structural and contextual factors, and argue that the European system and the global system for the last five centuries were characterized by a distinctive set of arrangements that are probably not generalizable to other systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]