K
ING
A
HAB VS
. A
SSYRIA
:
B
ALANCING AND
B
ALANCING
F
AILURE IN
B
IBLICAL
T
IMES
S
TUART
J. K
AUFMAN AND
W
ILLIAM
C. W
OHLFORTH
Prepared for Presentation at
Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association
Philadelphia, PA August 27-31, 2003
Note: The authors are grateful to Professors Mario Liverani and J. A. Brinkman
for thoughtful comments and bibliographical advice. This is an early draft;
comments are welcome, but please do not cite without permission of the authors.
Abstract: Balance of power theory purports to be universal but it is a
product of—and has mainly been tested against—the modern European
experience. The advent of unipolarity and the absence of great-power balancing
since 1991 raise the question of whether balancing orders are contingent on
factors unspecified in the theory that were present in the European
international system and its 20
th
century global successor but absent today,
and perhaps from other historical inter-state systems. This paper is part of a
collaborative effort to address this question by expanding the empirical domain
in which balance of power theory can be tested. We evaluate the theory's central
proposition—that major states in any system balance potential hegemons—in
the case of the rise of Assyria in Biblical times. Brute outcomes are inconsistent
with the theory: balancing failed to prevent Assyria from creating an empire
that dominated a unipolar system and marginalized balancing dynamics for
over a century. Moreover, key causes of the emergence, suppression, and then
reemergence of a balancing order in the Iron Age system lie outside current
renderings of the theory. Balancing tendencies were observable in Biblical
times, but they were much weaker and less consequential than standard
treatments of balance of power theory would lead us to expect.
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