(Page 2 of 31) - Balancing and Balancing Failure in Biblical Times authored by Kaufman, Stuart. and Wohlforth, William.

ING

HAB VS

. A

SSYRIA

ALANCING AND

ALANCING

AILURE IN

IBLICAL

IMES

TUART

J. K

AUFMAN AND

ILLIAM

C. W

OHLFORTH

he title of the paper is based on an incident described in an inscription on
an ancient Assyrian monument known as the “Kurkh Monoliths”. The

inscription, written in the voice of Assyrian King Shalmaneser III, in part says
the following:

I approached cities of Irhulenu, the Hamatite . . . I razed,
destroyed and burned Qarqar, his royal city. An alliance had been
formed of these twelve kings: 1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry,
20,000 troops of Hadad-ezer, the Damascene; 700 chariots, 700
cavalry, 10,000 troops of Irhulenu, the Hamatite; 2,000 chariots
[and] 10,000 troops of Ahab the Israelite; . . . [and others]. They
attacked to war and battle against me (Grayson 1996, p. 23),

Besides shedding interesting light on a character from the Bible, this account
quite clearly presents evidence of an effort by the kings listed to balance the
rising power of Assyria. This coalition stayed together for several years, fighting
repeatedly against Assyrian efforts at expansion. Later, however, Assyria
succeeded in establishing an empire encompassing virtually the entire
international system of the time including all these coalition partners.
Ultimately, Assyria was itself destroyed by a combination of internal rebellion
and external attack by a new foreign power. The system that replaced it was, in
turn, incorporated a few decades later into a single Persian empire that lasted
for centuries.

This sequence of events raises a number of empirical questions with

important theoretical implications. How common in ancient history was the
sort of balancing behavior noted here? Did states balance when balance of
power theory would predict that they would? Why were balancing efforts not, in
the end, effective at preventing Assyrian hegemony? What factors explain the
collapse and re-emergence of the balance, and to what extent should these
other factors be included in balance of power theory?

The purpose of this paper is to address these questions as part of a

larger effort to evaluate balance of power theory in new empirical domains
(Kaufman and Wohlforth, 2003). A half-century of previous social science
research centered on modern Europe has done remarkably little to reduce
scholarly debate over the power of balance of power theory (Vasquez and
Elman, 2003). Further testing of the theory demands new kinds of research:
either careful process-tracing in the data-rich modern system (Wohlforth
2003a), or new tests in new empirical domains that allow greater variation in
the theory’s key variables, as we undertake to do here. A major analytical
dividend of this second research strategy is that it allows potentially fruitful
comparisons with the current unipolar system. Scholars agree that the current