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Interdependence altered power relations between the European great powers between 1871 and 1914 in ways that both sustained the conditions for peace and, after 1911, made a European war more likely. Interdependence accelerated the development of international financial and commercial networks. Transnational social and cultural exchanges raised the costs of a general war, offered multiple channels for states and societies to exercise influence over each other, and altered power relations. The great powers pursued their interests through not only military force but also trade deals, financial loans, expert missions (teams sent to smaller states ostensibly to aid in modernization), and cultural diplomacy. They competed for influence in smaller states. Many of the crises that pockmarked this era derived from their contested interests in such strategically vital areas in Europe as the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire, and the Low Countries, as well as elsewhere in the world. States that lost out in this transformation, notably Austria-Hungary and Russia, saw the militarization of their foreign policies as a way to compensate for weaknesses in other forms of power.

Scholars often interpret balance of power theory to imply that great powers almost always balance against the leading power in the system, and they conclude that the absence of a counterbalancing coalition against the historically unprecedented power of the United States after the end of the Cold War is a puzzle for balance of power theory. They are wrong on both counts. Balance of power theory is not universally applicable. Its core propositions about balancing strategies and the absence of sustained hegemonies apply to the European system and perhaps to some other autonomous continental systems but not to the global maritime system. Sea powers are more interested in access to markets than in territorial aggrandizement against other great powers. Consequently, patterns of coalition formation have been different in the European system and in the global maritime system during the last five centuries. An empirical analysis demonstrates that counterhegemonic balancing is frequent in Europe but much less frequent in the global system. Higher concentrations of power in the global system lead to fewer and smaller rather than more frequent and larger balancing coalitions, as well as to more frequent and larger alliances with the leading sea power than against it.

Ripsman and Levy’s argument merits attention for at least two related reasons. The arst is the renewal of interest in appeasement within the international relations and security studies aelds. Piqued by the repeated use (or misuse) of the appeasement analogy by the administration of George W. Bush, several scholars have recently turned their attention to the international politics of the 1930s to assess what lessons should be drawn from the events of the period for today’s decisionmakers. 2 More speciacally, they question whether appeasement is sometimes justiaed or is always misguided. The second reason is that many of these scholars embrace what might be called a “rational

Scholars typically define appeasement as a policy of satisfying grievances through one-sided concessions to avoid war for the foreseeable future and, therefore, as an alternative to balancing. They traditionally interpret British appeasement of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s as a naïve attempt to maintain peace with Germany by satisfying his grievances. The standard conceptualization of appeasement and the empirical treatment of the 1930s, however, are theoretically limiting and historically incorrect. Appeasement is a strategy of sustained, asymmetrical concessions with the aim of avoiding war, at least in the short term. There are three distinct variations of appeasement: (1) resolving grievances (to avoid war for the foreseeable future); (2) diffusing secondary threats (to focus on a greater threat); and (3) buying time (to rearm and/or secure allies against the current threat). British appeasement was primarily a strategy of buying time for rearmament against Germany. British leaders understood the Nazi menace and did not expect that appeasement would avoid an eventual war with Germany. They believed that by the time of the Rhineland crisis of 1936 the balance of power had already shifted in Germany's favor, but that British rearmament would work to reverse the balance by the end of the decade. Appeasement was a strategy to delay an expected confrontation with Germany until the military balance was more favorable.