Alliances on Balance of Power in International Peace and Security in the East Asian Hub and Spokes

Abstract

This study sought to evaluate the workings of alliances in the exercise of Balance of Power (BOP) in international relations, importantly whether BOP undermines or enhances international peace and security in reference to East Asian ‘Hub and Spokes’. The discourse on international peace is a very delicate area of inquiry among scholars of global studies and practitioners. Available new thinking experts know peace as a situation that represents an occurrence when human people are endowed with real human dignity that depicts their life and they are able to carry out their daily transactions without regard to who they are, where they are, and what they do. This study used three objectives as a guide to answer whether BOP undermines or enhances desired peace and security. The objectives of this study are 1) examining nature of security alliance in the global dispensation and why they have existed, 2) establishing whether alliances on balance of power undermine or enhance international peace and security, and 3) evaluation of alliances in relation to East Asian ‘Hub and Spokes’. The study employed a desktop research, using available relevant literature to the research surrounding the objective themes. Conclusions indicate; these states seem to forget what they should do in anarchic international system; balancing the most powerful states or balancing the most threatening ones, no country claims to form military alliances to contain China in Asia as had happened to the Soviet Union, and other realists suggest soft balancing under unipolarity.

Keywords: Balance of Power, Global Security, Hub and Spokes, International Peace, International Relations, International Security, Military Alliances, Non-Military Alliance, Unipolarity