Nixonian Foreign Policy: A New Balance of Power, or a Revived Concert?

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Abstract
The claim of the early Nixon Administration to have moved the international political system in the direction of the classical balance of power has been in the center of discussion among students of international relations. Garrett questions that the new policy has been properly characterized. He works out an incisive distinction between the classical balance of power of the eighteenth century with its conceptual and operational chaos and the nineteenth-century concert of powers system as a rational and controlled management of power relations. He argues that the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy is more properly seen as a revival of the concert system and traces in detail the parallels between the two policies. He focuses on features in the international environment indicating that a concert is in fact in operation; on motivations of the member states that lead them to want a concert; and on technical requirements to be met for a concert to become a reality. In trying to obtain a clearer understanding the article deals with an important theoretical and practical problem.

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