Discuss various methods of Balance of Power. (Answer in 150 words)

- Discuss various methods of Balance of Power. (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
Balance of power is a policy before it is a condition. Morgenthau's Politics Among Nations (1948) set out the standard repertoire by which states have pursued equilibrium.

Body
1. Alliances: the commonest method, what Waltz calls external balancing — NATO (1949) answered by the Warsaw Pact (1955).
2. Armaments, and their control: internal balancing through build-up, mirrored by negotiated ceilings — the NPT (1968), SALT, New START (2010).
3. Compensations: territorial trade-offs that preserve relative shares, as in the partitions of Poland (1772-95) and the Congress of Vienna (1815).
4. Divide and rule: keeping a rival fragmented, the French policy towards the German states before 1871.
5. Buffer states: Afghanistan interposed between Tsarist Russia and British India.
6. The balancer: Britain holding the scales by joining whichever side was weaker.
7. Intervention and non-intervention: and today soft balancing, where institutions and law constrain a preponderant power (T. V. Paul, 2005).

Conclusion
These are instruments, not laws of nature. They have restrained hegemony, but as 1914 showed, they can also mechanise a war nobody chose.