5. Finally, a defender's allies can be cited as his ultimate source of support. By this we do not mean the ordinary type of ally such as the aggressor also possesses, but the kind who have a substantial interest in maintaining the integrity of their ally's country. If we consider the community of states in Europe today, we do not find a systematically regulated balance of power and of spheres of influence, which does not exist and whose existence has often been justifiably denied; but we certainly do find major and minor interests of states and peoples interwoven in the most varied and changeable manner. Each point of intersection binds and serves to balance one set of interests against the other. The broad effect of all these fixed points is obviously to give a certain amount of cohesion to the whole. Any change will necessarily weaken this cohesion to some degree. The sum total of relations between states thus serves to maintain the stability of the whole rather than to promote change; at least, that tendency will generally be present.
This, we suggest, is how the idea of the balance of power should be interpreted; and this kind of balance is bound to emerge spontaneously whenever a number of civilized countries are in multilateral relations.
To what extent this tendency of the common interest helps maintain existing conditions is another question. One can certainly imagine changes in relations between individual states that would strengthen this effect, and others that could weaken it. The first kind are attempts to perfect the political balance, and as their aim reflects that of the common interest, the majority of the parties would be in favor. The other kind, however, are deviations, hyperactivity of individual states, actual cases of disease; one should not be surprised that diseases occur in a loosely constituted polity such as a multitude of states of various sizes: after all, they also occur in the marvelously structured organic whole of all living nature.
It may be objected, of course, that history offers examples of single states effecting radical changes that benefit themselves alone, without the slightest effort by the rest to hinder them. There have even been cases in which a single state has managed to become so powerful that it could virtually dictate to the rest. We would reply that this does not disprove the tendency on the part of common interests to support the existing order; all it shows is that at the moment the tendency was not sufficiently effective. Aspiration toward a goal is not the same as motion, but that is not to say that it is a nullity—witness the dynamics of the heavens.
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