Morton Kaplan's Rules of the Balance of Power

1. All states act to increase capabilities but negotiate rather than fight.
2. All states fight rather than pass up an opportunity to increase their capabilities.
3. All states stop fighting rather than eliminate an essential state.
4. All states act to oppose any coalition or single state which tends to assume a position of predominance within the system.
5. All states act to constrain states who subscribe to supranational organizing principles.
6. All states permit defeated or constrained essential national states to re-enter the system as acceptable role partners or to pact to bring some previously inessential state within the essential state classification. Treat all essential states as acceptable role partners.

From: Morton A. Kaplan, System and Process in International Politics (New York, 1957).

Readings: 

Paul A.Papayoanou, "Interdependence, Institutions, and the Balance of Power: Britain, Germany, and World War I, International Security, Vol. 20, no. 4 Spring 1996

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