Discuss various methods of Balance of Power.

Balance of power is both a condition and a policy; the methods are the means by which states prevent any one power from achieving preponderance.

Morgenthau's classical devices in Politics Among Nations (1948):

• Divide and rule — keeping potential rivals weak by keeping them separated, as France did towards the German states for centuries.
• Compensations — territorial or colonial compensation to preserve relative shares, as in the eighteenth-century partitions of Poland and the African partition at the Berlin Conference.
• Armaments — building military strength, which produces the security dilemma and arms races.
• Alliances — the most important method, in which a state adds another's capabilities to its own.
• The balancer or holder of the balance — a state outside the contending groups, throwing its weight against whichever side threatens to dominate, the classic British role.

The structural restatement. Waltz distinguishes internal balancing — increasing one's own economic and military capability, which he considers more reliable — from external balancing, or alliance formation. Balancing is contrasted with bandwagoning, joining the stronger side, which Waltz holds is rarer than expected; Schweller argues it is common when the motive is profit rather than security.

Contemporary variants. Soft balancing through institutions, law and diplomacy without military confrontation, and multi-alignment, which India practises to avoid a binding choice among great powers.