Political Science journal

After the Concert of Europe, Europe encountered a strange period in which no countries were willing to go to war with each other. Given that realist perception of world order was more dominant throughout this era, what explained this phenomenon? Europe was in a balanced multipolar system following the Concert of Europe. After the Napoleonic War, the European countries were determined to maintain peace and make sure not to make a single country like France have so much power. Therefore, the Concert of Europe created alliances of states that helped Europe maintain the balance in the distribution of power through the active practice of defensive realism, where states were willing to focus more on security and less on expansionism. For example, when Russia had a chance to completely take over the Ottoman Empire 1829, it passed up its chance? Were they intimidated by a possible retaliation by the other European countries? According to Matthew Rendall, “Britain’s and France’s ministers in Constantinople could no longer do any good in the negotiations, and very little harm” (Rendall 532), because Britain and France did not want to risk a war to save an already weakened Ottoman Empire. However, Russia declined to expand simply because they “feared that toppling the empire would lead to conflict over the long term” (Rendall 532), where Russia foresaw an alliance arise and spark another war in Europe. By passing to take over the Ottoman Empire, Russia acted out of self-security, an action that helped maintain the balance of power Europe was
The world order leading up to World War I, however, was dangerously unbalanced. It was still a multipolar system, but the balanced distribution of power they had maintained after the Concert of Europe was falling apart, as Germany became powerful enough to assert itself as a regional hegemon. To counteract Germany, countries finally abandoned its defensive realism schemes to prevent Germany from taking over the entire Europe. Thus, World War I began.