In general, no one knowledgeable in modern European history and the politics of alliance can really suggest that Dr Mahathir Mohamad was wrong when he said in Moscow recently that the concept of balance of power once defined the dynamics of European politics.

The European concept can be traced back to 5th century B C when the warring Greek city-states suddenly ceased quarrelling among themselves and formed a grand alliance called the Hellenic League to fight against the invasion of the Persians.

The rationale for the formation of the Hellenic League was strategic, not ideological: divided, the individual Greek-speaking city-states were weak and vulnerable vis-a-vis the monolithic and powerful Persian threat, but united and synergised in a balancing alliance, they were able to fight with coordination, formation, discipline and strategy. The Hellenic League finally defeated the Persian Empire.

It was the same with the balancing alliances formed by European states, such as Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, etc, to counter-balance Napoleonic France which sought to conquer and dominate Europe in a hegemonic design. Napolean was also finally defeated in 1814/15.

History was to repeat in the Second World War (1939-1945) when the liberal democracies allied with the communist Soviet Union and other communist and nationalist forces to fight the Axis Power. Again, the basis of the formation of an anti-fascist alliance was strategic, not ideological.

The underlying rationale of the formation of strategic alliance is that, whatever their ideological differences and disputes, weak and vulnerable powers must unite, coordinate and strategise in a coherent manner, to counter-balance a powerful, offensive, threatening and domineering hegemony or groups of it.

Power corrupts

According to French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1728) and French historian Francois Guizot (1787-1874), the continuous and almost endless balance of power in Europe created and preserved freedom, or what we now call democratic space.

As British historian and liberal philosopher Lord Acton (1834-1902) once observed, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

To check the corrupting tendency of the threatening and hegemonic power, and to prevent the hegemonic political power from growing absolute, it is logically desirable to form a balancing alliance among weaker powers as a balancing force or power.

The power or powers could be states, political parties or leaders. For power is noting but the ability to force others to do its will by breaking the will of others.

In a domestic situation when a single political power has grown so powerful, domineering and threatening that not even the judiciary can review its executive decisions that affect the lives, rights and dignity of human beings, the principle of balance of power should be applied and its dynamics be allowed to operate.

In more or less mature and modern democracies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the system of check and balance among the executive, judiciary and legislature is preserved and respected. There is the institution of free press to act as the Fourth Estate.

However, in pre-modern, feudalistic, authoritarian or totalitarian states where the powers are concentrated in one party, one leader or one small group of elites, the forms of check-and-balance differ.

Divine protection

Since there is no respectable court to check against executive abuses and legislative tyranny, the oppressed people naturally turn to clergies and religious institutions for protection, empowerment and the strengthening of their psychic powers against arrogant oppressors and opulent tyrants.

This phenomenon is not unique in Islamic societies or countries predominated by Muslims. It is also not even new or novel in human history.

In the Philippines and Latin America, people oppressed by tyrants and despots who were often supported by the right-wingers and Cold Warriors in Washington and London, turned to the Catholic Church and the more people-oriented clergies for moral guidance and political protection.

The Catholic Church and its upright clergies in Nicaragua (1979) and the Philippines (1986) even joined the oppressed people in the overthrowing of the Somoza and Marcos dictatorships.

In the United States itself, Catholics and Protestants, black and white alike, supported the Civil Right Movement launched by Dr Martin Luther King to demand for ethnic equality.

Indeed, European history has recorded many instances where upright Catholic clergies protected the oppressed people against secularly corrupt and tyrannical Roman emperors, as well as the powerfully cruel barbarian chiefs.

For example, one of the early Father of the Church, St Ambrose (340-397), courageously imposed a public penance on Emperor Theodosius I for ordering a massacre of thousands of innocent people in Thessalonica. There was no other checks and balances at that moment.

Thus, upright and courageous clergies, whatever the faiths they represent, serve as checks and balances in pre-modern, feudal, barbaric, authoritarian or totalitarian societies where the political powers are not separated, but concentrated. It is also a form of balance of power.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.