Bringing technology into the balance of power politics: ‘network balancing’ between the United States and China

As the world became increasingly interconnected in the post-Cold War era, the concept of security within the IR field has been extended to include non-military aspects such as economic, demographic and environmental aspects. Yet, the technological aspect has not received much attention within the field until recently. While the importance of technologies has been recognised for their impact on the contours of world politics in existing studies, their conceptualisation within the discipline has remained quite limited; they have been mostly taken as a black-boxed exogenous factor rather than something integral to how international politics are carried out. The lack of clear conceptual and analytical frameworks makes it difficult to incorporate technology as a core component of international relations discussions. Hence, as an attempt to complement the existing IR scholarship by bringing technology into the core discussion of the field, this article investigates the link between network technology and the balancing strategies of great powers by introducing a new analytical framework called the 'network balancing' model. The model is then applied to the case of ongoing US-China rivalry over information and communications technologies.