Should We Balance Power?

     When people in power feel as though their power is being threatened, they should definitely take action. Obviously, no leader ever wants to be overthrown. In class, to learn about how Prince Clements von Metternich of Austria wanted to rule, we practiced, as his team of advisors, making decisions like we would have. We had a prompt of a real situation that happened when Metternich was in power, and we had three options on how to take action. We had to chose which option we though Metternich chose, and we had to explain why we thought he chose that option. Then after we discussed our choice, we talked about which choice Metternich made and we got to see who in the class made the correct choice according to Metternich. This activity taught us about how Prince Metternich handled his power being threatened, and what kind of a leader he was.

     Metternich and the Congress of Vienna both used the strategy of Balance of Power. Balance of Power was the idea of equally distributing the power so that no one country was powerful enough to take over or dominate the others. Metternich used this strategy after Napoleon was defeated because they wanted to recreate some of the new boundaries of countries in Europe. He wanted to expand some more powerful countries like Austria and France, and establish some land for other small countries and territories because he did not like much the boundaries that Napoleon had set when he took over. The Congress of Vienna used this strategy too because with all the representatives in the congress, they all wanted different boundaries for their countries, so they had to compromise by using the Balance of Powers method.

     I think that the Balance of Power method was a good choice for the Congress of Vienna and Metternich because it equaled out the power so there was no one over dominant country in Europe. This benefited everyone in Europe because everything was more equal. I think personally that in certain circumstances, yes, the people in power should sacrifice some of their power just to help out other countries or even their own countries. But obviously, no person in power wanted to be overthrown, so they have to keep in minimal as to who they give power to.

Balance of Power Congress of Vienna (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Map_congress_of_vienna.jpg/450px-Map_congress_of_vienna.jpg)