5.1 Concept
The balance of power is both a policy and a system: the notion that national security is preserved when power among states is so distributed that no single state (or coalition) can dominate the rest — each state's pursuit of safety produces a counter-balancing equilibrium. Morgenthau: the balance is "a universal principle of operation" of state systems; Kenneth Waltz: balances form whether states intend them or not (the structural logic of anarchy).
Two orientations: the balance proper (equal or appropriately proportioned distribution) and the counterweight/compensation logic (if A grows, others align against A — "the main purpose of the balance is not to preserve peace but to preserve the system itself," in Morgenthau's sober line).
5.2 Techniques of balancing (the list the examiner wants)
1. Armament and rearmament — internal balancing (build your own capability);
2. Alliances — external balancing (nato, Warsaw Pact; and counterweight alliances such as the US-Japan and AUKUS arrangements today); the flip side: balancing vs. bandwagoning (join the stronger vs. oppose the stronger — small states' classic dilemma);
3. Compensation/repartition — compensating a rival's gain elsewhere (19th-century Congress diplomacy's territorial trades);
4. Divide and rule — weakening rivals by fomenting their internal divisions (the dark art);
5. Buffer states — maintaining weak states between rivals (Nepal's classical function between India and China — the very reason its independence survived; Belgium in Europe the textbook case);
6. Intervention — armed interference to restore equilibrium;
7. Disarmament and arms control — structured reductions to stabilize the balance (NPT-era);
8. Neutralization — guaranteeing a state's non-alignment by great-power agreement (Nepal's Zone of Peace proposal, 1975, was an attempted self-neutralization; Austria's 1955 constitutional neutrality the European example);
9. Holding the balance / offshore balancing — a state remaining uncommitted to tip the scales (Britain's historic role in Europe).
5.3 Balance of power and Nepal (the compulsory Nepali paragraph)
Nepal is the living laboratory of balance-of-power doctrine: Prithvi Narayan Shah's counsel — Nepal as "a yam between two boulders," requiring friendship with both empires north and south and vigilance toward each — is the indigenous statement of the balancing imperative; Sugauli (1816) taught the cost of imbalance; the Rana-era British patronage, the 1950/1960 twin treaties, non- aligned membership, the 1975 Zone of Peace proposal, post-2015 diversification of trade and transit (China, Bangladesh) and calibrated engagement of the Indo-Pacific competition are successive chapters of one policy: survival by balance. For the essay: balance of power is not merely a great-power game; for a buffer state, being balanced is existence.