The balance of threat theory was proposed by Stephen M. Walt first in his article Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power", published in the journal International Security in 1985. It sas later further elaborated in his bookThe Origins of Alliances". The balance of threat theory modified the popular balance of power theory in the neorealist school of international relations. According to the balance of threat theory, states' alliance behavior is determined by the threat that they perceive from other states. Walt contends that states will generally balance by allying against a perceived threat, but very weak states are more likely to bandwagon with the rising threat in order to protect their own security. He points to the example of the alliance patterns of European states before and during World War I and World War II, when nations with a significantly greater combinedpower allied against the recognized threat of Germanexpansionism. Walt identifies four criteria states use to evaluate the threat posed by another state: its aggregate strength, its geographic proximity, its offensive capabilities, and its offensive intentions. Walt argues that the more that other states view an emerging power as possessing those qualities, the more likely they are to view it as a threat and balance against it. Balance of threat theory modified realism by separating power from threat. In balance of power theory, which had previously dominated realist analyses, states balance against others whose power was rising. Greater power was assumed to reflect offensive intentions. Walt argues that not to be borne out by empirical evidence, and that balance of threat theory, in which states will not balance against those that are rising in power but do not display offensive intentions, gives a betteraccount of the evidence. For instance, the United States was more powerful than the other superpower, the Soviet Union, during the Cold War, but, contrary to the balance of power theory, more states allied with it than with the Soviet Union because the United States displayed intentions that were much less aggressive intentions toward them than the Soviet Union did. The flaw of the balance of power theory became even more striking after the disappearance of the Soviet threat. With its power unbalanced, Walt argued in 2004 that the United States is still formally allied with NATO, Japan, South Korea, and several other countries, and he hints that the US might withdraw its forces, which still tend to provoke requests for a continued US presence. Counterbalancing coalitions predicted by the balance of power theory hardly appeared:
