According to Mearsheimer, nations use buck-passing or balancing to maintain the balance of power in the international society and prevent the rise of a hegemon. The strategy of balancing means that when a potential hegemon appears, a nation builds up its economic, political, and military strength to prevent its rise. The strategy of buck-passing means that a country passes the responsibility for holding the rise of a hegemon on another state instead of taking action.
Haas argues that the greater the threat, the higher the chances a nation would prefer balancing to buck-passing. One of the most illustrative examples of buck-passing is the unwillingness of the UK and the US to confront the rise of Nazi Germany because they underestimated its power and failed to predict the consequences of its further development.