And France and Russia would have felt even more threatened. So the balance of power required Britain to align against Germany. In that sense, encirclement and confrontation of the two alliance arrangements may have been unavoidable. It was a consequence of Germany's superior power and its position European continent. It was, in short, an outgrowth of the security dilemma. Any effort to counterbalance Germany within Europe would necessarily have involved encirclement, and encirclement meant that Germany had to plan to fight a war on two fronts.