John Mearsheimer

“In the anarchic world of international politics, it is better to be Godzilla than Bambi.”

“...If China continues to rise, you better be very careful, because that will drive the United States stark raving crazy....”

“The cycle of violence will continue far into the new millennium. Hopes for peace will probably not be realized, because the great that shape the international system fear each other and compete for power as a result. Indeed, their ultimate aim is to gain a position of dominant power over others, because having dominant power is the best means to ensure one's own survival.”

“The sad fact is that international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.”

“The liberal tradition has its roots in the Enlightenment, that period in the eighteenth-century Europe when intellectuals and political leaders had a powerful sense that reason could be employed to make the world a better place.”

“In an ideal world, where there are only good states, power would be largely irrelevant.”

“Preserving power, rather than increasing it, is the main goal of states.”

“In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.”

“A state's potential power is based on the size of its population and the level of its wealth.”

“States have two kinds of power: latent power and military power.”

“Simply put, the most powerful state is the one that prevails in a dispute.”

“Specifically, the presence of oceans on much of the earth's surface makes it impossible for any state to achieve global hegemony.”

“The German air offensives against British cities in World Wars I and II not only failed to coerce the United Kingdom to surrender, but Germany also lost both wars.”

“Decapitation is a fanciful strategy.”

“The most dangerous states in the international system are continental powers with large armies.”

“States care about relative wealth, because economic might is the foundation of military might.”

“The ideal situation for any state is to experience sharp economic growth while its rivals' economies grow slowly or hardly at all.”

“Bandwagoning is a strategy for the weak.”

“Important benefits often accrue to states that behave in an unexpected way.”

“The Soviet Union and its empire disappeared in large part because its smokestack economy could no longer keep up with the technological progress of the world's major economic powers.”

“This self-defeating behavior, so the argument goes, must be the result of warped domestic politics.”

“Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.”

“When an aggressor comes on the scene, at least one other state will eventually take direct responsibility for checking it.”

“A potential hegemon, as emphasized throughout this book, must be wealthier than any of its regional rivals and must possess the most powerful army in the area.”

“When World War II started on September 1, 1939, the German army contained 3.74 million soldiers and 103 divisions.”

“In short, unbalanced bipolar systems are so unstable that they cannot last for any appreciable period of time.”

“The optimists' claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong. In fact all of the major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power among themselves for the foreseeable future.”

“Great powers must be forever vigilant and never subordinate survival to any other goal, including prosperity.”

“I believe that the existing power structures in Europe and Northeast Asia are not sustainable through 2020.”

“China, in short has the potential to be considerably more powerful than even the United States.”

“Nuclear weapons are an excellent deterrent against aggression, and India lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Since gaining independence in 1947, it has fought three wars with Pakistan and has come close to war with Pakistan three other times.”

“In fact, as soon as it declared independence, Ukraine should have been quietly encouraged to fashion its own nuclear deterrent.”