John Mearsheimer Short Quotes

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

John Mearsheimer
Preserving power, rather than increasing it, is the main goal of states.

John Mearsheimer
Simply put, the most powerful state is the one that prevails in a dispute.

John Mearsheimer
Important benefits often accrue to states that behave in an unexpected way.

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

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

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

John Mearsheimer
States care about relative wealth, because economic might is the foundation of military might.

John Mearsheimer
The most dangerous states in the international system are continental powers with large armies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Mearsheimer
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.

John Mearsheimer
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.

John Mearsheimer
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.

John Mearsheimer
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.

John Mearsheimer