John Mearsheimer quotes

John Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, best known for his work on realism and security studies. His influential theory of offensive realism analyzes how great powers interact in an anarchic world system. He has published numerous books and articles, shaping debates on international politics and U.S. foreign policy. Here are 36 of his quotes:

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

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

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

John Mearsheimer

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

John Mearsheimer

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

John Mearsheimer

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

John Mearsheimer

Bandwagoning is a strategy for the weak.

John Mearsheimer

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

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

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

John Mearsheimer

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.

John Mearsheimer

Decapitation is a fanciful strategy.

John Mearsheimer

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

John Mearsheimer

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.

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

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

John Mearsheimer

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

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

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

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 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.

John Mearsheimer

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

John Mearsheimer