John Mearsheimer: Power

John Mearsheimer is American political scientist. Explore interesting quotes on power.
John Mearsheimer: 64 quotes8 likes

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 20

“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.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Preface, p. xi
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 10, Great Power Politics in the Twenty First Century, p. 361

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 15

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 2, Anarchy and the Struggle for Power, p. 43

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 16

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 3, Wealth and Power, p. 55

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 10, Great Power Politics in the Twenty First Century, p. 398

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 6, Great Powers in Action, p. 202

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 8, Balancing versus Buck-Passing, p. 293

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 4, The Primacy of Land Power, p. 135

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 10, Great Power Politics in the Twenty First Century, p. 385

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 7, The Offshore Balancers, p. 252

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 3, Wealth and Power, p. 57

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

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 10, Great Power Politics in the Twenty First Century, p. 371

“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 book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 2, Anarchy and the Struggle for Power, p. 38