University:
East Georgia State College
Course:
POLS 2301 | Comparative Politics
Academic year:

2022
Views:

357

Pages:

2
Author:

Alma Stephenson

John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Chapters 1, 2. Mearsheimer uses the offensive-defensive balance developed by Jervis, Van Evra, and Snyder, to refine Waltz’s “defensive realism” into “offensive realism”. The actors in offensive realism are great powers, states that “have sufficient military assets to put up a serious fight in an all-out conventional war against the most powerful state in the world” and fight to at least a war of attrition. (5) “Offensive realism” is based on five assumptions: “the international system is anarchic”; “great powers inherently possess some offensive capability”; “states can never be certain about other states’ intentions”; “survival is the primary goal”; and states are rational actors. (30-31) From these assumptions, Mearsheimer directly deduces, “Apprehensive about the ultimate intentions of other states, and aware that they operate in a self-help system, states quickly understand that the best way to ensure their survival is to be the most powerful state in the system.” (33) In this conception of the international system, great powers live in a perpetual security dilemma. (3536) Great powers are not unthinkingly aggressive. Mearsheimer recognizes that there are costs and benefits associated with proposed military action, and that states must weigh the costs against the anticipated benefits. (37) Mearsheimer defines a hegemon as “a state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system. No other state has the military wherewithal to put up a serious fight against it.” (40) Thus, if a hegemon exists, it is the only status quo power; in all other situations, all great powers are revisionist. (35) Mearsheimer distinguishes between regional and global hegemons. Although there has never been a global hegemon, regional hegemons do exist. (40-41) Powers balance against other power’s military capabilities. While wealth and population are indicators of capacity, a state’s actual power is embedded in its armies, “because they are the principal instrument for conquering and controlling territory—the paramonutn political objective in a world of territorial states.” (43) He argues that the level of fear (and implicitly, the likelihood of war) varies due to three power considerations. First, second-strike nuclear capacity decreases fear. Second, great powers separated by large bodies of water decreases offensive capability and fear. Third, inequality in the distribution of power in the system increases fear. Bipolarity is the most stable distribution of power, followed by multipolarity, followed by multipolarity with a potential hegemon. (44-45) Mearsheimer posits a hierarchy of state goals. Non-security goals (such as economic prosperity, ideology, national unification, and human rights) are secondary to security goals. He dismisses a world peace movement because the states that promote it are the states that would otherwise lose out if the status quo were not preserved, and without certainty that the effort would succeed, those who support the movement are likely to have lost ground in terms of the balance of power. (50-51) Finally, he argues that states consider the distribution of absolute gains in relative terms. (52-53)