John Mearsheimer Quotes

... after the war, he became a big proponent of the argument that chemical warfare or gas warfare was actually a more humane form of warfare than shrapnel and bombs, because he saw what all those shrapnel and bombs did to all the boys who climbed out of the trenches and tried to cross no man's land, with German machine guns and artillery on the other side, he said I'll take the gas any day. I'm not making the case for gas warfare, but the idea that getting killed by gas is, more horrible than getting ripped apart by shrapnel and bullets is not one I buy. And when I see the Obama administration putting pictures of people killed by gas up on the internet, I say "let's put pictures of the people who got killed by shrapnel up there, and lets have a debate about which pictures look worse". It won't even be an interesting debate, getting killed by shrapnel, in my opinion is a lot more gruesome and a lot worse.

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

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

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.

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

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

I think that nuclear war is most likely if the Russians are losing. If the Russians are losing, if the Ukrainian military is rolling up Russian forces in eastern and southern Ukraine, and the sanctions are working and the Russians are on the verge of being knocked out of the ranks of the great powers, in that situation I think it's likely that the Russians would turn to nuclear weapons, and they would use those nuclear weapons in Ukraine. They would not dare use them against NATO, but they would turn to nuclear weapons. I think, given the fact that the Russians are not losing and, if anything, are winning, therefore the likelihood of nuclear war is greatly reduced. I don't want to say it's been taken off the table for one second, but I think as long as the Russians are on the upside of the battle, not on the downside, the likelihood of nuclear use is very low.

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

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

We invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe.... This is a story that we invented so that we could blame him (Vladimir Putin). My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible.

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.

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.

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.

Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.