Kenneth Waltz Quotes

With many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire - conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur.

According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity.

It is not true that were the Soviet Union to disappear the remaining states could easily live in peace.

States in the world are like individuals in the state of nature. They are neither perfectly good nor are they controlled by law.

War may achieve a redistribution of resources, but labor, not war, creates wealth.

If we are to have peace, we must learn loyalty to a larger group. And before we can learn loyalty, the thing to which we are to be loyal must be created.

War most often promotes the internal unity of each state involved. The state plagued by internal strife may then, instead of waiting for the accidental attack, seek the war that will bring internal peace.

Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it.

Once socialism replaces capitalism, reason will determine the policies of states.

The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others.

In a zero-sum game, the problem is entirely one of distribution, not at all one of production.

To solve these problems one needs as much an understanding of politics as an understanding of man - and the one cannot be derived from the other.

I am not saying that such a theory cannot be constructed, but only that I cannot see how to do it in any way that might be useful. The decisive point, anyway, is that a macrotheory of international politics would lack the practical implications of macroeconomic theory. National governments can manipulate system-wide economic variables. No agencies with comparable capabilities exist internationally. Who would act on the possibilities of adjustment that a macrotheory of international politics might reveal?

Each state pursues its own interest's, however defined, in ways it judges best. Force is a means of achieving the external ends of states because there exists no consistent, reliable process of reconciling the conflicts of interest that inevitably arise among similar units in a condition of anarchy.

Each man does seek his own interest, but, unfortunately, not according to the dictates of reason.