Actor: States as socialized players who are the primary actors in world affairs, anarchy.
- domestic politics can influence a state's foreign policy (<> black box)
Offensive realism
Goal: Security, Status quo
- Anarchy on the world stage causes states to become obsessed with security.
- This results in security dilemmas because security is zero sum.
Mean: Balance of Power
Features:
- States may signal their intentions to one another. If a state can communicate that its intentions are benign to another state, then the security dilemma may be overcome.
- States may signal their intentions to one another. If a state can communicate that its intentions are benign to another state, then the security dilemma may be overcome.
Prominent defensive realists include Stephen Walt, Kenneth Waltz, Stephen Van Evera, and Charles Glaser.
Offensive realism
Actor: Great powers (state as black boxes, no internal politics)
Goal: Survival, Maximizing relative power ahead of all other objectives
- depicting great powers as power-maximising revisionists privileging buck-passing(책임전가) over balancing strategies in their ultimate aim to dominate the international system.
Tenets:
- Great powers are the main actors in world politics and the international system is anarchical
- All states possess some offensive military capability
- States can never be certain of the intentions of other states
- States have survival as their primary goal
- States are rational actors, capable of coming up with sound strategies that maximize their prospects for survival
John J. Mearsheimer as fully developed in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
Source: Wikipedia
