Realists
Offensive realist who argues for hegemonic war theory and assumes that states are aggressive actors
Who is Mearsheimer (or Gilpin)?
The strong do what they can, the weak do what they must.
Who is Thucydides?
Democracies do not go to war with each other (likely due to ideological and economic factors).
Who is Kant?
Anarchy is what states make of it and it doesn't have to be a self-help world.
Who is Went?
Nuclear weapons are irrelevant and it is the fear of intolerable consequences that produces peace
Who is Mueller?
An world where offense has the advantage and it is impossible to distinguish offensive from defensive weapons is the most dangerous.
Who is Jervis?
Defensive realist who assumes that states are uncertain in the anarchic world are are driven by the security dilemma.
Nuclear weapons bring peace because they raise the cost of war, so leaders are less likely to go to war.
Who is Waltz?
Who is Ikenberry?
A change in domestic ideals and culture caused the USSR to end the Cold War
Who is Herman?
Capitalism causes imperialism because capitalism needs new markets and workforces to be sustainable, so it colonizes abroad to find those markets.
Who is Lenin?
WW2 was a hegemonic war with Germany and Japan as rising powers.
Who is Nye?
WW1 was caused by the security dilemma and states' belief that offense had the advantage.
Nuclear weapons increase the chance of conflict because they exist in imperfect systems controlled by imperfect actors.
Who is Sagan?
Argues that soft power is just as useful as hard power and that economic interdependence makes the cost of war too high
Who is Nye?
Social relationships construct what states are, what they believe, and what they want to achieve.
Who is Hurd?
Dependency Theory: Underdevelopment happened in some countries because it served the imperial power economically to keep the other state poor and reliant on the larger power.
Who is Frank?
New democracies are the most likely state to go to war because they are unified through nationalism which seeks an outside enemy
Who are Snyder and/or Mansfield?
Coined the phrase "Thucydides trap" referring to the inevitable conflict between a rising challenger and the status quo power.
Who is Allison?
All realist assumptions can be challenged because states are interconnected, have different interests that aren't clearly ordered, and force is not the solution to every problem.
Who is Keohane?
Female leaders may be more likely to be aggressive when it comes to foreign policy because the public punishes them more for backing down.
Who are Schwartz and/or Blair?
Primacy is the lack of a peer competitor in the international system. The US has had primacy since the end of the Cold War
Who is Brooks and/or Wohlforth?
Argues that the USSR was a failing power at the end of the Cold War, so following hegemonic war theory, it ended the conflict with the intent to return once it grew stronger.
Who is Wohlforth?
Applied the security dilemma to civil wars (uncertainty and an offensive advantage make peace difficult)
Who is Posen?
Climate protocols must be enforced and states who don't join them need to be punished.
Who is Nordhaus?
Leaders still impact IR because they are driven by different factors that cause different actions (personality has an impact on policy).
Who are Byman and Pollack?
Terrorists are rational actors who consider the cost before resorting to violence to enact an agenda.
Who is Crenshaw?