32 quotes
I believe that the existing power structures in Europe and Northeast Asia are not sustainable through 2020.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
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 Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
Decapitation is a fanciful strategy.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected and pro-Russian president —which he rightly labeled a "coup"— was the final straw.
When World War II started on September 1, 1939, the German army contained 3.74 million soldiers and 103 divisions.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
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 Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
...If China continues to rise, you better be very careful, because that will drive the United States stark raving crazy....
The liberal tradition has its roots in the Enlightenment, that period in the eighteenth-century Europe when intellectuals and political leaders had a powerful sense that reason could be employed to make the world a better place.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
The optimists' claim that security competition and war among the great powers has been burned out of the system is wrong. In fact all of the major states around the globe still care deeply about the balance of power among themselves for the foreseeable future.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable.
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.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001)