The updated edition of this classic treatise on the behavior of great powers takes a penetrating look at the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century: Can China rise peacefully? In clear, eloquent prose, John Mearsheimer explains why the answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain the world's sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening. The tragedy of great power politics is inescapable.

A groundbreaking examination of a central question in international relations: Do states act rationally?   To understand world politics, you need to understand how states think. Are states rational? Much of international relations theory assumes that they are. But many scholars believe that political leaders rarely act rationally. The issue is crucial for both the study and practice of international politics, for only if states are rational can scholars and policymakers understand and predict their behavior.   John J. Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato argue that rational decisions in international politics rest on credible theories about how the world works and emerge from deliberative decision‑making processes. Using these criteria, they conclude that most states are rational most of the time, even if they are not always successful. Mearsheimer and Rosato make the case for their position, examining whether past and present world leaders, including George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, have acted rationally in the context of momentous historical events, including both world wars, the Cold War, and the post–Cold War era.     By examining this fundamental concept in a novel and comprehensive manner, Mearsheimer and Rosato show how leaders think, and how to make policy for dealing with other states.

A renowned scholar argues that liberal hegemony-the policy America has pursued since the Cold War ended-is doomed to fail Named a Financial Times Best Book of 2018 "Idealists as well as realists need to read this systematic tour de force."-Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo's World It is widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build international institutions. The policy of remaking the world in America's image is supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not what has happened. Instead, the United States has become a highly militarized state fighting wars that undermine peace, harm human rights, and threaten liberal values at home. In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony-the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended-is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad. The Great Delusion is a lucid and compelling work of the first importance for scholars, policymakers, and everyone interested in the future of American foreign policy.

Does America's pro-Israel lobby wield inappropriate control over US foreign policy? This book has created a storm of controversy by bringing out into the open America's relationship with the Israel lobby: a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape foreign policy in a way that is profoundly damaging both to the United States and Israel itself. Israel is an important, valued American ally, yet Mearsheimer and Walt show that, by encouraging unconditional US financial and diplomatic support for Israel and promoting the use of its power to remake the Middle East, the lobby has jeopardized America's and Israel's long-term security and put other countries - including Britain - at risk.

For more than two decades, John J. Mearsheimer has been regarded as one of the foremost realist thinkers on foreign policy. Clear and incisive, a fearlessly honest analyst, his coauthored 2007 New York Times bestseller, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, aroused a firestorm with its unflinching look at the making of America's Middle East policy. Now he takes a look at another controversial but understudied aspect of international relations: lying.
In Why Leaders Lie, Mearsheimer provides the first systematic analysis of lying as a tool of statecraft, identifying the varieties, the reasons, and the potential costs and benefits. Drawing on a trove of examples, he argues that leaders often lie for good strategic reasons, so a blanket condemnation is unrealistic and unwise. Yet there are other kinds of deception besides lying, including concealment and spinning. Perhaps no distinction is more important than that between lying to another state and lying to one's own people. Mearsheimer was amazed to discover how unusual interstate lying has been; given the atmosphere of distrust among the great powers, he found that outright deceit is difficult to pull off and thus rarely worth the effort. Plus it sometimes backfires when it does occur. Khrushchev lied about the size of the Soviet missile force, sparking an American build-up. Eisenhower got caught lying about U-2 spy flights in 1960, which scuttled an upcoming summit with Krushchev. Leaders more often mislead their own publics, sometimes with damaging consequences. Though the reasons may be noble--Franklin Roosevelt, for example, lied to the American people about German U-boats attacking the destroyer Greer in 1940, to build a case for war against Hitler-they can easily lead to disaster, as with the Bush administration's falsehoods about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
There has never been a sharp analysis of international lying. Now a leading expert fills the gap with a richly informed and powerfully argued book.

For more than fifty years, George F. Kennan's "American Diplomacy" has been a standard work on American foreign policy. Drawing on his considerable diplomatic experience and expertise, Kennan offers an overview and critique of the foreign policy of an emerging great power whose claims to rightness often spill over into self-righteousness, whose ambitions conflict with power realities, whose judgmentalism precludes the interests of other states, and whose domestic politics frequently prevent prudent policies and result in overstretch. Keenly aware of the dangers of military intervention and the negative effects of domestic politics on foreign policy, Kennan identifies troubling inconsistencies in the areas between actions and ideals - even when the strategies in question turned out to be decided successes. In this expanded fiftieth-anniversary edition, a substantial new introduction by John J. Mearsheimer, one of America's leading political realists, provides new understandings of Kennan's work and explores its continued resonance. As America grapples with its new role as one power among many - rather than as the "indispensable nation" that sees "further into the future" - Kennan's perceptive analysis of the past is all the more relevant. Today, as then, the pressing issue of how to wield power with prudence and responsibility remains, and Kennan's cautions about the cost of hubris are still timely. Refreshingly candid, "American Diplomacy" cuts to the heart of policy issues that continue to be hotly debated today.

For almost half a century, Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1895 1970) was the most highly regarded writer on strategy and military matters in the English-speaking world and even today, his ideas are still discussed and debated. Although he helped to formulate Great Britain's military doctrine after the First World War, it was his critique of British strategic policy before and during the early years of the Second World War that earned him a seemingly unassailable reputation as a brilliant strategist.

In this unflinching but balanced book, John J. Mearsheimer reexamines Liddell Hart's career and uncovers evidence that he manipulated the facts to create a false picture of his role in military policy debates in the 1930s. According to Liddell Hart's widely accepted account, his progressive ideas about armored warfare were rejected by the British army and adopted instead by the more far-sighted German generals. The Wehrmacht's application of his theory of blitzkrieg, he claimed, resulted in the defeat of France in 1940, a disaster he foresaw. Setting the historical record straight, Mearsheimer shatters once and for all the myth of Liddell Hart's prescience in the interwar period.

Liddell Hart had, in fact, "been quite wrong on the basic military questions of the 1930s," Mearsheimer finds, "and his writings helped lead the British government into serious error. Wide recognition of Liddell Hart's misjudgments badly damaged his reputation during the war, and Mearsheimer shows how he mounted a successful campaign to restore his image. Although some of Liddell Hart's military theories are still relevant, Mearsheimer warns that they should be applied with caution. This troubling book offers a striking illustration of how history can be used and abused how a gifted individual can create their own self-serving version of the past.

Based on scrupulously documented evidence, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History is certain to be of great interest to those concerned with military policy and history."

Conventional Deterrence is a book about the origins of war. Why do nations faced with the prospect of large-scale conventional war opt for or against an offensive strategy? John J. Mearsheimer examines a number of crises that led to major conventional wars to explain why deterrence failed. He focuses first on Allied and German decision making in the years 1939-1940, analyzing why the Allies did not strike first against Germany after declaring war and, conversely, why the Germans did attack the West. Turning to the Middle East, he examines the differences in Israeli and Egyptian strategic doctrines prior to the start of the major conventional conflicts in that region. Mearsheimer then critically assays the relative strengths and weaknesses of NATO and the Warsaw Pact to determine the prospects for conventional deterrence in any future crisis. He is also concerned with examining such relatively technical issues as the impact of precision-guided munitions (PGM) on conventional deterrence and the debate over maneuver versus attrition warfare.Mearsheimer pays considerable attention to questions of military strategy and tactics. Challenging the claim that conventional detrrence is largely a function of the numerical balance of forces, he also takes issue with the school of thought that ascribes deterrence failures to the dominance of "offensive" weaponry. In addition to examining the military consideration underlying deterrence, he also analyzes the interaction between those military factors and the broader political considerations that move a nation to war.

A jarring and compelling analysis of the inevitability of war.

A decade after the end of the Cold War, both policy makers and academics foresee a new era of peace and prosperity, an era when democracy, open trade, and mutual trust will join hands to banish war from the globe. With insight worthy of The Prince, John Mearsheimer exposes the truth behind this idyllic illusion: in a world where no international authority reigns above states, great powers invariably seek to gain power at each other's expense and to establish themselves as the dominant state.

Since, as Mearsheimer reminds us, nobody answers when states dial 911, they must be ready for danger from any quarter. Is my neighbor my friend? Will today's friend become tomorrow's enemy? Am I strong enough to stave off an attack? In a world where no state can be sure that others will not have hostile intentions, great powers must protect themselves by acquiring as much power as possible in case another state becomes aggressive. Herein lies the tragedy of great power politics: even states that might be content to live at peace are condemned to engage in a relentless struggle for power.

Mearsheimer's provocative theory of "offensive realism" not only explains why visions of a harmonious world remain utopian but also illuminates the different strategies that great powers use to advance their interests. He shows, for example, why great powers try to shift the burden of preserving the balance of power onto both allies and rivals, and why they often welcome wars between rival states. To support his theory, Mearsheimer unveils a comprehensive, eye-opening history of modern great powers such as Wilhelmine Germany, the Soviet Union, imperial Japan, and the United States, showing how each one sought to maximize its own power whenever favorable opportunities arose.

Readers will find more than just theory and history in these pages. Mearsheimer also reflects on the prospects for peace in Europe and Northeast Asia, the areas of primary strategic interest to the United States. He maintains that today's relative tranquillity in those regions will be but a brief interlude in the perennial struggle between great powers. In particular, he argues that the United States is destined to wage an intense and dangerous security competition with a rising China, and that attempts to prevent that conflict through a strategy of "engagement" are doomed to fail.

"Mearsheimer asks important and difficult questions and gives provocative answers. Here, he provides a fascinating account of how great powers behave and a powerful explanation of why they behave as they do. This book is the definitive work on offensive realism." —Kenneth Waltz, Columbia University

"In The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John Mearsheimer marshals enormous evidence and sophisticated logic to make an impressive case for his theory of 'offensive realism.' This book ranks with, and in many respects supersedes, the works of Morgenthau and Waltz in the core canon of the realist literature on international politics. All serious students of international affairs will have to come to grips with its argument." —Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard University

"The Tragedy of Great Power Politics takes realist theory to a new level of rigor and sophistication. In clear and accessible prose, Mearsheimer explains why security competition is 'hard-wired' into the international system and identifies the different ways that great powers compete for power. His arguments are provocative and compelling, and supported by a wealth of historical evidence. Some readers may reject his conclusions, but few will find them easy to disregard. This book will be essential reading for scholars and students but will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know how international relations really works." —Stephen M. Walt, Harvard University