Questions: Offensive Realism and Great Power Competition

Question 1

China continues expanding its military capabilities well beyond what would be needed to deter an invasion of its territory. A defensive realist would struggle to explain this, but an offensive realist would explain it by arguing that:

• A. Chinese leaders have inherently aggressive personalities that drive expansion regardless of the structural environment
• B. Under anarchy, a state can never be certain rivals won't eventually use power against it, so maximizing relative power toward regional hegemony is rational even from a position of security
• C. China is responding to a specific, imminent military threat from the United States that justifies the buildup
• D. Domestic political pressures from nationalist factions force Chinese leaders to pursue military expansion against their strategic preferences

Answer: (B)

Offensive realism's key move is to deny there is a natural 'enough security' stopping point. Waltz's defensive realism implies states seek a comfortable survival margin — additional power beyond that is costly and unnecessary. Mearsheimer argues that because a state can never know another's future intentions, any rival's power is a potential future threat. The rational response is to keep maximizing relative power toward regional hegemony, which eliminates the threat environment rather than managing it. Option A invokes individual-level psychology, which is precisely what structural theories are designed to avoid. Options C and D likewise invoke unit-level explanations inconsistent with offensive realism's structural logic.

Question 2

What is the central disagreement between Mearsheimer's offensive realism and Waltz's defensive realism?

• A. Waltz believes states are rational; Mearsheimer believes states are often irrational and driven by fear
• B. Mearsheimer denies that anarchy is the key structural feature; Waltz sees it as the source of competition
• C. Waltz holds that states seek sufficient security and balance against threats; Mearsheimer holds that states rationally seek to maximize power toward regional hegemony
• D. Waltz's theory applies only to bipolar systems; Mearsheimer's applies to multipolar ones

Answer: (C)

Both theorists accept the anarchic structure as the starting point and both treat states as rational. The disagreement is about the goal states pursue given anarchy. Waltz argues states want to survive and will balance against threats, but don't need to dominate. Mearsheimer argues that since you can never be certain of others' intentions, the only way to guarantee survival is maximum relative power — and any state that could achieve regional hegemony at acceptable cost should rationally do so. This difference in the 'threshold' drives very different predictions about how much power states accumulate.

Question 3

Offensive realism predicts that the United States would work to prevent other regional powers from achieving dominance in their own hemispheres, even when the U.S. faces no direct military threat.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This follows directly from offensive realism's logic. The U.S. achieved regional hegemony in the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century (enforced by the Monroe Doctrine) and, per Mearsheimer, has since pursued a grand strategy of preventing any peer competitor from doing the same in Europe or Asia. U.S. intervention in both World Wars, NATO membership, and containment of China all fit this pattern: not because the U.S. was directly attacked, but because another regional hegemon would constrain American power globally. Offensive realism predicts this behavior structurally — it doesn't require the U.S. to be threatened, only for a potential rival to be rising.

Question 4

Offensive realism holds that great powers pursue expansion primarily when their domestic political systems are nationalistic or their leaders have aggressive ideologies.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is precisely the kind of unit-level explanation that offensive realism rejects. Mearsheimer's argument is structural: the incentives toward power maximization flow from anarchy, uncertainty about intentions, and the potential harm states can inflict on each other — regardless of domestic regime type, leadership ideology, or national culture. This is why offensive realism can explain expansionism by democracies, autocracies, monarchies, and republics alike. The strength (and limitation) of the theory is that it abstracts away domestic politics entirely. Leaders may be ideologically moderate or nationalist, but the structural logic pushes all of them in the same direction.

Question 5

Why does Mearsheimer argue that the security dilemma cannot be resolved through reassurance or transparency about a state's benign intentions?

Model answer: The security dilemma in offensive realism is not based on misperception — it is a structural condition rooted in the permanent uncertainty of intentions under anarchy. Even if State A transparently declares benign intentions today, State B cannot be certain that those intentions won't change in the future as circumstances shift. More fundamentally, offensive military capabilities are not separable from intentions: a strong state is dangerous regardless of its current disposition. Since power can be repurposed, a strong neighbor is a threat independent of what its leaders currently say. Reassurance addresses current intent but not future capability or future intent.

This is what makes offensive realism 'structural': the problem isn't that states misread each other (though they sometimes do) — the problem is that the incentive structure of anarchy makes competition rational even between well-intentioned states. This contrasts with liberal institutionalist and constructivist views that reassurance, communication, and norm-building can genuinely dampen competition. Mearsheimer's response is that these tools work only at the margins — they cannot override the structural logic.