John J. Mearsheimer
American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
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 ideal situation for any state is to experience sharp economic growth while its rivals' economies grow slowly or hardly at all.
In short, unbalanced bipolar systems are so unstable that they cannot last for any appreciable period of time.
States have two kinds of power: latent power and military power.
Important benefits often accrue to states that behave in an unexpected way.
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.
Preserving power, rather than increasing it, is the main goal of states.
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.