Kenneth Waltz (1924 – 2013)
Member of the faculty at the University of California and Columbia University and one of the most prominent scholars of international relations of the 20th century.
The best critical consideration of the inherent weakness of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers.
Asking who won a given war, someone has said, is like asking who won the San Francisco earthquake. That in war there is no victory but only varying degrees of defeat is a proposition that has gained increasing acceptance in the twentieth century.
Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it.
The most important causes of political arrangements and acts are found in the nature and behavior of man.
If we are to have peace, we must learn loyalty to a larger group. And before we can learn loyalty, the thing to which we are to be loyal must be created.
External pressure seems to produce internal unity.
To solve these problems one needs as much an understanding of politics as an understanding of man - and the one cannot be derived from the other.
No system of balance functions automatically.
To build a theory of international relations on accidents of geography and history is dangerous.
Is it capitalism or states that must be destroyed in order to get peace, or must both be abolished?
In a zero-sum game, the problem is entirely one of distribution, not at all one of production.
According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity.
The transitory interests of royal houses may be advanced in war; the real interests of all people are furthered by the peace.
The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others.
States in the world are like individuals in the state of nature. They are neither perfectly good nor are they controlled by law.
War may achieve a redistribution of resources, but labor, not war, creates wealth.
Once socialism replaces capitalism, reason will determine the policies of states.
In anarchy there is no automatic harmony.
It is not true that were the Soviet Union to disappear the remaining states could easily live in peace.
Each state pursues its own interest's, however defined, in ways it judges best. Force is a means of achieving the external ends of states because there exists no consistent, reliable process of reconciling the conflicts of interest that inevitably arise among similar units in a condition of anarchy.