INTR 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Power Transition Theory, Kenneth Waltz, Hard Power
19 Oct 2016
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Point 5 steaks are literally a life and death. Realists are very prone to the malian dialogue vs. athens ideology, he reason they lost un terms of zero sum game. The strong do as they will and the weak do as they must. If the melians had been rational they would have submitted to the athenians. There is always a winner and a loser. Realists say it"s better to be a slave/ Realists say that hard power is the most important under the anarchy is hard power. Not just any form of hard power, military hard power is the most, economic or demographic, etc. is only important if it benefits to capacity of state to build military power. Realists are not insensitive to soft power; they just consider hard power more valuable. It is rational to seek out hard (particularly military) power. The debate is between defensive and offensive realists.
