Book Review

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. By John J. Mearsheimer. W.W.Norton & Company,
Inc., 2014. Pp. vii, ix, xi, xv, xix,413. Index. $19.95, paper.

The Tragedy of Great Power Politics is a book written by John J. Mearsheimer, an American
political scientist who proposed offensive realism in international politics. The book is based
on this theory. Mearsheimer believes that anarchic international system lead to security
dilemma among states. Because there is no superior to protect them when states are in danger.
So they have to gain as much as power to help themselves.

The Tragedy of Great power means that conflict between great powers is endless, since every
state wants to gain as much as power at the expense of other states and become the only
hegemon in the world. Unlike the liberalism, offensive realist strengthens that states pursue
relative gains not absolute gains which means the international politics is a zero sum game.
Every great power wants to take advantage of other states and gain power at their expense.
Simultaneously, states are hypocrisy. Their behaviors are to maintain or maximize their
relative power to others rather than promote peace or help the weaker defeat the stronger.
Mearsheimers thesis statement is great power always view each other as the potential
military rivals. Security competition and war between the great powers is inevitable, because
the ultimate goal of every great power is to become the only regional hegemon in the world,
which is the optimal for state survival.

Mearsheimers book is well organized and convincing. As he didnt use too much academic
word in his book. Even reader who is unfamiliar with international politics can easily

understand his idea. I highly recommend those who interested in international relationship
choose this book as their primer. There are ten chapters in this book, each chapter served as a
supporting argument to the thesis. instead of rephrasing every single detail in each chapter, I
would like to give a brief introduction of every chapter which can give a brief review of the
book.

Firstly, Mearsheimers introduces the offensive realism as a theory in international politics to

the reader (pp.4-8). Then, Mearsheimer uses his theory to explain why states compete for
power and pursue hegemony. under the theory of offensive realism, the international system
is anarchy. state can never understand other states intention. States want to survive, so they
process military power to protect themselves, which assure them the wherewithal to hurt or
possibly destroy others. To the states, the more power they process the less threatened they
are (p.30).

To understand how states pursue power, understanding the definition of power is significant.
In chapter 3 and 4, he defined what is power in international politics. There are two
categories of power. One is potential power; another is actual military power (p.55).
Considering with the potential power, China has the largest population and the considerably
rapid rate of economy growth in the world. In addition, the actual military power of China is
very strong too. Military power that state already process, including independent sea power,
strategic airpower, land power, and nuclear weapons (p.83). China is a state with nuclear
weapon without doubts. in the recent year, China constantly show its assertiveness toward
maritime disputes.

chapter 5, Mearsheimer discusses how great power employ strategy to gain power. The
precondition for states gaining power is become wealthier which is the foundation of military
power. After processing wealth, state can acquire relative power by war, blackmail, bait and
bleed, and bloodletting. the state can employ those strategies through balancing or buckpassing (pp.138-39). In retrospect, Chinas behavior in recently year, China has incredibly
strong economy. the military budget of china grows annually. China more or less employ
blackmail to deal with their disputes and conflict with its neighbor.

After the theoretical parts. Mearsheimer uses historical record of Japan, German, the USSR,
the United Kingdom and the United States to justify his theory. Those great powers tried to
maximize their power as much as possible in the past, and expanded through conquest and
sought regional hegemony. To compare with the behavior of those states and China.
Mearsheimer finds that China is moving toward to this path.

Ultimately, Mearsheimer concludes that Anarchy and unbalanced multipolarity, which is two
major characteristics nowadays, are the major cause of war (p.337). So combining all of the
evidence, he gives out his own prediction about the rise of China in the last chapter. If China
economy continues skyrockets in the next few decades, the United States will once again face
a potential peer competitor, and great-power politics will return (p.367). To summarize his
book, he predicts that China cannot rise peacefully. China and the United States will felt into
the tragedy of great power politics.

In a nutshell, the theme of that book is likely to persuade reader if Chinas economy
continually grows rapidly, Chinas rise will bring war to the region or the world, because no
matter its neighbors or the United States wont allow China become the regional hegemon.

However, there are several points I want to raise to question the correctness of the theory in
Chinas case. Before my question, I want to elucidate I will not argue whether the rise of
China is peaceful or non-peaceful. because even the Chinese government itself doesnt give a
clear definition about what is rising peacefully. what I will do is find out the weakness of
Mearsheimers arguments.

The first set of question concerns about the definition of long term. The author emphasizes
that his focus is not on how China will behave in the near future, but on how it will act in the
longer term, when it will be much more powerful than it is today (p.362). Mearsheimer
doesnt mention what long term refer to, he only mentions next few decades in the chapter
10. So I assumed that the precondition of his prediction was based on the next few decades.
However, once someone understand what happened in china nowadays, no one will believe
that China can catch up with other great power and be the potential regional hegemon in few
decades to challenge the American predominance, even it grows very fast, it still is a
developing country in few decades, in terms of the hard power and soft power.

The second set of question concerns about the rapid economy growth in China. In chapter
ten, Mearsheimer argues that great powers politics will return if Chinas economy continually
grows rapidly for decades. however, this argument is contradicted by what he says in chapter
two. Mearsheimer says, GNP is a poor indicator of latent power when the states being
compared are at different levels of economic development (p.63). with limitation, he insists
using GNP (1991-2000) as an indicator of Chinas latent power (p.67). Undeniably, China is
the second largest economy in the world in terms of GDP now. But China is a semiindustrialized states. Its reasonable to predict after decades of development, China maybe
become an industrialized state like Japan and the United States. But in the final chapter, the

author didnt show hard evidence to prove that the rapid economy growth would lead China
be much wealthier than its neighbor or the United States and become the potential hegemon
in Asia to threaten the survival of other country.

Moreover, becoming wealthier doesnt prove that China will use the wealth to modernize it
fighting force to gain power which lead to security competition in the region. Wealthy states
sometimes do not build additional military forces. In the case of China, even its capabilities
arent on the flat of the curve like the UK in 19 th century (p.76). Despite of the primary
object of survival, China need to solve its domestic problem in the coming decades rather
than pursuit for regional hegemon. A tragedy happened in China few weeks ago, a village
woman killed her four children before committing suicide. Because poverty forced her to do
so. Someone may argue this is accidental, but the gap between the rich and the poor is
extremely large than any foreigner can imagined unless they have been to those rural areas in
China. Even in city, the livelihood issues are the great concern of government and citizens.
Such as the housing problem and the expensive medical treatment. Although the government
is reluctant to spend more money on those issue, they have to do so. Since those issues have
great impact on the domestic stability.

China is not as strong as what people imagined. Though as a rational actor, China wants to
become a regional hegemon, it still has a long way to go. In this scenario, even after decades,
the rise of china wont bring back great power politics because the United States will remain
the only regional hegemon in the world.

The third set of question concerns about the security competition in Asia, Mearsheimer
argues that major dispute between China and its neighbors or America will lead to the break

out of the conventional war, even under the nuclear deterrence (p.398). Because nuclear
armed great powers tend to be so confident that it could fight a war against a nuclear armed
rival without the war turning nuclear (p.132). So there is a serious possibility for China and
the United States to fight a conventional war in the future. However, Mearsheimer seems
underestimate 2 main factors.

Firstly, the nuclear deterrence in Asia is different from the Europe in cold war, but it also has
tremendous impact on Asias stability. System is anarchy and states can never be certain
about other states intention, which means miscalculation in states always happens in
international politics. Even though the great power A wants to fight a conventional war
without using nuclear weapon, the great power B would perceive its opponent want to fight
an all-out nuclear war with it, because he can never know the As intention. So may be B will
use nuclear weapon responds to As behavior. Fearing of the miscalculation, two state with
nuclear weapon is less likely to go into war.

Additionally, during the cold war, proxy war broke out between country without nuclear
weapon in Asia. Because both two super was afraid of miscalculation would turn
conventional war to nuclear war. Up until now, there are eight sovereign states in the world
declare they own nuclear weapon. Regardless of China, four out of seven is the neighbor of
China, which means the possibility of war between China and these four states is very low. In
addition, Japan, which is the most potential enemy of China in terms of historical problem
and territory disputes, is under Americas nuclear umbrella. So China is by no means to go to
war with its neighbor during its rise. Someone would argue that what about other weaker
states without nuclear weapon. For the weak states, blackmail is a better choice. Most of the
weak states in Asia dont want to give up the share of the worlds largest market in China.

Hence, war is unlikely happened between China and the weak state in Asia. Definitely, as the
author says, both two countries can find the proxy. But who can be the potential proxy for
them. Since most of the states in Asia process nuclear weapon.

Regarding to Sino-America, War between China and America is less likely happen in terms
of geographic reason. In chapter 4, Mearsheimer points out land power remains the king of
military power in the modern world. And large bodies of water minimize the powerprojection capabilities of land forces (p.83). Not to mention the nuclear deterrence, China and
its potential rival are separated by large bodies of water. There is the largest ocean, the Pacific
Ocean, between two countries. Its difficult for two countries project their military power to
others land. Even Japan, the loyal alliance of the United States, is far away from each other.
How to mobilize the land power is a tough task for two countries before war. Moreover, its
impossible for China fight with the United States beyond Asia. Because most of country in
the world are in a security community which dominated by America. Conversely, China only
has the DPRK.

From my understanding, the object of this book is to convince reader cannot rise peacefully,
so all of my suggestions will focus on the chapter ten. In my opinion, to strengthen the
argument that China cannot rise peacefully. I have few suggestions for the book. At first,
Mearsheimer has to clarify what is long term scenario. How long it should refer to. if there is
no specific scope of time, the argument is meaningless. Because I can argue that after 100
years, a random country will achieve clear-cut nuclear superiority. This country become a
globe hegemony and end the tragedy of the great power politics. Or there is another potential
regional hegemon which rise much more quickly than China.

Then if a few decades are the scope of time for the prediction. I would recommend to add
more statistical data to prove that if China economy continues growing at the high rate in the
next few decades, China will become the potential regional hegemon in Asia. Since
comparing with other great power in Asia, I dont think China can become a regional
hegemon which threaten the only regional hegemon, the United States, in the coming future.
Because the domestic issues always drag China down. the housing issue, the gap between the
rich and the poor etc.

Last but not least, about the nuclear deterrence in Asia. Mearsheimer dose say that one should
not deny the impact of nuclear weapons and the roles of states with nuclear power in Asia.
but he thinks the scenario in nowadays Asia is different from Europe in Cold war (p.398). So
war is easy to break out in Asia. I think he underestimate the power of other Asian country
with nuclear weapon, as 4 out of 8 countries with nuclear power are the neighbor of China,
and war is always fighting between neighbor. the existence of nuclear weapon can reduce the
instability rather than increase it in the region. In order to be more convincing, I suggest
analysis and evident should be given in last chapter. in addition, more clear explanation of
why geographic factors wont hinder China go to war with other states is needed.

All in all, this book is nice and well organized. As a junior international politics student, I got
a lot of inspiration from this book, in term of understanding nowadays international
relationship or the states behavior. I would recommend those who want to learn more about
the offensive realism and how to apply it in the international politics to read this book. You
will be never disappointed by it.