Glenn H. Snyder

Mearsheimer's World—Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security: A Review Essay

Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. More than afty years have passed since Hans Morgenthau introduced “realism” as an approach to the study of international relations. Since then, the approach has withstood not only a steady assault from such external quarters as liberal institutionalism, the democratic peace school, and “constructivism” but also a marked divisive tendency. Splinter groups have emerged, each waving an identifying adjective to herald some new variant or emphasis. The arst of these came in the late 1970s, when Kenneth Waltz’s “neorealism” marked a major split from Morgenthau’s traditional realism, which henceforth became known as “classical” realism. Since then, especially during the last decade, new variants and new tags have proliferated. The aeld of international relations now has at least two varieties of “structural realism,” probably three kinds of “offensive realism,” Mearsheimer’s World— Offensive Realism and the Struggle for Security Glenn H. Snyder