John Mearsheimer

But when we talk about power, it's important to understand that it's population size and wealth that are underpinning it.

Yeah, well, anarchy basically means the opposite of hierarchy.

Sometimes people think when you're talking about anarchy, you're talking about murder and mayhem, but that's not what anarchy means in the realist context.

Anarchy simply means that you don't have hierarchy.

There's no higher authority that sits above states.

States are like pool balls on a table.

And in an anarchic world, there's no higher authority that you can turn to if you get into trouble.

And of course, the political philosopher who laid this all out was Thomas Hobbes.

And Hobbes talked about life in the state of nature.

And in the state of nature, you have individuals.

And those individuals compete with each other for power.

And the reason that they do is because in the state of nature, by definition, you have no higher authority.

And Hobbes's view is that the way to get out of this terrible situation where individuals are competing with each other and even killing each other is to create a state.

It's what he calls the Leviathan.

And that, of course, is the title of his famous book.

So the idea is to escape anarchy, you create a state.

And that means you go from anarchy to hierarchy.

The problem in international politics is that there is no world state.

There is no hierarchy.

And if you have no hierarchy and you're in an anarchic system, you have no choice but to try to maximize your relative power to make sure you are, as we used to say when I was a kid on New York City playgrounds, the biggest and baddest dude on the block.