John Mearsheimer

Yes, inside the structural realist world, right?

And you have a handful of realists who believe that the structure of the system is

fosters competition for sure security competition but it really rules out great power war almost all the time so

It makes sense to care about the balance of power, but to focus on maintaining how much power you have.

That's the defense of realism, maintaining how much power you have, not trying to gain more power.

Because the argument the defense of realists make is that if you try to gain more power, the system will punish you.

The structure will punish you.

I'm not a defensive realist.

I'm an offensive realist.

And my argument is that states look for opportunities to gain more power.

And every time they see or almost every time they see an opportunity to gain more power and they think the likelihood of success is high and the cost will not be great, they'll jump at that opportunity.

Well, I think that Nazi Germany was driven in large part by structural considerations.

And I think if you look at Imperial Germany, which was largely responsible for starting World War I, and of course Nazi Germany is largely responsible for starting World War II,

What that tells you is you didn't need Adolf Hitler to start World War I, right?

And I believe that there is a good chance you would have had World War II in the absence of Hitler, right?

I believe that Germany was very powerful.

It was deeply worried about the balance of power in Europe, and it had strong incentives to behave aggressively.

in the late 1930s, early 1940s.

So I believe that structure mattered.

However, I want to qualify that in the case of Adolf Hitler, because I do think he had what you would call a will to power.