Empires of the Weak

John Mearsheimer

Great Delusion

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication date: 2019

ISBN: 978-0691182797

Pages: 216

Large parts of Africa, America, and Asia were colonised by dominant European powers during the Age of Discovery, which meant that the European expansion of the 15th and 18th centuries formed the first global political and economic systems. The author argues that the great conquerors at the dawn of the modern age were not the Europeans, but rather the Asian powers, such as the Ottoman Turks in the Middle East and the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. Whereas, in the case of the conquest of America, a plague that decimated the indigenous population served as the base of European supremacy. For this reason, the dominance of the West should rather be viewed as an exception, while the rise of Asia in the 21st century may be considered a return to the norm.

Published by: Yale University Press

Year of publication: 2018

ISBN: 978-0300234190

Pages: 328

The great powers that dominate the international system are constantly engaged in security competition, that sometimes lead to war, according to John Mearsheimer, the American political thinker and a leading exponent of the realist school. In order to avoid this and to achieve their foreign policy goals, actors involved in international politics are, in his view, pursuing three world-views – liberalism, realism and nationalism. Emerging victorious from the Cold War, the United States became the sole great power in the world, and as a deeply liberal country, its objective was to spread liberal democracy, which is the basis for peace, because liberal democracies do not want to go to war with each other.