Difference Between Realism And Defensive Realism

Security Dilemma has been one of the core concepts of international relations theory since the past fifty years or so as it has played an important role in explaining the major events in the world such as World War 1 or the cold war. It looks into the problem of states going into war even though they do not desire to only because they feel insecure or threatened by the actions of another state. This term looks into the dynamics of relationships between countries and how lack of communication between them leads to misunderstandings resulting in a competition. This competition takes shape in the form of arms race and alliance formation. Moreover, it is very interesting to understand the difference between offensive and defensive realism as different …show more content…
Waltz considers the international system to be anarchic hence states must follow the principle of self-help and ensure their own security. Defensive realism believes that any action taken by a state to increase its security, be it military or diplomatic, is done in order to defend itself in hard times. It is not done with the intention of threatening another state but merely for saving itself. Hence defensive realism’s foundations are based on survivalism. On the contrary, offensive realism does not consider states as security maximisers but as power maximisers and its spokesperson is John mearsheimer suggested that it is impossible to be sure of any state’s intentions. No state would display its actual foreign policy for its rivals or give its rival a peace of mind by declaring its capabilities as offensive. Hence according to mearsheimer, the only way to achieve security is by maximising a state’s capabilities to a level where it has no other direct competitor. Even though he does realise that this is impossible in today’s world, he does not believe in upholding status quo within states. Thus, defensive and offensive realism may result in preventive war wherein as one state realises that the balance of power is shifting in favour of another state, it decides to attack first as the future conditions for war may not be favourable. Whereas in premptive war, …show more content…
In this anarchic world, one state might build up its military capability in order to ensure its security or to utilise its resources, but since the other states are not clear about the intentions of the state, they would regard this as a direct threat to their survival and an aggressive stance and would result in the other state increasing its military capability in competition. This leads to an increasing spiral of military and arms in order to have that offensive power other the rival state. The most valid example for this the arms race between USA and USSR during the cold war. When USA bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki with its atomic bomb in 1945, it thought that it would take the ussr atleast another 15 years or so to make the bomb considering the damage done to it during world war 2, but the usssr had realised the lag and it was able to produce its atomic bomb in 1949. This made USA feel threatened hence they moved on to developing hydrogen bombs to have an upper hand over ussr again, but in 1953 ussr was able to catch up once more. Hence the we moved towards building a number of long range missiles including Atlas, ICBMs, jupiter, IRBMs and SLBMs. Thus USA did have a technological edge over the USSR, but USSR kept challenging that not just by their nuclear weapons but even by their space satellites as in 1957 Sputnik 1 was launched by the soviets and it was the first ever artificial