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The basic dictate of neorealism is that the anarchic nature of the international system is the primary determinant of international relations. Kenneth Waltz first articulated neorealism in his 1979 Theory of International Politics. The earliest form of neorealism is Waltz’s defensive realism, which asserts that states merely seek to survive.

Mearsheimer agrees that the structure of the international system drives state behavior and that states' primary objective is to survive. However, offensive realism goes a step further, and argues that states seek to maximize relative power, as a way to strengthen their chances of survival.

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This appears in the updated edition of John Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

The rest of the 500-plus page book more closely outlines Mearsheimer’s theory of offensive realism and checks it against the historical record.

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This, like nearly all discussions of nuclear power, leads back to the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction.

Because states understand that a nuclear conflict would lead to the complete annihilation of all parties involved, states have avoided nuclear warfare at all costs. In fact, there has never been a direct war between nuclear-armed states. Thus, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been a peace-keeping, not a destructive, force.

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The mere potential for the Iranian regime – or any regime, for that matter – to be irrational is a large drawback to the predictive quality of international relations theory.

As constructivists argue, the whole of IR theory is based upon assumptions that are not inherently nor universally true. I.e., if some regime truly were irrational, they would not behave as an IR theorist would expect them to behave, thus rendering the “rules” of international relations irrelevant.

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According to Waltz’s neorealism, states behave rationally and in defense of their own security above all else in the international system:

In a selfhelp system, considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest.

– Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (p. 107)

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Below is a map, provided by CNN, of all countries that have or are suspected to have nuclear weaponry.

It would seem that the United States, too, has a regional monopoly on nuclear firepower. However, this is not so: while it is true that no other state in North America is armed with nuclear weaponry, Canada has the breakout capability that Waltz mentioned earlier. This is evidenced by Canada’s contributions to both the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Canada is not armed, though, and is committed to nuclear non-proliferation.

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At the time of the writing of this annotation – October 16, 2014, over two years after the writing of this article – no nuclear deal between these three entities had yet been agreed upon.

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This is a very realist perspective: this statement assumes that individual security is the ultimate goal of states.

A liberal may argue that Iran’s vulnerability would cause it to become more compliant with international expectations as it seeks allies and support, and, thus, cease its nuclear program.

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Realist Kenneth Waltz delivers an argument for why Iran attaining nuclear weaponry would actually be a positive contributor to peace in the world.

Originally published in the July/ August 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs.

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Waltz was the first modern IR theorist to consider the international system of anarchy to be the driving motivation of state conflict. This became neorealism, or structural realism, and amended the classical realist thinking that human nature drives state conflict.

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