A state's potential power is based on the size of its population and the level of its wealth.

Bandwagoning is a strategy for the weak.

Important benefits often accrue to states that behave in an unexpected way.

Decapitation is a fanciful strategy.

The German air offensives against British cities in World Wars I and II not only failed to coerce the United Kingdom to surrender, but Germany also lost both wars.

The liberal tradition has its roots in the Enlightenment, that period in the eighteenth-century Europe when intellectuals and political leaders had a powerful sense that reason could be employed to make the world a better place.

Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.