The Realist perspective on international relations generally emphasizes the importance of power in international politics.  In general, power is the capacity to influence others to do things that they would otherwise not be likely to do.  Power is derived from many sources, but realists often emphasize in particular military power, and or the control of vital resources.  In general, it is useful for states to be powerful, and to bend others to their will, however, no state enjoys being force to do things it does not want to do by other states.  This leads consequently to the security dilema, where in increase in power by one state, is inherently threatening to other states.

In this chapter, you learn about how the United States power has had few rivals, and no real peers since the end of the cold war.  This has led to a debate amongst American realists about how best to manage the global security dilemna.  The power transition school feels that a decline in the relative power of the United States could lead to instability, and so it is very important that the United States take advantage of its present predominance of power to maintain every possible advantage.  A more traditional realist perspective would be more conservative.  Because it is inevitable that challengers will arise to confront US power eventually, the power balancing school calls for using American power judiciously and rarely, and trying to build positive relations with other powerful states, so they will not feel as threatened by American power.

The chapter also does a careful assessment of the power resouces of China and the Russian Federation.  Ultimately, those two states are likely to be rivals to American power.  American hegemony is inherently threatening to their interests, and they can be expected to build their own power resources in order to avoid being constantly subject to America’s political will.  This will likely create tension between the US and these rising powers.  A challenge for future American policy maker’s will be to manage those tensions while avoiding direct conflict.