Imprudent Predators

Why the Most Aggressive Powers Are Often the Weakest

Discovery Power and the Limits of Offensive Realism

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Epigraphs

“The great questions of the day will not be settled by speeches and majority decisions… but by blood and iron.”
— Otto von Bismarck

“The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.”
— Alfred North Whitehead

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I. The Puzzle

Why do the most powerful states in the modern international system often behave in ways that appear strategically cautious rather than aggressively expansionist?

During the nineteenth century, Britain became the most powerful state in the world without conquering large new territories or dramatically expanding its population. Instead, its power grew from transformations occurring inside its economy.

A series of technological breakthroughs—steam engines, mechanized textile production, modern metallurgy, and rail transport—multiplied the productivity of British industry and reshaped global trade.

These innovations did not merely redistribute wealth within the international system. They expanded the frontier of productive capability itself. British factories produced goods more efficiently than those of any rival, British shipyards built the world’s most advanced naval vessels, and British financial institutions organized global trade networks on an unprecedented scale.

Other powers quickly recognized the implications. Governments across Europe began attempting to replicate Britain’s industrial capabilities in order to compete militarily and economically with the new industrial power.

The transformation revealed something fundamental about the nature of modern geopolitical strength. Power was no longer determined primarily by territory or population. It increasingly depended on the ability of societies to generate continuous technological discovery.

Why, then, have the most powerful states of the modern era often behaved in ways that appear inconsistent with the predictions of offensive realism?

The theory developed by John Mearsheimer argues that prudent great powers behave like predators. Because the international system lacks a central authority capable of guaranteeing security, states must compete for power in order to survive. Rational actors therefore seek opportunities to expand their capabilities, weaken rivals, and prevent potential competitors from achieving regional dominance.

Yet the historical behavior of several system-leading powers appears to diverge from this prediction. Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth frequently emphasized open trade, alliance networks, and system leadership rather than territorial conquest. This behavior has long posed a puzzle for realist theory. If great powers must behave like predators in order to survive, why did the leading powers of the modern era often support open economic systems that appeared to benefit potential rivals? The answer suggested here is that discovery powers can tolerate such openness because their institutional ecosystems continually regenerate the sources of their strength.

From the perspective of offensive realism, such behavior appears puzzling—perhaps even imprudent.

Traditional schools of international relations theory tend to explain geopolitical behavior through the distribution of capabilities, the operation of institutions, or the influence of ideas and norms. This essay approaches the problem from a different angle by examining how power is generated in the first place.

Offensive realism assumes that great powers compete primarily to capture existing power. The argument developed here suggests that modern geopolitics is better understood as competition over the production of power.

In the modern world, national power increasingly depends on institutional environments capable of generating continuous technological discovery and productivity growth.

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II. The Logic of Offensive Realism

Offensive realism begins from a structural premise: the international system is anarchic. Because no central authority exists to guarantee security, states must rely on their own capabilities to survive.

Under these conditions the intentions of other states can never be known with certainty. Even states that appear benign today may become threats tomorrow. Survival therefore requires maintaining sufficient power to deter or defeat potential rivals.

Within this framework prudent great powers behave like predators. They seek opportunities to increase their relative power, weaken rivals, and prevent the emergence of competing regional hegemons.

Expansion becomes a rational strategy in a dangerous world.

Offensive realism therefore predicts that rising powers will frequently pursue aggressive strategies to maximize their share of power within the international system.

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III. The Organic State and the Fixed-Power Assumption

The intellectual roots of modern realism extend back to nineteenth-century European theories of the state.

Earlier political thought often treated the state as a legal or institutional arrangement created through social contracts. Romantic and German idealist traditions introduced a different conception. Influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, many thinkers began describing the state as an organic entity embedded within historical development.

Later writers such as Heinrich von Treitschke emphasized the struggle among states as a central feature of political life. States appeared as living organisms competing for survival in a hostile environment.

This tradition is sometimes described as “Social Darwinism,” though the label is historically misleading. The metaphor of states as organisms struggling for survival developed largely within Romantic and Hegelian traditions before the biological theories of Charles Darwin were widely applied to political thought.

What this intellectual lineage did produce was a particular assumption about power.

If states are organisms competing for survival, power appears largely finite. One state’s gain must come at another’s expense.

Modern realist theories largely inherit this fixed-power assumption, even when the philosophical language of organic state theory disappears.

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IV. The Industrialization Problem

This assumption worked reasonably well in a pre-industrial world where wealth depended primarily on land, labor, and agricultural production. Under those conditions expansion directly increased power by incorporating territory and population into the state.

Industrialization fundamentally altered this relationship.

Technological innovation and productivity growth began to expand the frontier of economic capability itself. Power no longer depended solely on controlling existing resources but on generating new forms of production.

In this sense, the shift resembles the transformation in economic thought that followed the decline of mercantilism. Mercantilist thinkers believed wealth consisted primarily of finite stocks of precious metals. Modern economics eventually demonstrated that wealth could be created through innovation and productivity growth.

A similar insight applies to geopolitical power.

Once technological discovery becomes the primary driver of economic and military capability, power can be generated rather than merely redistributed.

In the modern world, power follows discovery.

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V. Discovery Powers and Secondary Industrializers

A discovery power is a state whose long-run strength derives from institutional systems that generate continuous innovation. Universities, firms, financial markets, and scientific communities form decentralized environments that produce technological and organizational breakthroughs.

This relationship between economic productivity and geopolitical power was emphasized by historian Paul Kennedy, who argued that long-run shifts in the balance of power often follow changes in the productive capacity of competing states.

Other states industrialize later by adopting technologies developed elsewhere. These secondary industrializers may achieve rapid economic growth but often face incentives to close the technological gap through alternative strategies.

Historically, secondary industrializers have followed two major paths.

The first wave pursued import-substitution industrialization, developing domestic heavy industry in order to achieve military autonomy. Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all followed this strategy.

A second wave after the Second World War pursued export-stimulated industrialization. West Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan integrated into global markets while developing advanced manufacturing sectors.

A crucial difference distinguished this second wave: these states industrialized within an American-led security and trade system.

China represents a historically unusual case. It is the first major power attempting export-driven industrialization while simultaneously positioning itself as a strategic rival of the state that created the global economic system within which that industrialization occurred.

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VI. Strategic Adaptation in Wartime

Discovery powers sometimes adopt mobilization strategies when confronting adversaries organized around centralized power.

During major conflicts democratic societies have expanded state authority, coordinated industrial production, and mobilized national resources on a massive scale. As the Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky once observed, democracies at war often imitate non-democracies to some extent for the duration of the conflict.

Yet these adaptations are usually temporary.

After major wars Britain and the United States both returned to decentralized economic systems that continued generating innovation.

Mobilization may win wars.

Discovery sustains long-run power.

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VII. The Asymmetry Theorem

An important asymmetry distinguishes discovery powers from mobilization powers.

Discovery systems are flexible. They can adopt centralized mobilization strategies when confronted by hostile rivals.

Mobilization systems, however, struggle to reproduce the decentralized institutional environments that sustain discovery.

Scientific experimentation, entrepreneurial initiative, and open information flows are difficult to generate within highly centralized political structures.

Discovery powers can temporarily adopt mobilization strategies when necessary.

Mobilization powers rarely reproduce the institutional environments that sustain discovery.

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VIII. Imprudent Predators

Offensive realism assumes prudent great powers behave like predators.

Yet many of the most aggressive expansionist states of the modern era were not the strongest powers in the system. They were rising secondary industrializers attempting to close technological and productivity gaps.

Imperial Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all exhibited this pattern.

The experience of the First World War illustrates this dynamic clearly. Imperial Germany mobilized industrial power with remarkable efficiency. Yet the broader discovery ecosystems of Britain — and eventually the United States — proved more adaptable over the long run.

Expansionist strategies were not irrational. They represented attempts to compensate for institutional disadvantages.

But territorial expansion rarely eliminated the productivity gap separating these states from discovery powers.

The result was a recurring historical pattern: rising powers often behaved like predators precisely when their structural position was weakest.

They were not prudent predators.

They were imprudent predators.

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IX. Conclusion

Offensive realism captures an important feature of international politics: states operating in competitive environments often seek opportunities to increase their relative power.

But the theory rests on an assumption that becomes increasingly problematic in the modern world.

It treats power as largely fixed.

Industrialization revealed that power can be generated through technological discovery and productivity growth. Societies capable of sustaining institutions that accelerate innovation continually expand the frontier of economic and military capability.

Power in such systems is not merely redistributed.

It is created.

The strategic asymmetry between these systems can therefore be summarized simply.

Discovery powers can temporarily adopt the mobilization strategies of their rivals. Mobilization powers rarely reproduce the institutional environments that sustain discovery.

This relationship can be summarized as a simple principle: states that sustain institutional environments conducive to decentralized discovery will accumulate greater long-run power than states organized primarily around centralized mobilization.

The most powerful societies of the modern era have therefore not been those most willing to seize power through expansion, but those most capable of generating it through discovery.

Rising powers that rely primarily on territorial expansion to compensate for institutional disadvantages may therefore appear aggressive, but their behavior often reflects structural weakness rather than strength. In this sense, many of the most expansionist states of the modern era were not prudent predators. They were imprudent predators.

In the modern world, power follows discovery.

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Recommended Reading

Readers interested in the theoretical traditions discussed in this essay may wish to consult the following works.

John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.

Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches.

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.

Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity.

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Tim Starr is an autodidact writer and independent thinker exploring the deep interplay between economic liberty and military defense. Through his Substack, Free Markets and Firepower, he examines how free markets generate prosperity while credible firepower secures the conditions for liberty to thrive—rejecting both naive pacifism and unchecked statism.

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