The Tragedy of Great Power Politics[1] is a book by the American scholar John Mearsheimer on the subject of international relations theory published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2001.

Mearsheimer argues although achieving global hegemony would provide maximum security to a state, it is not feasible because the world has too many oceans which inhibit the projection of military power.

Mearsheimer disagrees with the assertions that states are content to live in a MAD world and that they would avoid developing defenses against nuclear weapons.

Instead, he argues that great powers would not be content to live in a MAD world and would try to search for ways to gain superiority over their nuclear rivals.

Mearsheimer points to the comment made by Henry Cabot Lodge that the United States had a "record of conquest, colonization and territorial expansion unequaled by any people in the 19th century."

By 1900, however, the United States had achieved regional hegemony and in 1895 its Secretary of State Richard Olney told Britain's Lord Salisbury that "today the U.S. is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects within its interposition...its infinite resources and isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable against all other powers."

[6] Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations called it an "important and impressive book" in which Mearsheimer "elegantly lays out his theoretical approach to the study of international politics".

Furthermore, Kupchan decries Mearsheimer's conviction in his own theory and his inability to be "more open to eclecticism in explaining politics among the great power".

[8] The Columbia University Professor Richard Betts called Tragedy one of the three great works of the post–Cold War era, along with Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (1992) and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996).

[9] And, Betts suggested, "once China's power is full grown", Mearsheimer's book may pull ahead of the other two in terms of influence.

If China implodes from a socioeconomic crisis, or evolves in some other way that eliminates its potential as a threat, Mearsheimer's theory will be in serious trouble because of its dismissal of domestic politics.

[10]One review held that rapprochement between Britain and the United States at the end of the 19th century and the success of the European Union in transforming Europe's geopolitical landscape cast serious doubt on the notion that balancing and destructive rivalry are inescapable features of international system.

If Mearsheimer had analyzed episodes of lasting peace that defy the predictions of balance-of-power theory, he would perhaps have been less convinced of the pervasive logic of offensive realism.

According to R. Harrison Wagner, Mearsheimer does not address whether democracy, trade, or another mechanism could prevent states from fighting, a view that is consistent with the broader perspective of the Kantian Peace Triangle.