Acknowledgments In writing this book, I benefited enormously from the criticisms and support of many individuals and institutions. My first and greatest debt is to John Mearsheimer. When my arguments were in their least developed and most vulnerable form, he generously and unfailingly gave me vital intellectual guidance and encouragement. He pushed me to strengthen my arguments and to pursue them to their logical conclusion. And, perhaps most important, when the research was not going so well,

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... e reassured me that the project had value and that I ought to persevere and complete it. For his support and friendship I will always be grateful. I also offer special thanks to Louise Hodgden. She read every chapter many times and offered extremely important criticisms and suggestions on how I might clarify my theoretical ideas and empirical analysis. I am also especially grateful to Claudio Cioffi-Revilla and George Tsebelis for their guidance in thinking about how one might specify a realist-informed utility function for defensively positional states. I thank my friends and colleagues who read the entire manuscript and offered many recommendations on how to improve it: