random poli sci-ness

On balance of power in international relations:

Secondary states, if they are free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens them. On the weaker side they are both more appreciated and safer, provided, of course, that the coalition they join achieves enough defensive or deterrent strength to dissuade adversaries from attacking. Thus Thucydides records that in the Peloponnesian War the lesser city states of Greece cast the stronger Athens as the tyrant and the weaker Sparta as their liberator. According to Werner Jaeger, Thucydides thought this 'perfectly natural in the circumstances,', but saw 'that the parts of tyrant and liberator did not correspond with any permanent moral quality in these states but were simply masks which would one day be interchanged to the astonishment of the beholder when the balance of power was altered.'

~Kenneth Waltz, 'Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power'

I don't always agree with realism, but...yeah.