re and its role in the basis of international politics can also justify cooperation. This use of defensive realism is particularly seen in cooperation between the United States, Britain and Soviet Union during the Second World War. In this situation, the United States and Britain recognized the need to enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union in order to maintain a balance of power against Hitler’s Nazi Germany (Royde-Smith and Hughes). This time, the attempt to regulate the balance of power relates back to human nature in a very similar way. Hobbes’ assumptions about humanity’s irrefutable fear of death, which would explain that this balance of power was a reaction in fear because Hitler had already overtaken so many nations that if he were to fully conquer the Soviet Union, his power would presumably be one that could eliminate the United States and/or Great Britain. The United States and Great Britain were using this defensive alliance to prevent their own destruction in such a way that this balance of power was clearly developed on the basis human nature. No one explained this better than Prime Minister of Great Britain at the time, Winston Churchill, who told his nation after forming the alliance, “No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism for the last twenty-five years. I will unsay no word I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding…The Russian danger is therefore our danger, and the danger of the United States, just as the cause of any Russian fighting for hearth and house is the cause of free men and free peoples in every quarter of the globe.”

It is necessary to point out that human nature does not only relate to this singular form of realism, as it can be an explanatory force in offensive realism as well. The United States has seen a rapid rise to power in the past 200 years by establishing itself as a regional hegemon in the Western hemisphere. Specifically, one of the first ways that the United States established itself within the explanations of offensive realism was through the Louisiana Purchase. However, the selling of the Louisiana Territory by Napoleon Bonaparte and the French in 1803 was more indicative of offensive realism than the United States’ purchase of it, as the French analyzed all possibilities of local power that they would leave by selling the territory. For reference, the French knew that if they continued to hold the Louisiana Territory, they would not be able to focus on building up their empire within Europe. Selling the Louisiana Territory, however, would improve the relationship that the French had with the United States (Elman, 572). The French leaders of the time recognized that keeping