"We differed on the last point, and sometimes on the key, recurring question of American foreign policy: When is military intervention justified, by which he meant, when is it in the national interest? Waltz had no patience for "liberal intervention," or what we might now call humanitarian intervention, because we could never be sure that we would succeed in making things better over the long-term. And he had little patience for supposed national security arguments that could not identify a threat to vital interests — we are not, and therefore should not act like, an empire. Waltz was not an isolationist, but he was definitely a minimalist when it came to the use of force."
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Robert Gallucci, "Remembering the professor" (2013)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kenneth_Waltz
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Kenneth Waltz
Kenneth Neal Waltz (June 8, 1924 – May 12, 2013) was a member of the faculty at the University of California and Columbia University and one of the most prominent scholars of international relations (IR) of the 20th century. He was one of the founders of neorealism, or structural realism, in international relations theory.
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