Notably absent from this article is any discussion of "why now?". Commenters in the thread are saying that his 2015 article on the subject could be written last week. That's precisely the issue. Why did Russia raise the stakes in December? Sure, NATO's eastward push has demonstrably increased tensions but the eastward push has been frozen since about 2014 since countries can't join NATO if they have territorial conflicts. If anything tensions should have been easing with a new, slightly more Russia friendly, German Chancellor, the nearing completion of NordStream2 and President Zelsynsky ran on a platform of improved relations with Moscow.
If you just look at the independent variables you inevitably are going to make conclusions from ideology rather than testing hypothesis. This type of article is the international relations equivalent off economists have predicted 5 of the last 3 recessions.
You can also see this weakness play out in Mearshimer's answers to journalists questions about the agency of Ukrainians in this article. He dodges the question and points to a speech from George W Bush in 2008, which was 15 years and 3 presidents ago, and prior to the current Ukrainian regime. In contrast he can't explain why the Baltics entering NATO did not trigger the same reaction. If we're going to look at history we can't ignore that these Eastern European Countries have endogenous reasons for joining NATO including the USSR and then Russia's long history of invading those countries.
Formal joining was on hold, but everything else was accelerating since 2014. Most notably arms shipments, military funding, and NATO/US troops in Ukraine. At some point, there are simply too many NATO arms in Ukraine to invade. Russian power is waning, and at the same time Ukraine-NATO integration was approaching the point of irreversibility.
In 2016, Ukraine was granted a NATO Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), comprising the advisory mission at the NATO Representation to Ukraine as well as 16 capacity-building programmes and Trust Funds.
In 2018, Ukraine was officially given an aspiring member status.
In 2021 NATO reaffirmed that “Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP)", which is the most traction on the topic since 2008.
From the Russian perspective the window to stop Ukraine was closing. Look at how much trouble they are having now. It would only have been worse with another year of arms shipments and training. Perhaps Russia miscalculated an they already waited too long.
Yes, after suffering defeat in an unprovoked invasion and occupation by Russia, Ukraine cranked up arms purchases and outside training for it's military.
Blaming this on NATO and not the invader is...beyond stupid.
Do you have a source for that?
Don't forget,
"On June 1, 1996, Ukraine became a non-nuclear nation, sending the last of the 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads it had inherited from the Soviet Union to Russia for dismantling. Ukraine had committed to this by signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in January 1994."
That was certainly a stupid idea.
Also China. Even Biden recognizes China is a problem and is making moves to attempt to manage them (renewed alliance with Australia, domestic manufacturing). China has likely made some guarantees to Russia with regards to its economic security, in exchange for seeing how the West puts up with its annexation of more of Ukrainian territory.
And there's the recent Ukrainian rumblings about wanting to take Crimea back, which certainly did not help matters. Speaking of which, Russians in Crimea have been expensive to supply, and I would point back to how we're all taxed because of COVID.
There are certainly other variables, but the timing is not random. Putin certainly has not suddenly 'gone crazy'.
That may have been what Putin thought but it seems like a terrible misunderstanding of western resolve on his part.
I didn't mean to imply that. In fact I would say that if a theory relies on someone "going crazy" to explain the war its probably bunk. Putin has decades of proving himself to be an intelligent player.
The Covid and China pivot is an interesting theory and it would make Mearshimer's argument a lot more compelling if he used current events to explain his theory.
This rule... isn't. Heck, countries have been admitted to NATO with ongoing territorial disputes with NATO countries.
I don't see why being able to predict events is important here because for this particular conflict, the key take away is how the knot became entangled since the late 90s and how we get can back to a more predictable, less paranoid Russia by untying it the same way we tied it.
> Notably absent from this article is any discussion of "why now?"
"Now" is a relative term in big history time scale, Putin's plan and might have been in action for a while, and now is just the time some strategic factors happen to be in their favour, or so they thought.
The "why now?" question doesn't seem to be very important to me comparing to "how to get out of this?". And you don't get out of this simply by addressing some recent trigger. Sounds like what Dr Mearsheimer said is that we should reverse course.
> why the Baltics entering NATO did not trigger the same reaction
Ukraine is the last straw, well, before Belarus that is, if that ever happens. They have always been calling for NATO to stop expansions for 20 years,
> agency of Ukrainians in this article
Could you give me the name of a country in the world that doesn't side with a great power? There should be some, but what they did is fundamentally different than what Ukraine is doing.
Otherwise yes I do think Mearsheimer is a little too mechanical in his theories and doesn’t factor in ideologies, especially in the modern Information Age.
"In 2019 the Kremlin expected that Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory in the presidential elections would change Ukraine’s agenda, making peace in the Donbas a top priority."
Zelenskyy has always been pro-EU, anti-Russian.
You may think that there is an absolute answer to this situation, but there isn't. I recommend that you study commentators and scholars such as: John Mearsheimer, Zbigniew Brezinski, George Friedman, Peter Zeihan, George Kennan, Noam Chomsky, Peter Hitchens, Gonzalo Lira, Tim Marshall, Robert D Kaplan, etc., etc. to gain some insight into the other and more complex side of this story. Their books are a good and quick read.
I am a proud American -- but, I am convinced that my country started this entire episode and planned to have it be so for a long, long time. 9/11, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. just got in their way. Instead of drawing a rational meet-me-in-the-middle red-line with Russia (ex: Poland and the Baltics) that we could live with, we decided to take Ukraine for this ride. We did that. We encouraged Zelensky to talk about acquiring nukes, grabbing Crimea back, grabbing Luhansk and Donestk, joining NATO and the EU, etc. -- instead of encouraging Austria-like neutrality, we promoted our-way-or-the-highway.
And now what are we doing? Fighting to the last Ukrainian? Fighting until they lose even more in a country that has lost ~20% of its population from its peak? We are literally sacrificing their country and encouraging suicide. This. is. just. wrong!
The idea that even a new-born nation, could walk out of the board game and do its own thing is so outrageous to the players, it is not even considered.
Well, ukraine just tried that. Its a sovereign nation, and it wanted nothing to do with its imperialistic neighbourhood. And all the zhars horse and all the zhars man, could not hold all its conquered ethnicities in again and again, cause technology now favors david instead of goliath.
So ukraine might not walk this time, but others will, until this ball of muddy-power dissolves one last and final time. Russia, this unreformable assembly of thiefdoms, is stumbling like a feverish plague victime towards the end of its story and it will not be pretty. To blame this corrosion on the west, is pompous victim blaming.
Russia is also falling apart near the chinese border, were large parts of the economy are now owned by chinese state owned companies. Its just a failed state and to the man with glass-bones-disease even a friendly handshake is a attack.
It's become a bit passe with the internet and human rights movements and the like - you can't just go militarily occupy the neighbours these days without pissing off a lot of people as Russia is finding just now.
The 1904 thing was quite interesting in the current context. Emperor of Russia Nicholas II thought it would be easy to take out the Japanese navy but they ended up with most of the Russian navy sunk and subsequently the Russian royals got overthrown and replaced by the communists which has led up to what we have now.
It's possible that history will play out in a similar way - Putin thought taking Ukraine would be easy but loses that and then loses power at home and ends up replaced. Perhaps by a normal democracy, looking on the optimistic side.
It says that there are other big players in the world other than the US that will behave following the exact same set of game theory laws.
no they did not, what they did is nothing like what Sweden, Finland, or Singapore did. Joining the EU, sure, but joining NATO and claim to be trying to "walk out of the game"?
This seems to be a US-centric view of the world, which assumes that Ukraine following blindly in whatever encouragement was provided.
Zelensky is Ukraine’s 7th President, 3 years into his term. Ukraine has had administrations that were Russia-centric (two Kuchma terms, and then half of Yanukovich’s term) and in economic terms those did not pan out to be impressive.
Ukrainian companies seem to crave access to European markets, as in many core areas (grains, livestock, aviation, machinery) they are competing with Russia. In energy consumption Ukraine also seems to get a better price for Russian natural gas when they are part of EU monopsony, negotiating a bulk discount, vs one-off negotiations.
Is it too radical to assume that Ukrainians were acting out of self interest?
Zelenskyy ran on a platform of peace with Russia and neutrality vis-a-vis Russia and the West.
What changed?
The puppet-masters pulled strings or he was lying all along.
Unequivocally the government of the Russian Federation is the aggressor here. That the United States has been inconsistent with respect to Ukraine doesn't diminish the fact that the military of the Russian Federation is actively shelling hospitals, schools, residential dwellings and precipitating a humanitarian crisis in Europe.
Do you know about what Victoria Nuland (leaked intercepted tapes), Senator John McCain, Senator Lindsay Graham, Hunter Biden, CIA John Brennan, etc. did in Ukraine?
Zelenskyy ran on peace with Russia, but his puppet masters in Washington would never have allowed that.
So, by late-2021, do you know that Zelenskyy had a sub-28% approval rating from his own population because he threatened to acquire nuclear weapons, threatened to join NATO, join the EU (comes with military connections also, BTW), take back Crimea and the entirety of the Donbas, etc.? His population mostly wanted Austria-style neutrality but he was being strung along by the US because we wanted to turn it into a battering ram against Russia.
So, Russia acted pre-emptively. Heck, by our logic, this war is more justified than the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.
You have to look at the entire political situation in Ukraine, starting at least since 2003-4. And, especially 2014 and the US-backed putsch that took place that year.
For what it's worth, what Russia is doing is wrong. But I do absolutely understand Mearsheimer's perspective that this is basically a Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 moment. The United States should have clearly recognized that trying to get Ukraine into NATO or even the EU was clearly going to make the Russians think they're being backed into a corner security-wise. We could have just as easily kept trading with Ukraine and cooperating without starting the process to join NATO.
In reality Ukraine is even more corrupt than Russia, their economy is in terrible shape, despite having more natural resources than most, and a diligent educated population. GDP per capita is a third of Russia's, lower than Belarus! The elites, including Zelensky, are incredibly corrupt.
I love Ukraine, only had wonderful experiences there, but it's getting ridiculous.
Manufactured consent.
Is it any wonder that people who like peace get mad when countries start wars?
There was no hope of Ukraine joining NATO without the resolving of the Crimea/eastern Ukraine territories. In other words, not in the foreseeable future. Same with the EU, in practice.
Even if Ukraine were to a) resolve the territorial issues and b) convince the rest of NATO (any one member country being able to veto accession), this would not have brought NATO to the Russian border; Norway was a founding NATO member in 1949, and Poland and the Baltic states joined 15 years ago.
All this talk of Russia getting upset that "its" sphere of influence would rather look westward is completely writing off the agency of individual countries that haven't been part of the USSR for over a generation. There are very good reasons why Ukraine et al look West instead of East - chiefly riches and individual freedoms. Russia could have riches, but instead suffers from the resource curse. Russia could have liberalized, but instead continued to rely on (and is now even tightening up) uniparty-based censorship.
Say what you will about the failings and pathologies of Western liberalism. In fact, it's your patriotic duty to do so! But never take it for granted.
Exactly. Russia has no inherent right to a sphere of influence. If it wants the support of its neighbours it will have to work hard to win that support.
what on earth? Who is we? Policy that pisses Russia off I can take blame for, but Americans sacrificing Ukrainians? I really just cannot parse how you lay guilt at our feet for Ukrainians’ propensity for defending their sovereignty from invaders.
NATO/US/EU played a geopolitical game with Russia where Ukraine is the sacrificial pawn. While Russia is the naked aggressor, the role of NATO/US/EU is more insidious and needs to be called out. It is the Ukrainian (and Russian) soldiers/people dying and suffering while NATO/US/EU have gotten away scot-free.
Relevant Reading:
1) Opinion piece from Henry Kissinger himself; written after the last conflict in 2014 : https://cnnbc.com/henry-kissinger-on-ukraine
2) Article showing excerpts from US archives : https://www.dawn.com/news/1677138/ukraine-crisis
3) The relevant research by the professor referenced in the above article can be found at https://www.jrishifrinson.com/ Excerpt from one of his papers "George H.W.Bush: Conservative Realist as President" :
Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger observed in an accompanying memorandum, “It is in our interest to see the peaceful end of the Soviet Union as we have known it since 1917—a strong, totalitarian central government able to mobilize the vast human and material resources at its control. . . . The sine qua non for eliminating this threat is substantial devolution of economic and political power [emphasis added].” Even more direct was Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady, who argued in a June 1991 meeting of senior policymakers that “A real reform program would turn [the Soviet Union] into a third-rate [military] power, which is what we want;” judging from their comments at this meeting, Baker, Scowcroft, and others seemed to accept this point of view. Put simply, the spread of freedom, liberty, and U.S. values into the Soviet space was normatively attractive, but it also carried starkly advantageous geopolitical consequences for the United States.
I'm not sure what else you expected, it's completely one-sided issue - one side started and continues the war. One side can stop this war at any time.
Did you expect 50-50 coverage, with 50% repeating Putin's propaganda?
Not true. You have to look at the entire political situation in Ukraine, starting at least since 2003-4. And, especially 2014 and the US-backed putsch that took place that year.
Nobody wants to talk seriously about the intricate complexities. My way or the highway.
Russia bad. Ukraine good. America leader of the free world. Go to sleep. Eat. Buy. Work. Rinse. Repeat.
Meddling and stirring up trouble. And Biden's son was on board of directors of a Ukranian energy company getting paid $50,000 per month. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hunter-biden-ukraine/what...
A little correction though: you need to replace "we" with "Russia", or "Putin".
Fully agree with "This is just wrong" part.
This is literally Kremlin lies and talking points.
Who is we ?
A) President Z and the Ukrainian army can literally wave the white flag and let the Russian tanks roll into Kiev - they are the ones doing the sacrifice here
B) Or President Putin can give the order to withdraw
Who else need to be involved here ?
Got in their way? What? Nonsense?!
When you go to war based on lies you yourself made up, then it's intentional.
That's not accidents that "get in the way".
In the Grand Chessboard, former NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski openly talks about oil and gas pipelines and diverting them away from Russia. That's what this war is really about.
Had NATO been wiser, none of this would be happening.
But, after reading the authors I mentioned closely, I now realize that this is a war for control/negative-control over natural resources (grain, oil, gas, fertilizers, etc.). Also, this is about geostrategic security (anchoring at the Carpathian mountains and Bessarabia Gap).
Following several hundred years of rule by Poland and then Russia, in 1991 the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from Russia. (I assume you think that was a mistake?)
Between 1991 and 2004, two the administrations of two presidents retained close ties to Russia. However, in 2004, in an election festooned with accusations of fraud (serious accusations, not Trump-accusations), another pro-Russian president was elected, sparking protests and a second election, which brought into power another president who called for closer ties with the European Union. (Yeah, this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yushchenko demonstrating the results of not recognizing Russian authority.) Corruption seems to have abounded during most of these and the next president's terms.
In 2010, another pro-Russian president was elected, which in 2013 and 2014 led to the Euromaidan protests, complete with violence, that led to that government's collapse. This was the time when Russia annexed Crimea and civil war broke out in Donetsk and Luhansk. (They should have just given up then, right?)
The next President, elected in 2014, began again the policy of closing the relationship with the EU and withdrawing from the Commonwealth of Independent States, the association of countries from the USSR, and generally trying to clean up the mess. In 2019 the constitution was amended:
"The authority of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine include ... determining the principles of internal and foreign policy, realization of the strategic course of the state on acquiring full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
"The President of Ukraine is a guarantor of the implementation of the strategic course of the state for gaining full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
"The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine provides the implementation of the strategic course of the state for gaining full-fledged membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."
(Stupid fools, don't they know they have no rights a world power is bound to respect? They're barely human!)
Also in 2019, Zelenskyy was elected president with 73% of the vote, a group of prisoners were exchanged with Russia, freeing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Sentsov, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Sushchenko and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olexandr_Kolchenko, among others, and here we are today. (Not that I'm suggesting holding political prisoners is bad, mind you.)
Now, Putin has said that the big mistake happened when Lenin's USSR gave Ukraine any autonomy at all, which may in fact be true. But,
1. The Ukrainians are not victims. Well, they are, but only of Russian aggression.
2. The military-industrial complex seems to have an awful lot of reach and power. Shades of the Elders of Zion, eh? On the other hand, seems like they could have worked a bit faster.
3. NATO does not look to be a very big player; the EU and Poland have had as big a hand in "false promises" if you choose to look at it that way.
That being said, I think on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, Mearsheimer is not consistent with his own theory (defensive realism). I completely understand why Putin is doing what he's doing, his actions are very well explained by Mearsheimer's framework; he's not a madman (necessarily). But to say that what Russia is doing is somehow US's fault, that really does not make any sense.
US and NATO do whatever is in their best interest, and that implicitly means they will try to reduce Russia's power. Russia knows that. In turn, Russia will try to reduce NATO's and US's power (and increase their own). That's all rational. Now, to say that the US and NATO have to have some form of guilt, and they should change their actions, that's crazy, it does not make any sense.
To say that the US, or NATO, or Russia, or anyone else is hypocritical, or they say one thing and do another, well, welcome to politics. "Not one inch", said NATO some decades ago. Russia calls foul play. Well, what did they think? People say one thing and do another thing all the time, that's the way you play the game.
But, one thing is to not keep your word about this or that, another thing is to start killing people. By the thousands. And destroy their homes. And make them leave their countries. Is really Mearsheimer incapable of understanding this difference?
From the perspective of power maximizing their willingness to go to war is puzzling. But most research suggests states are not power maximizing but rather security maximizing. States don't consider their military potential in a vacuum but rather relative to other states that could disrupt their security. ( see: Collateral Damage Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance)
In this regard, Russia's decision for war is very easy to understand even if it comes across as blindingly machiavellian and immoral. Even if the Russian economy is wrecked and the people of Russia are materially worse off Russia the state will be more secure with Ukraine destroyed.
An armed an strong Ukraine furthers this goal.
A bloody war between Ukraine and Russia also furthers this goal.
My take on it is: if you willingly push a bear in a tight corner, you have it coming when he starts biting and fighting.
Now, this is no valid excuse for me when it comes to nation states and their actions, but nations are just run by humans, aren't they?
This is setting up camp in another ecosystem where the bear isn’t supposed to be at all, has no claim.
I don't think there was any kind of commitment about this. Definitely not in a form of a signed treaty.
https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/312636...
He's saying it is US's fault because Russia has been accommodating the US for decades. Russia allowed NATO to gobble up country after country all the way to Russia's borders.
> People say one thing and do another thing all the time, that's the way you play the game.
Hence it's NATO's fault. It is NATO's greed that resulted in Georgians dying. It's NATO's greed that resulted in ukrainians dying.
> But, one thing is to not keep your word about this or that, another thing is to start killing people. By the thousands. And destroy their homes. And make them leave their countries. Is really Mearsheimer incapable of understanding this difference?
War is politics by other means. As you said "well, welcome to politics.". Yes, ukrainians are dying. You can thank NATO.
The war in ukraine is a result of NATO's ( ultimately america's ) actions. NATO was the first mover ( aka the cause of it ). Nobody who has taken a class in international politics will debate it. None. And the biggest beneficiary of the ukraine war is NATO. Ukraine suffers, Russia suffer. NATO is sitting pretty.
US told the Soviet Union putting nukes in cuba would lead to nuclear war. The soviet union backed off. Russia said NATO expansion to Ukraine or Georgia would lead to war. NATO discarded it. If the soviet union had put nukes on cuba and got attacked, it would be the soviet union's fault. Just like the blame for ukraine lies entirely with NATO. But that's academics. In reality, the propaganda will tell you who is to be blamed for what in each country.
Can't wait to see what our meddling in Taiwan will lead to. Hopefully a serious punch in the mouth so we'll quit the empire business once and for all.
NATO didn't gobble them up, they voluntarily joined, and they weren't Russian colonies such that it was a matter of Russia “letting” anyone do anything.
Russia is the one that has been literally gobbling up (at least parts of, prior to the most recent attempt) neighboring cointries.
>>That being said, I think on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, Mearsheimer is not consistent with his own theory (defensive realism). I completely understand why Putin is doing what he's doing, his actions are very well explained by Mearsheimer's framework; he's not a madman (necessarily).
Except Mearsheimer explicity didn't predict a major war between Ukraine and russia. He has commented on this situation repeatedly and failed to accurately predict the outbreak of major war. Mearsheimer has a problem here: Russia is weakening its military potential against other major states by going to war against ukraine. His formulation of offensive realism does not really produce a testable prediction in this case.
Here's how this war fits into Mearsheimer's framework: great powers have a certain amount of power. There are 3 great powers today, the US, China and Russia. The power of a nation depends on its population and GDP, and lots of other things as well. Russia's population is going down, its GDP is just a fraction of China's or America's. So, their great power standing is on the decline.
A conquest of Ukraine, if speedy and decisive, would convince all the other former Soviet Republics to submit to Russia voluntarily, maybe with the exception of the Baltic republics which are part of NATO.
If Putin reincorporates the Russian Empire, the population doubles overnight, a feat not achieved even by Bismark. The GDP also increases, although not that much. Still, under such a scenario, Russia under Putin would achieve a huge leap in great power standing. It would probably still not be number 1, but it could be number 2, because, despite having much lower population and GDP than China, it would have fresh war experience.
Given that this fits so well in Mearsheimer's framework, it's obvious that all of Putin's rhetoric about the NATO transgressions is just that, rhetoric.
"When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States."
This seems too forgiving of Russia and also the US re: Central and South America. "It's not our fault those countries poked us in the eye by being [democratic/socialistic/whatever]."
Maybe Putin and American leaders both need to stop trying to ruling other countries. Putin has fucking nukes, is he seriously afraid of being invaded himself?
It sucks of course but it is what it is. That is all he is saying.
The people of Ukraine have overturned a fraudulent election, overthrown a president who betrayed his commitment to his people, and are now fighting tooth and nail to defend their country. But it's all 'just' power politics?
That sounds unlikely to me.
First of all, we have nukes. Why would we care if Russian troops showed up on the border. If they cross that line, their country gets wiped off the map. The same dynamic exists with Ukraine and Russia.
Also, you analogy completely ignores the economic relationships that the West has been trying to build with Russia for the last few decades. Western doctrine has been largely focused on building international trade and economic relationships as a method for maintaining peace. There is a reason we exported a good chunk of our manufacturing after all.
The only way your analogy holds is if Russia and Canada had been spending decades trying to build peaceful economic relationships with the US. And they openly express little interest in invading the US. But then the US starts saber rattling at Canada and claims that they feel their security is threatened. I think most people would agree that the US is behaving belligerently in that scenario and that Canada would be justified in building up defenses.
A future of a pro-Putin Canada is just absurd in its own right. Why not North Korea or Iran? It only really makes sense to talk about realistic possibilities. However, if they wanted to align closer to European powers, such as UK and France, again, I don't think the US would be invading Ontario.
Canada is not compatible with Russia, so forming a military alliance is a crazy idea.
Putin is the aggressor who has invaded an European country just because their actions did not suit him.
There are no acceptable excuses for the invasion, it's a very dangerous game he is playing as Russia cannot live with the sanctions in the long run.
At the very best he can hope to get away with an agreement that Ukraine will never join EU or NATO, and will stay neutral forever.
Even then, there is no 100% guarantee that Ukraine will not go back on that deal in the future.
He seems to be saying that Russia/the US reaction is probably morally wrong, but completely expected behavior. And the moral aspect isn't worth considering as history has shown that great powers usually act out of strategic interest not moral consideration.
Yeah, it'd be great if great power politics ended. Ukraine trying to change to the US's side isn't going to end them.
If you are trying to decide how to exert influence on how your country should react, rather than being a passive observer, the moral aspect is worth considering.
If you are merely a passive observer, you aren't worth considering.
I don't know how old you are, but when I was young and idealistic I felt the same way you seem to. Now I see a world of grey and I can, at least a little bit, empathize with (though not condone) the Russian position here. From their perspective the West is being intentionally belligerent, and we know it.
Despite what the media and the talking heads say, the west poking the bear is not about democracy or western values. It's about power and control. And Putin is repaying us in kind. And the Ukrainians are left to pick up the pieces.
Yes, in an ideal world countries can do whatever they want within their own borders and other countries respect that sovereignty.
But we don’t live in an ideal world.
Countries like Vietnam understand this - they cozy up to the Russians, to China, to the US. Never getting too close and never pissing anyone off too much. Always assert your sovereignty, but avoid war at all costs since you’ll never win except at Pyrrhic victory.
They recognize that we don’t live in an ideal world and act according to how things are.
He is afraid of insignificance. Once there was a great RUS empire, now there isn't. Many russians feel sad about that.
I don't to be honest, because those great empires, whether from the tsar or sowjets, were mainly known for slave conditions for most people.
Just compare the fate of Japan in 1944 vs. 1954 and Russia in 1989 vs. Russia in 1999. It has caused an enormous traumatic syndrome in the russian society.
1. Russia is a great power. As such, it is effectively an automaton that must react in specific ways to external stimuli. There's no reasoning, and no morality, only stimuli and response. Thus the concept of blame and responsibility are meaningless when applied to Russia.
2. Europe and the west are not great powers. Instead they are thinking, feeling actors with a moral obligation to tiptoe around and appease great powers like Russia. Because the west are the only thinking feeling people, they're the only ones that can be responsible for anything.
3. Ukrainians are neither a great power or real people. They just need to sit there and accept whatever other actors want to do to them. Any attempt to make decisions for themselves means they deserve any bad thing that happens.
Mearsheimer's statements read like a setup to a punchline (A great power, a real human, and a useless blob walk into a bar). I appreciate that after the interviewer got over his initial shock, he started making fun of Mearsheimer with questions like "But his bombs are touching it [western Ukraine], right?" Also, "I thought you said that he was not interested in taking Kyiv" is a nice touch.
Most ridiculous of all is that Mearsheimer's defines giving improving the economy, reducing corruption, increasing political liberty, and generally improving peoples lives as "western aggression".
These so called "realists" haven`t considered one simple fact. Ukraine was attacked. Not Latvia nor Lithuania nor Estonia. What is the difference? NATO.
I understand your sentiment.
The point is that in case of Ukraine the pro-russian half of the population did not want to be governed by us-installed government who started their reign by changing the language legislature in favor of the ukranian language. The anti-russian political tilt resulted in federalisation demands from the eastern regions as well as crimea which progressed into full-blown separatism (eventually supported by russia).
I believe it is quite immoral to blame Russia for supporting pro-russian separatists when the federal government installed by the US was effectively nationalistic.
Half?! Putin's propaganda is quite effective
Until about ten years ago Ukraine has tried to maintain sovereignty by doing a balancing act between West and Russia - similar to what Belarus did until the recently. In 2005 I realized that balancing is impossible when Russia supported the election fraud and poisoned the western-leaning president Yushchenko.
Mearsheimer is right that the US and Europe are using Ukraine as a shield for the Western Europe. However, this aligns well with the desires of the Ukrainians - most would rather fight for independence than live oppressed under a decaying chauvinistic dictatorship. Another motivation is that Russia has long history of ethnic cleansing in the regions it captured - that includes Crimea, Western and Eastern Ukraine, and the Caucasus.
All the „It's the West fault“ crowd is missing the elephant in the room. What is the alternative if West did what Russia want? De-facto Iron curtain still up with tens of millions of people living under authoritarian regimes similar to Belarus and, well, Russia.
Yes, it's completely „West fault“ since they could have left us for Russia to eat for lunch. More „West faults“ please.
Why didn’t staying neutral prevent Russia from occupying Crimea?
Taking Ukraine from Russia? What have Russia the right to take Ukraine from (checks) Ukraine?
The deliberate ethnic genocide is not universally accepted. The famine affected large areas of the USSR besides Ukraine.
I wholeheartedly agree. I feel like I could write an entire book of what it reveals about the state of Western culture. But when something is so obnoxious I try to remind myself to be especially careful about how I react. Because one of the other obnoxious things about contemporary Western culture is how partisan political sentiments are driven by spiteful contrarianism.
> he very clearly explains what has led to the current situation.
He very clearly explains his opinion, at least. Much of what he says is pretty much consensus opinion. The U.S. and Europe did push NATO expansion too aggressively. (Though that's different from saying that it was wrong to include, e.g., Latvia and Estonia, which IIRC is a claim Mearsheimer wasn't willing to state outright.) In fact, this was a moderately important point of domestic U.S. political debate which even featured in the 2008 presidential campaigns; particularly regarding ABMs in Poland.
One of the flaws in his PoV is that none of it actually justifies Russia's behavior. It makes most sense only if you conceive of Russia as a scared child, rather than a hyper rational, deliberate, realpolitik actor, which most people (until recently) consider to be Putin's M.O. It also ignores the fact that Germany, France, and even the U.K. were more restrained than the U.S., and Russia well understood that there were some bright lines those countries wouldn't cross (and the U.S. couldn't force them to cross), especially after the dust settled from the 2004 expansion that put NATO on Russia's doorstep.
Moreover, we're 6+ years on from that speech and the status quo had only further solidified. That's why Russia in 2014 and now in 2022 knew with absolute certainty that NATO would not directly intervene in its invasions of Ukraine. At most there'd be a proxy war, but that's typical Cold War realpolitik and Russia couldn't with a straight face call foul.
No observer can seriously dispute that Europe and the US had as a practical matter committed to and contented themselves with keeping Ukraine and Belarus as buffer states, at least in terms of military posture. Now, however, everything has been upended. Russia's revealed, hard irredentist ambitions has fundamentally changed the situation. If Ukraine ends up in the EU or even NATO, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy, not because things were inexorably moving in that direction.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that just because Russia had very legitimate security grievances does not, by itself, explain or excuse the Ukraine invasion. To my ears (having studied International Politics in college and staying apprised of events over the past 25 years), Mearsheimer's speech borders on a dangerous apology of Russia and other authoritarian regimes. His factual recounting is on its face reasonable, but those facts only beg the question. The question is whether Russia was justified, according to even the most conservative, zero sum, realpolitik perspective, in invading Ukraine in 2022. The answer is a resounding, "No". Just as the answer to whether the U.S. was justified in invading and overthrowing Iraq is, "No". And in neither case were those decisions inevitable, nor does culpability lie anywhere other than with the invaders. The U.S. for its part recognized the inexcusable harm the Iraq invasion did to global and American security stability when Obama took a huge bite of humble pie (both personally and on behalf of the country) and refused to escalate in Syria. Unfortunately Putin, like Bush in 2003, has already committed Russia to carrying through an unforgivable injury to global and its own security stability.
He seems unable to assign blame to Russia/Putin
> It makes most sense only if you conceive of Russia as a scared child,
It comes over as appeasement- with mentions of “poking in the eye” - as if it were a bear
This is good advice and possibly a fault on my part. Coming from a deep frustration about not being able to make sense of current news, then finding out about Mearsheimer, it is very easy to see it as the truth.
> One of the flaws in his PoV is that none of it actually justifies Russia's behavior
I am not looking to find justifications. What happens in Ukraine is awful. There are no excuses.
What is the problem is that I (as Danish person) feel a great injustice has been seeded by the West and that no European politician now takes that responsibility upon them. On the contrary, they only repeat the narrative that this is the fault of Russia and, obviously, Putin.
That's probably what should be expected during times of war. Answering the "why?" is very difficult without the historical background and the interpretations from people like yourself.
>Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov set out Russia’s objectives in the Eastern European nation.
>“After the 2014 coup d’état, Ukraine has become influenced by Nazi ideology. We want to free her from this ideology,” he claimed.
Which doesn't really make sense with a democratically elected jewish former comedian being president. (thats from https://www.rt.com/russia/551294-kremlin-goal-ukraine-offens...)
Is racism in America gone because we had a black POTUS?
Zelenskyy is backed by an oligarch who funds right-wing neo-fascist groups.
Dig deeper.
This is the part that confuses me about recent American foreign policy. This line of reasoning seems so blatantly clear that I don't understand why we have consistently adopted such hawkish policies against Russia. We have allies that do stuff that is at least as sketchy, morally and legally, as what we accuse Russia of doing, so why have we made Russia an enemy?
The answer is the inertial of interest groups. US had put its weight on every corner of the society to demonize Russia, cut off every economic tie over 70 years, while done the exact opposite towards China. According to what I've read, a majority of members of congress and senate have business connections with China back in 2018 (80%? I don't remember the exact number). Never mention the bad images lasting forever in the entertainment(mass brain wash) industry.
Inside of the government, there have been piles of research papers, plans, and millions of man-year brain power accumulated on screwing Russia, it's cheap, reliable, achievable and efficient to just follow what old hands had envisioned.
For great powers, it's painful to conduct strategic adjustment. In authoritarian countries, it's mostly done through cold blooded purge. In liberal democracy, it's often the mass propaganda campaign with helps of God sent PR events, under extraordinary leadership, which believe or not, is not what elected are good at.
In strictly political terms, I'll side with Germany, France, UK, etc. which all have bigger GDP's than Russia.
This would require Russia to change in a lot of ways from how Putin runs things, but who would that be bad for, really?
Putin asked Bill Clinton about this in 2000; was rebuffed.
> Right, but saying that America will not allow countries in the Western hemisphere, most of them democracies, to decide what kind of foreign policy they have—you can say that’s good or bad, but that is imperialism, right? We’re essentially saying that we have some sort of say over how democratic countries run their business.
> We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.
> Of course we did, but I’m wondering if we should be behaving that way. When we’re thinking about foreign policies, should we be thinking about trying to create a world where neither the U.S. nor Russia is behaving that way?
> That’s not the way the world works.
What is unsaid is does the world HAVE to behave this way? Are humans capable of cooperation beyond petty short-sighted resource grabs? If the US ceased it's imperial ambitions, and all discrimination and capitalist exploitation ended, would we be able to build a harmonious society where we cooperate on prosperity?
Up until the COVID pandemic, I would have said yes. In spite of religion, capitalism, communism, genocide, or the entire history of the world, the human capacity for empathy and adaptability is strong enough that we could build a utopia.
I genuinely believed this until I saw 21st century internet-connected individuals politicize the science of virology, immunology, and epidemiology. When I realized people - MANY people - genuinely valued their own discomfort of wearing a mask over the safety and LIVES of others. When I realized that Alan Moore was actually too optimistic during the ending of The Watchmen.
Because unfortunately fear is pretty much our biggest driver as a species. So many of these unforgivable actions are done in varyingly twisted degrees of self-interest to protect our 'national interests' or our 'way of life', big country or small.
I am never too far from blaming US fuckups in past decades, be it Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, and maybe some more. But I still struggle to find any meaningful reason to accept freedom denial to a country who is fighting so hard to retain it, against clear, completely amoral and frankly abhorrent aggressor. Just because Russia has nukes? Well then we can always back away from any conflict... till we have nowhere to back and they are stronger, bolder and more numerous than we can handle.
Russia has been asking for this for a long time. They are meddling in internal politics, in many cases very openly, for past 20 years. One example out of many - blowing up munition depot in Czech republic very openly, laughing at any investigations. Trump is a topic on its own. And every single time, without exception, they were/are the force of evil. Force of death, corruption in many ways.
So, if we stand up this one time, I believe it will have huge consequences for decades to come. It can show other bullies where are the lines that shouldn't be crossed. Otherwise, there are no lines, and psychopaths in power can do whatever they want, wherever they want. And for sure they will just like now.
Sure I understand it's not black and white, but NATO is already the stronger party, by far, so what does it REALLY matter if they put up some more bases nearby?
What Putin does not want is Ukraine as a democratic state where a president loses an election and steps down peacefully. Ukraine is "small Russia" and Russians could start asking questions.
And every one already knows that there are democratic countries, it's not like Russians would suddenly stage a coup because Ukraine has a fair election. Which they won't have any time soon, by the way. Ukraine is more corrupt than Russia.
Mearsheimer sounded cogent and intelligent, and I think he made some very interesting points.
His article from 2014 seems like it could have been written this week with how prescient it is: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
It's hard for people from the west to see things from a different point of view than modern liberalism. This article shows where and why.
It also shows how intolerant the liberal mindset is to other global viewpoints.
One substantive issue that I have seen is that he discounts nationalism; it seems like Ukrainians are rather attached to their independence.
One that I haven't seen much about in the nuclear non-proliferation issue: if the existence of a country without nukes is predicated on the whims of one with them, every country is strongly incentivized to develop them.
As for me, a little bit of my heart belongs to his book, Liddell Hart and the Weight of History.
It's not only independence. They want to live in county that one day might aspire to western standard of life and freedom, and not to live in county where wrong word puts you inside prison for 15 years.
I think Mearsheimer intentionally ignores the facts that "power corrupts, great power corrupts greatly", so that he doesn't need to address the annoying abnormalities that great powers fall eventually, and the incoming fall of USA sooner or later, even if the `blob` gets all the strategic decisions right. After all, the blackboxes of great powers would mess up from inside.
I think that it's still Russia's fault for using a stick and not having a carrot. The United States, China, the European Union or even Saudi Arabia are influential because of their economy, and not because of their military or democracy.
I agree. But saudi gets away with ironing Yemen just because it's an US ally not because it's influential by itself
Why do we need Russia? Their GDP is smaller than Italy's.
If by "we" you mean the US, then absolutely, that's what "we" think—hence the crippling sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba in our own sphere of influence for exactly the same reasons.
All great powers do this—US, Russia, China today—and always have.
You can say the hornet (Russia) is always too blame. Or, you can acknowledge that hornets are dangerous and best not provoked. Willingly provoking them if there is the alternative of not doing that, can be considered irresponsible.
As to why Ukraine turning western is considered a provocation, there's a lot of simplistic "fatalistic madman" narratives. I found this video to be very insightful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
It sums up a few very rational reasons that when combined, add up to a serious existential threat to Russia as a country, as a concept.
Mind you, I'm no Russia apologist, I'm just trying to understand the hornet. So far the video holds up. Putin openly expressing to Macron that he will flip Ukraine entirely. Remarks like "There is no world without Russia in it", emphasizing that this campaign is existential, not a random aggression.
China would review the US/NATO response differently if the US played the old strategy of setting "red lines" and allowing them to be crossed with minimal reaction. We still have yet to see how this goes but Chinese officials who would have wanted to attack Taiwan are probably watching this play out now.
Russia has awoken a sleeping giant.
> Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a threat before February 22, 2014
"Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe," -- presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, 2012
People today say you cannot be a "Putin apologizer", or that looking for reasons for Putin's behavior was a form of "appeasement".
People who say these things believe they have learned from history. They look back at Hitler in 1938. Czechoslovakia. Austria. And, finally, Poland. They look back at England and France, who, not wanting to risk war, sought ways to "appease" Hitler. And by doing that, they lost valuable time and allowed Hitler to grow stronger, making the situation much worse for the world.
Now, people are drawing the conclusion: "You should never try to appease a dictator!"
But I'd argue that this is the wrong conclusion.
What backfired back then is not that England and France tried to appease Hitler. What backfired was that the leaders of England and France grotesquely misread Hitler and his goals.
Their mistake was not that they tried to understand Hitler's motives. Rather, their mistake was precisely that they failed to accurately understand his motives.
This is why the English public finally turned to Churchill. Because Churchill actually "got" Hitler. He had formed an accurate mental model of Hitler's motives.
Did that make Churchill into a "Hitler apologist"? Not at all. Instead, it allowed him to accurately predict Hitler's next moves. It allowed him to predict that making territorial concessions to this man would never help to guarantee peace long-term.
Churchill was actually one of the few European leaders who had troubled to read "Mein Kampf". He also read the books written by Sebastian Haffner, a German who had chronicled his life under Hitler from inside Germany.
When I see people today saying they cannot stand Putin, and therefore they don't want to hear what he says, because it's all lies and propaganda anyway, it worries me. Because even if Putin was a Hitler 2.0 (which is very doubtful, since History rarely repeats itself and reasoning by analogy often leads to spectacular failures) it would mean that we should pay even more careful attention to his motives, and not less. We should pay even more careful attention on the outside contingencies and the mental frameworks that drive Putin's actions, and not less.
Nietzsche has said, "If you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you."
And it almost seems that people are afraid of precisely that. They almost think that by not acknowledging a thing they don't like, it will go away. Those who have been warning about a war in Ukraine have correctly pointed out that this strategy will not only not work, but that it will backfire.
So the true lesson from 1938 is not that one should "never negotiate with dictators". The true lesson is that you have to make an effort to face the other party's viewpoint. To make an effort to understand the true motives, without any fear of what you might find.
That includes the fear of finding out that your own behavior might have contributed to the status quo. You need to let go of your comforting beliefs -- that things will "sort themselves out", that it's "just the other party's fault", that there's "nothing to learn or understand" because you already know exactly what the other party is really after, etc..
What made Churchill great, in my view, is that he was able to overcome all of those comforting beliefs. People respected him because he would tell them not what they would have liked to hear, but what they needed to know.
I think this is very, very different from what we're seeing today from our own leaders. They are posturing. They claim that the inconvenient truth is that "Putin is worse than we thought", and that the necessary sanctions will require "sacrifices from all of us". They try to sound like a Churchill. But they make no effort to be one. They imitate the outside posture, but they totally miss the inner essence.
Scholz said it best. He said to Putin during that recent press conference (and I'm paraphrasing), "What do you care about Ukraine and NATO? It's not going to happen anytime during our terms of office anyway".
That isn't Churchill. That's Chamberlain.
Russia has just invaded, where is the US? Certainly not protecting Ukraine.
Pretty clear the US has no desired to protect Ukraine. They certainly could if they wanted to, right now.
What the US and her allies do have is a strong desire to hurt Russia, and they're doing a great job at that since the conflict began. But actually protecting Ukraine? No.
