Very interesting and refreshing interview, yes. But I challenge Mearsheimer on one point: Russia did not just want the ‘neutrality’ of Ukraine. They wanted Ukraine to be under Russian political control, even if formally independent, a vassal state in the Russian empire, like Belarus. I think Putin himself said that he did not mind formal independence as long as the country was part of the Russian world. It was the idea of a functional independent Ukrainian state with close ties to the EU – militarily neutral or not – that Russia refused to accept. As one of their propagandists put it on Unherd ‘Get rid of the corrupt pro-western oligarchs, and have Ukraine run by a group of corrupt pro-Russian oligarchs instead. No need for war and suffering at all.’ The size of the Russian invasion force could have been sufficient to achieve that – Zelensky flees the invasion, some friendly oligarch takes over, and the Russian troops are enough to convince people to accept the new regime. Only the Ukrainians insisted on fighting.
I agree with you, there is no doubt in my mind Putin wants Ukraine back under Russian control. It seems to me the history of that area and Russia’s idea about itself makes that inevitable. Even Solzenitzyn was strongly against an independent Ukraine.
there is no evidence to support that claire, in fact everything thats happened over the years suggests the opposite as i point out in my reply above to rasmus
You might be right, but remember that politicians, including Putin, are just as likely to change course in life as anyone else. Circumstances change, eg, the Maidan revolution, Biden following Trump into the White House, Zelensky’s promises before his election and his turn around afterwards + Russia has played it’s part for good or ill. Politicians alter course all the time, they have to to survive. Putin’s intentions in 2015 may have been as you say but they were unlikely to remain the same.
You need to know you are trying to understand politicians from the politicians that you know of. It is certain that the politicians you know of cannot represents what politicians are, at least this does not fit for every politicians. Jump outside of the mind box.
The issue since 2013 is Putin’s attempt to corral Ukraine into his abortive Eurasian Economic Union. The Sochi Olympics were designed to put the cherry on its top.
In a sense, his behaviour since has been to try to somehow resurrect that dead parrot. But his invasion has put the final nail in the coffin. Note how cold Tokayev was at their latest meeting.
Even with a destroyed Ukraine, Russia will be a crippled nation for decades to come.
LOL…
Countries are indeed running and stand in line to join brics,… a club of states… why should they join the state Russia itself anyway?
Has any state tried to join the US or UK lately… or ever?
Many, people and states, are very keen to join with USA, UK Europe, EU, NAFTA Japan, ASEAN etc that’s why these countries are the wealthiest, happiest, freest, and why they have immigration problems – as opposed to miserable Russia which has a massive emigration problem, and North Korea, which would have if they didn’t so effectively threaten anyone thinking about leaving with death or imprisonment.
Dude, dont let your superiority complex ruin your thinking.
Look up real world statistics. Russia is on balance a IMMIGRATION country, Top 3 in numbers for sure.
The point was not joining with a state, but join A state.
And even in joining WITH a state, Russia and its state clubs are superior right now… look at the line waiting to join BRICS,… e.g Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many more
How many of states has the West (US+ca. 50 Vassals) succeeded to convince to JOIN the sanctions against Russia, within the 8 months (!) since they started??? Hint: a FAT zero…
Population of Russia has fallen by 4 million in the last 30 years (up to 2020), In the same period UK pop went up by 10 million and USA by 80 million. Russia is very keen to attract immigrants because of it’s population crisis:
Yeah dude, whatever your superiority complex wants you to believe, you’ll find some skewed data to support your fallacy…
Anyone can instead look up the raw data for himself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe#2013_UN_data
–> Russia is by far the first on the list as destination among European countries.
what evidence is there to support your claim regarding putin wanting ukraine under russian rule. since the war started in 2015 russia has tried its best to keep the country together under the minsk accords, even when the donetsk and luhansk regions carried out votes to separate from ukraine and applied to join russia putin said no and tried to keep minsk alive. this isnt the actions of a man who wanted to take over ukraine. also as pointed out in the article the military operation was a mere 190k personnel, hardly an invasion force intended to subdue an entire country.
190,000 men was plenty of force to subdue a willing country. Ukraine wasn’t willing to be subdued. Given the problems Russia has had supplying its 190,000 men, it probably couldn’t muster the men necessary to subdue an unwilling Ukraine, and it certainly couldn’t supply them.
Remember, the Nazis marched into the Rhineland a mere 20,000 strong — all the force the Nazi regime could muster in 1936. They were greeted jubilantly by the Rhinelanders.
The German General Staff were quaking in their boots. If either Britain or France had responded with force, the 20,000 men would have been toast. Neither Britain nor France did anything, and a jubilant Fuhrer was on his way to world domination.
Be warned.
either you didnt read what i wrote correctly or youre intentionally misinterpreting it and your making some comparisons that are not at all comparable at all, for example the rhineland is miniscule compared to the size of ukraine.
Rhineland was/ is a pure German region (Land) and always belonged to Germany. The invasion by the Nazi Regime was so successful, because there was no resistance from the inhabitants and they were jubilant to be “freed”. Rhineland was occupied by the French because the Germans were behind their payment of the Reparations. So there is no comparison with the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops
First, that the conquest of Crimea and the Russian-fomented ‘insurgency’ in the Donbas were triggered by the Maidan, where Ukraine refused to join the Russian orbit and made a deal with the EU (*not* NATO). Second, that I see the Minsk accords as, effectively, a form of Russian control. The Donbas regions would be effectively ruled from Moscow – whatever the constitutional arrangements any local government there would be 100% dependent on Russian military force for its survival. And, being still part of Ukraine, those regions would give Moscow an effective veto over Ukrainian foreign and security policy. One of the disagreements that sank the Minsk accords, I seem to remember, was how much control Ukraine would have over elections in the Donbas, which is sort of suggestive. Ukrainian connection to the Russian economic system and forced disconnection from the Western one would do the rest. Once Ukraine was run by a pro-Russian (and likely corrupt) elite, it would be a safely Russian vassal state (like Belarus) without going to the trouble of actually conquering it. Which is of course why Ukraine was not willing to abide by the Minsk accords.
The kind of authoritarian kleptocracy Putin runs can’t survive unless it can keep its people focused on external threats, real and imagined, against which their fearless leader will protect them. A truly independent, prosperous Ukraine would, by its very existence, be a threat to such a regime. If Putin really wanted to encourage Slavic brotherhood that can be done without subjugating people.
I agree with this assessment. It is no less consistent with political realism than Mearsheimer’s opinion and as you mention it better fits the facts such as troop levels and overall military strategy. The Russians were attempting to do what the Americans did in Iraq and Afghanistan and hoping their proximity and lack of moral scruples would allow them more success. Also, your point fits with the origin of the conflict, the 2014 revolution that ousted the pro-Russian Yanukovych. The Russians believed that the coup was backed by NATO and the US. The nearest analogy for the Americans would be if someone staged a coup and installed a Chinese/Russian pawn regime in Mexico or Canada. Obviously, the US would not and could not simply ignore this. They would, logically, attempt to bring a friendly government to power and bring the nation back into the American sphere of influence. Whether that rose to the level of military conflict would depend on specific circumstances, threat levels, the current domestic and geopolitical climate, etc.
Also, I am able to comment on some articles but not others. It’s very strange. I think it must be some computer bug.
I could quibble a bit. Ukraine did not belong to Russia before 2014, so it is not a question of bringing it ‘back’, and I do think it makes a difference that your ‘coup’ has been repeatedly legitimised by free elections. This was not some generals taking over, but a government falling to popular insurgency, like the Arab Spring.
Still, the parallel with Iraq and Afghanistan, while painful, is unfortunately rather apt.
A ‘coup’ is used to take away democracy and free elections. You have it backwards. The people of Ukraine are not slaves to be owned by Russians. They have a right to their own government that they control. So do the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. A “government” that is NOT elected is by definition illegitimate.
You’re correct in that subsequent history does vindicate the Maidan Revolution as more a popular revolution than a ‘coup’. Had the Yanukovych election been legitimate, future elections would have shown as much. Russia would, of course, contest that interpretation.
Sorry, since 1848 the US has had many unfriendly govts in Mexico. Some have been overtly Marxist.
Except for one questionable foray after a border raid, the US has tried to maintain good relations. And I recall a nation about 90 miles away that is as hostile as you claim Ukraine was to Russia.
The idea that Ukraine would immediately become a NATO missile base is simply disinformatin.
Zelensky only wanted in when he thought Russia would invade.
“Russia did not just want the ‘neutrality’ of Ukraine. They wanted Ukraine to be under Russian political control”
Strangely, this desire did not seem to become apparent till 2014.
For the very good reason that until 2014 Russia thought, not without reason, that they could get the control they wanted by political means. The Yanukovich government accepted to ditch the EU and opt for Russias economic sphere in return for Russian cash promises (and maybe some discreet threats?). Only Yanukovich could not carry his people with him so that his government fell and the plan fell through. On to plan B: Conquest of Crimea, send the ‘little green men’ into the Donbas, and use the Minsk accords to keep Ukraine under control. Only Ukraine refused to remain bound by the accords (the other side did not respect the details much either), so there was no stable control to get here either. On to plan C and invasion.
No, they usually dont, they do however vote governments out in elections in functional democracies (quite few nowadays)… If a few % of radicals do try to do a insurrection, they usually end in prison, like 6th January…
Maidan was an exemption which confirmes the rule, and only succeeded because of outside help.
Yes indeed, a few % of the population can overturn a government, if they have radical (Nazis) prominently agitating among them… Especially if they are massively supported by foreign powers.
So governments, beware!
Putin beware! And boy he knows it, hiding from his own team, his own people, imprisoning and killing any of them who so much as hurt his feelings, and paying hacks and hackers to ‘create content’. Rarely in history has the distance between a mans ambition & self regard, and the reality, been so great, and so pathetic. Chekist loser punk.
Hey Dominic,
Are you still showering regularly?
I heard Putin ordered an even longer table to distance himself from his EU guests, once he heard, that EU countries advise their citizens to take less showers… He must have an overly sensitive nose…;-)
Strangely, this desire was apparent, which makes you seem either ignorant, or a shill. Gary Kasparov was very vocal, before Putin even took power, in warning Russian and the World of Putin’s mindset and intention to ‘rebuild Russia’ using whatever means necessary (crime, aggression). The West largely ignored him, as they ignored Boris Nemstov, until Putin had him killed.
What makes me wonder is that Mearsheimer does not seem to take into account what the Ukrainians themselves wanted. We discuss the Russian point of view, West’s strategy etc and the will of the Ukrainian people is absent. Do Ukrainians want to be part of the EU or NATO or Russian Federation or …Starfleet? They should be able to join whatever organization they wish for.
Coming from a democratic tradition, I find inexplicable that lack of supporting the will of a Nation. Why Russian, Western or Chinese interests should block, at least in principle, Ukrainians to decide for themselves?
I have read dozens of articles in which the Ukrainian point of view is dismissed as non relevant. But, defending Democracy, we have first and above all ask the Ukrainian people how they wish to live.
as mearsheimer points out in his lectures, yes in an ideal world democracy should prevail, however we dont live in that ideal world. so this is when different rules need to come into play for the sake of the human race, and if that means ukraine doesnt get a say and has to stay neutral to save us all from being blown to smithereens then so be it
Keeping Ukraine demilitarised and out of NATO should not be a problem – provided of course they could trust Russia not to invade them. This is not about neutralisation, but about subjugation.
Unfortunately no one ever cares what Ukrainians want…
Starting with US proclaiming in 2007 at the NATO summit, that Ukraine will be part of NATO , when polls in Ukraine showed there was around 20% public support in Ukraine for joining…
You mean the US was going to incorporate Ukraine into NATO by force, against the will of the Ukrainian government? Or that the outcome of opinion polls trump government decisions?
That’s obvious nonsense. That was 14 years ago, and Ukraine still wasn’t part of NATO. Countries have to apply to be part of NATO. People of the country have to want to be part of NATO. It doesn’t get decided from the outside by a military invasion like Russian monsters prefer. Typical that a Russian troll would have no understanding of how NATO works. Freedom and democracy baffle people who prefer slavery to a brutal dictator.
This were not my words but the ones of US President GW Bush…
Anyone can go find them and read them for themself…
But awesome that you find the whole thing to be nonsense, totally agree, btw… GW Bush and all US governents since have been mostly whackos imho…
And the dude before Bush,.. with the cigar in the girl and “read my lips” lying, ah… yes: Clinton, BFF of Epstein was not better either…
The moves to bring Ukraine into NATO was led by the Ukrainian government – no, it was not a popular position until after 2014, when Putin showed himself and taught Ukrainian people why being part of NATO would protect them. I would imagine now that a large majority of Ukrainians would like to join, and wish they had. They probably also wished that they had not got rid of their nukes, as Putin reneged on his promise not to invade, whilst the West has not reneged on their promise to support Ukraine.
Moreover, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was generally a headache for NATO, which is why they delayed it.
Exactly! To the Mearsheimer’s of this world the desires of the little people are irrelevant. They have no agency at all. That’s real politik. The corollary is that “powers” have “legitimate” spheres of influence that others need to respect.
Because Mearsheimer agrees with the Russians that they own Ukraine instead of the people of Ukraine owning themselves and their country. He is all about power and dictatorship like a proper Putin tool. He thinks people should be forced to stay as slaves of the dictator in power.
Thank you Freddie for a really good interview. It would be good if you followed this up with an interview on Are sanctions working? Now it has become apparent how dependent on Russia we still are in Europe. To give a couple of examples 40% of Uranium supply still comes from Russia, 20% of LPG is is still coming from Russia etc etc
Stephen Walsh
3 months ago
Nobody has done more to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers than President Putin. Russia appears well on its way to becoming a vassal state of China’s; just a bigger version of North Korea or Uganda. If Ukraine becomes a failed state, due either to Russian invasion or to its forced subjugation to Russia (“a neutral Ukraine” as Mearsheimer calls it), then many millions more of its population will migrate west, which in itself is a security threat to the rest of Europe. If little Estonia is to get the benefit of an article 5 guarantee, with the resulting possibility of nuclear war, it is not clear why Ukraine should not get the support of the US and UK as fellow parties of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, in which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal to Russia.
This is what came to mind for me as well, when he stated nationalism could also factor in to Russia’s efforts. I don’t see how you could know anything about Russia, or actual Russian people, and think this could be anything but a negative force.
To any Russian who felt like they were finally beginning to actually be a part of the wider world, to have opportunities and improvements to their lot in life – this war has been a devastating blow. I have heard people who fled talk about how homeless and hopeless they feel, like the Russia they knew and/or at least thought it was possible could one day become is now likely lost forever, at least in their lifetime.
This effort may have been seen as a restoration of greatness to someone like Putin – but to many, it was actually the death of Russian potential. They are now back to being a pariah, back to USSR, as it were – and other than the rallies Putin forces government employees to attend, or the online trolls he pays to push a narrative – I don’t hear a lot of Russians expressing any sort of nationalism. I hear a lot of despair and fatalism.
Yep. He said in the article that Russia planning to invade the Nordic states was only in the Western imagination. The idea that NATO was any type of offensive threat to Russia is absurd. Not even Putin believes it. You’re also right about the aspirations of the Russian people; They have no desire to invade Ukraine and restore greater Rus, they want to join the modern world as the proud nation they are.
Apart from anything else it’s just heartbreaking.
“The idea that NATO was any type of offensive threat to Russia is absurd. ”
Absolutely. Ask Serbia, Libya and Iraq.
There was absolutely nothing wrong about Ukraine joining NATO and US missiles literally next door to Moscow.
After all, recall how gracefully the US accepted Cuba’s right to join the Soviet bloc and Soviet missiles being based there.
You’re sounding a bit like a self-pitying Russian.
Since Russia already has NATO states on all its western borders, and Putin’s explicit reason for invading was that Ukrainians are really “just Russians,” it was actually the best way to get NATO missiles “literally on Russia’s doorstep.”
Wherever you put the border, NATO will alwasy be on teh other side.
Of course, one could then negotiate a treaty, as Reagan and Gorbachev did.
But invasions are so much more fun!
Ukraine never intended to join NATO before Putin attacked. The Ukrainians thought the Russians would abide by their prior agreement to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nukes.
If Putin is really concerned about war with NATO, he shouldn’t constantly be trying to cause one. If Putin is so concerned about missiles next door to Russia, he shouldn’t be taking actions almost guaranteed to cause just that. Is he really that stupid, or is it just you Russian trolls who are?
Yeah!!! PURE LOGIC man…
Of course the death of 500.000 Iraqi children, that Albright claimed were an O.K. price to remove the henchman Hussein from Iraq were not a threat to the country Iraq… Never mind talking about victims other than children… These stoopid Iraqis should not take their deaths so personal… just business, baby. These dead kids if they had any sense of morality should instead sing as angels in heavenly choirs and praise the nobility and harmlessness of US/Nato.
Also never mind, that Saddam himself was an US stooge before, and massively supported by US to inflict death and destruction on the neighboring state Iran, just because the people choose to rather live under even the Ayatollahs, than the US stooge Shah, after the US and UK first overthrew the legally democratically elected prime minister Mossadegh, who did not want to continue to give US+UK Irans Oil basically for free…
Nah, the US (or its puppet self financing foreign legion NATO) is NO danger to anyone…
The people of Libya can totally confirm this! What the heck did they need that highest human development index (HDI) of all Africa for, before the benevolent Nato intervention???
HDI is so totally overrated, Libyan people now enjoy living in the mad Max world of warlords, where you never know if you still have to eat or if you even are alive the next day… MUCH more fun! Thanks, Nato!
Nato was never a danger to them, but brought them heaven on earth!
By your logic, Germany’s main threat mid C20th was not Hitler and his NSDAP, but the Allies – and the Allies are responsible for German deaths. Maybe they should be paying reparations to the German people? And did you conveniently forget, or not know, that NATO did not get into the Iraq War?
So you like to play naming games and are throwing in straw-man arguments.
Any reasonable person does not care if you call it “coalition of the willing” if it anyway is mostly US + her vassals in Nato.
How do you compare Germany with Libya?
Did Libya or Iraq declare war against US as Hitler did in 43? Note that the US did NOT even declare war on Germany before that (because of so called humanitarian reasons, “fight against evil”), but waited that Germany exhausted itself against Russia before they joined the fight to pick up Western Europe on the cheap…
You undermine everything else that you try to argue for by saying that Hitler declared war on the US in 1943 and claiming on that basis that the US waited until the Germans had exhausted themselves fighting the Russians before joing the war in Europe/North Africa. In fact, today is the 81st anniversary of Hitler’s declaration of war against the US, on December 11th 1941. At that stage the German invasion of the USSR had been highly successful, and most historians presume, logically, that Hitler in acting as he did must have thought completing the conquset of the country was simply a matter of time. You can’t expect to be taken seriously when you get such basics wrong: but then, you come across as someone who hates the US and is eager to take the opportunity to vent that hatred.
You are completely right! Thank you for the correction!
I remembered it wrong and confused it with the first US active fighting in Europe in 1943. Wiki:
“The United States entered the war in the west with Operation Torch on 8 November 1942, after their Soviet allies had pushed for a second front against the Germans.”
–> in Africa, close to a year after declaration of war vs. US.
combined allied (US/UK/etc.) troops ca 100K vs . ca 125K axis forces (incl. lots of Vichy French, who surrendered/switched sides quite fast). At the same time the Axis had 3700K forces on Eatern Front vs ca. 3000K Soviets.
the US joined the bombing campaign in 1942:
“In mid-1942, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) arrived in the UK and carried out a few raids across the English Channel.”
“The first stepping stone for the Allied liberation of Europe was invading Europe through Italy. Launched on 9 July 1943…”
–>close to 2 years after Hitler declared war.
combined ally troops 160K, in Sicily vs. ca. 200K axis troops, later in Italy 180K allies vs 100K Axis.
Same time on Eastern Front: Axis forces 3700K vs Soviet 5200K.
Finally the main US thrust with significant numbers followed only in Normandy in 1944 almost 3 years after declaration of war:
“The second European front that the Soviets had pressed for was finally opened on 6 June 1944, when the Allies launched an invasion of Normandy.”
Allied forces (13 countries, mainly US UK) 1450K vs. Axis 380K (later 600K).
At the same time on the eastern front: 3370K Axis vs. 6800K Soviet.
And I dont hate US, far from it!
I just despise most actions of the US government in other countries, once it became the western hegemon after WWII, just as I despise most of the actions of the eastern hegemon, the communist Party in Soviet Russia.
Sorry double post, did not see the above in the thread so I rewrote, but more detailed:
Playing with names?
So how exactly is it different when you call US +Vassals the “Coalition of the willing” instead of US+Nato, if it is overwhelmingly the same countries?
Another straw-man argument from you with throwing Hitler-Germany into the mix…
So how exactly does Hitler-Germany equate to Iraq or Libya?
With Iraq US had to invent the false testimony of incubator atrocities by the Iraqis, just to convince their own population, that Saddam is now bad invading Kuwait and not doing the exact same as before, when invading Iran, when the West supported him with even giving him chemical weapons he used against the Kurds…
What did Libya do, that was even in the slightest comparable to Germany?
Not to mention that US did not fight against Germany (for “humanitarian reasons”, “fight against evil”) until Germany themselves declared war on US and defacto US started fighting only when Germany has exhausted themselves and the soviet Union…
LOL… While checking to edit my double post, I noticed that I received 2 negative “likes” on both of them within minutes, between refreshing to check if they are in the thread…
Looking down further I seemingly received the exact same 2 negative likes on ALL of my posts, even from yesterday… while the post I was responding to, received always 2 positive likes at the same time…
LOL… nice job with your double/triple accounts you sockpuppet! (thumbsup)
And there we go… ROTFLMAO
Looking in to the thread again I seemingly got 5-6 further negative likes on ALL my ca. 30 comments in this tread in the these 30 minutes between checking. The same positives likes went to the posts I answered to, if I was arguing against it… While other comments barely moved in their likes in this time.
Dude, don’t you have anything better to do?
You could at least try to do the manly thing, to defeat my posts with arguments. ;-D
Just came back to see the progress…
Seems after clicking most of my posts into the red within an hour the dude stopped… Now almost no move in likes for 2 hours. Did his mouse break down clicking?
LOL
Here we go again…
He bought a new mouse!
Another 6-7 negatives on all my comments within the last hour.
Though this sockpuppet’s intellectual skill to argue may be lacking, you’ve got to admire his energy in creating additional accounts and clicking all these likes/dislikes. Kudos to him!
NATO is the greatest threat to peace in Europe, just as the US is the greatest threat to peace in the world.
The greatest terrorist country on the planet, bar none, is the good ol’ USA.
Putin is only concerned with his own greatness as “owner” of the Russian Federation. He wants to expand his ownership. He has no concern for the welfare of the Russian people.
Ukraine surrendered “its” nuclear weapons because, since Ukraine was part of USSR, the nuclear weapons were actually part of the Russian arsenal. It was understood by all parties that NATO would not expand to the east.
So what belonged to the ‘Union’ automatically became Russian after the break-up? Those were NOT the terms of the USSR break-up.
Nor should they have been. A lot of Soviet technology, nuclear and otherwise, was developed in Ukraine, not Russia.
And any which way, Ukraine did agree to disarm in exchange for assurances over the protection of its border.
If such agreements are seen to be worthless, then the world will soon realise just how easy it is for tinpot countries to build nuclear arsenals.
Russia never attacked Ukraine for decades, until Obama began his brainless move to overthrow Ukraine’s elected government.
In fact, Russia leased Crimea from Ukraine, and paid as agreed, for many years.
Then the black Marxist (aka Obama) came in and in 2014, began to destroy Ukraine through his foolish policies.
Russia comprised 51% of the population of the USSR in 1989. If a partnership is wound up, a 51% shareholder doesn’t get to keep all the key assets, potentially to use them against their former partners. Ukraine received security assurances from the US, UK and Russia in 1994 in exchange for surrendering to Russia the nuclear weapons deployed within its borders, which Russia had already recognised. In those circumstances, potential NATO membership for Ukraine did not arise. As Russia has now reneged on the security assurances it then gave, making the achievement of similar nuclear non-proliferation agreements in the future much less likely, the US and UK have a legitimate interest in the security of Ukraine.
You got a document for that “understanding?” It’s certainly not in the text of the agreement.
What is in the text of the agreement is the statement that all of the signatories will respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine, refrain from the use of force or economic coercion against Ukraine, and not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or any other non-nuclear state. treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/v3007.pdf, pages 168-171
Russia broke all these openly published agreements when it invaded Crimea in 2014 and again when it went into Ukraine proper last February. Ukraine only applied to join NATO after Crimea, and who can blame them?
Your argument is so feeble, you should be ashamed.
The Budapest memorandum was null and void after the US and EU staged the coup and insurrection against a legally elected Ukrainian government with the so called Maidan “revolution”. This was a clear breach against the memorandum and its agreement to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. The US/EU disrespect and thus destruction of the Budapest memorandum went even as far as Victoria Nuland deciding who shall be next president/prime-minister in Ukraine…
Agreements are there for ALL sides to respect them. If one side first does not but breaches it and then accuses the other, that it IN TURN as well does not respect it (Russia taking Crimea), then this is pure hypocrisy and shows a shameful lack of understanding of pure logic.
The US/EU did not stage a revolution. The Ukrainians did that all by themselves – at most the US/EU made some promises. Besides there have been several legally elected Ukrainian governments since 2014. All of them had the option to undo that supposed ‘coup’, yet none of them did. Anyway. do you really think that the FSB did not interfere on the other side? That would put Russia as much in the wrong. Finally, just check the memorandum. It says nothing about the memorandum being null and void if any of the signatories should be unhappy with the way future Ukrainian governments are formed.
You wrote that ironically?
The political party which has been legally in government before the insurrection has been declared illegal by the hunta installed by US, as well as any party which had a similar program. That party had more than 50% of the population before the coup..
Members of parliament have been lynched, any opposing mass media forbidden… Dozens of People have been burned ALIVE (without any consequence for the perpetrators TILL TODAY, 8 years after. Overall a nice democratic atmosphere for “legal elections” after the coup…
But still, Zelensky came only to power because he promised peace with Russia in his campaign… look it up yourself.
LOL…
Amazing how delusional people can be!
You, just like the US/Western governments have totally lost contact to reality.
Yeah, sure you’ll do to Russia as you did to Serbia!?!?!…. 😀
Well, Albright mentioned once how it was unfair that Russia owns so much real estate in Siberia, that it does not really “need”… And US pundits have tried to circulate the idea how Russia needs to be “decolonized” (aka reduced to a small territory around Moscow),…
LOL again…
If even small Serbia had had a few nukes US would not have dared to touch her, just like NKorea now…
Sure US, as world champion producer of “collateral damage” everywhere it goes and philanthropic sponsor of human rights institutions like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, would have groaned and moaned, huffed and puffed about how “Hitlerite the demonic Serbs” were, and all of the “international Community” (=US+Vassals) would have joined the choir….but they would not have touched Serbia.
Russia has more nukes than US and could turn it into glowing ash… Be carefull how much you want to bite of Russia like of YU/Serbia, you might regret it one day.
As if. You Russian trolls are such terrible liars. Nobody ever planned to invade Russia in modern times, and that still won’t happen even after what you have done.
Russians make their own troubles and blame it on other people. No one will invade, BUT: You have made yourselves pariahs. No one will trust you to keep agreements. No one will do business with you, either. Europe was set to buy all your gas and be your trading partner, and you threw all that in the garbage for fantasies of empire. You’re your own worst enemies.
LOL. Delusional.
Though Putin proposed a “common European House” from Lissabon to Vladivostok, Russia sure does not necessarily need neither EU money nor EU love, if it comes with the price of being treated very disrespectfully.
Russia has options, more then EU has. You are completely disconnected from reality, if you think that US+UK+puddles (EU and the few other vassals) are the REAL “international community”.
Russia is totally selfsufficient in all its needs. EU is NOT, which will be an unpleasant thing to watch this winter.
Serbians are scary – like Russians – they seem to be unable to rise above their pathetic liitle delusions of grandeur – stuck in some kind of megalomaniac obsession. Bad news for anyone in their vicinity. in an ideal world natural selection would have thinned their ranks, maybe it is -but it is taking WAY too long….
LOL.
Nice analysis (from a hobbyist psychiatric?).
Lots of projection going on in your post.
But seriously, you should have a shrink look into that racist genocidal dreams you write about…
Best wishes and get well soon!
First of all, since I didn’t do a “whatabout”. But more important, I agree with YOU. It’s those you were arguing with who deserve the pot.kettle.black award. If you look closely, you’ll see my comment was to the delusional vojin subasic.
The pot calling the kettle black seems to to be per definition a “whataboutism” argument!
But I see the usual lazy “whataboutism” reply itself as a total non-argument, rather is any “whataboutism” reference the best way to out oneself as a hypocrite…
Yanukovych was ousted by a majority of the Ukrainian Parliament after plans were found that he planned to kill many of the protestors by sniper guns. He was also secretly planning to change the Ukrainian Constitution.
Putin’s puppet government was NOT legitimate. The present government was legally elected. There was nothing in that agreement about Russia keeping control of Ukraine’s government by dictatorship.
There is no a document for that “understanding “.
However, James Baker (then the United States Secretary of State) gave a verbal promise to Eduard Shevardnadze (then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union) that NATO would not expand Eastwards during negotiations regarding the situation with the sudden collapse of Eastern Germany (DDR or GDR). It was not written on paper, but it was said with a few people present in the room including interpreters.
I cannot judge to what extent it was a legally binding statement. However, it seems that the Russians viewed it as a morally binding one.
The problem is: it was made to the Soviets, when many present nations were still in the Union. When it broke up, as sovereign states, they were free to do what they wanted.
spot on…The top and bottom is that if you start a war you own all of it… what your side does and what the other side do, and what non involved nations or people do.
All of this is on Putin and his own already ramshackle country is suffering as well. I agree with the article that 190,000 wasn’t meant to seize and hold the country, but it was meant to kill Zelensky and others, decapitate the state and insert client politicians , and they messed that up.
it seems to me that Putin knows EXACTLY what he is doing – ie turning the Ukraine into a rubbish dump at minimal expense to the Russians – because they cant risk attacking inside Russia. Damned easy to sit on the safe sidelines firing endless rockets into Ukraine knowing that they wont fire back -p cant lose unfortunately – this should have been sorted years ago- but we all got sidetracked by that super ultra killer bug from our other global megalomaniacs. The US, are of course, also megalomaniacs but at least they have the problem of democracy to cause a little hauling of the reins ….
You got a document for that “understanding?” It’s certainly not in the text of the agreement.
What is in the text of the agreement is the statement that all of the signatories will respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine, refrain from the use of force or economic coercion against Ukraine, and not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or any other non-nuclear state.
treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/v3007.pdf, pages 168-171
Russia broke all these openly published agreements when it invaded Crimea in 2014 and again when it went into Ukraine proper last February. Ukraine only applied to join NATO after Crimea, and who can blame them?
Your argument is so feeble, you should be ashamed.
Er, that was something called the USSR–not Russia.
The latter is half the size, with a much smaller miltiary force.
And the treaty stating that is…where?
Outrageous BS. Pure Russian agitprop. Ukraine surrendered its nukes after Russia agreed to respect its sovereignty. Putin broke that promise long before the invasion. And Meirsheimer’s idiotic claim about 190,000 Russians not being enough is 20/20 hindsight. Before the invasion, he (and most others) thought Ukraine would fold in a week, so more troops weren’t required. The Germans did NOT think that about the Poles in 1939.
As I recall the agreement, Ukraine would be an independent state with that condition guaranteed by the US, UK and Russia. There was no “understanding” given the guarantee made that step unnecessary. Russia violated the agreement in 2014, even more so today.
In 2014 it seemed more a contest of which criminal gangs were to operate and where. The current Ukrainian government has decided to clean out a large number of those gangs.
you cite the 1994 agreement however you neglect to mention the agreement russia had at the end of the cold war, twhere nato would not expand east of the elbe. if we hadnt have broken that agreement we wouldnt be in this mess right now.
Which “we”? You can’t have an agreement that the people it is made about never agreed to. Where is the document, and where are the signatures of the democratically ELECTED governments of those Eastern European countries that supposedly agreed to never join NATO? Russians think they can make slaves of other people in other countries.
Not joining NATO was also obviously a mistake, because those are the only countries vulnerable to Russian invasion. Thus the rush of unaligned nations to join NATO for protection from Russia.
The idea that Putin was never trying to conquer Ukraine is nonsense. He thought he could do it with a lot fewer troops than he really needs, wishful thinking because he still doesn’t have as many troops as he really needs. The opportunity for peace, if we are to take Putin seriously, never existed barring Ukraine’s unconditional surrender on Day One. A cease fire now would simply allow him to lick his wounds and build up his forces for another attack later on. What alternative is there now but for Russia to suffer humiliation on the battlefield and economic ruin at home until it can no longer continue its war effort?
Yes, Mearsheimer is using Putin’s failure to date to achieve his war aims to retrospectively spin that they were never his war aims in the first place.
My opinion is that Putin was thinking Belarus, not Chechnya or Syria. He intended to remove the Ukrainian govt and replace it with a Russian-friendly regime, in a short period of time. Given that that hasn’t happened he’s now thinking Chechnya or Syria.
His argument fell over right at the start when he said:
“They made no effort to conquer all of Ukraine. They didn’t even come close. “
The whole point of the paratroopers taking the airport at Kiev was to quickly capture and decapitate the Ukraine leadership and insert their own puppets. So of course they were trying to conquer all of Ukraine through this approach.
I sense that he’ll state anything to promote his theory.
That’s real close to what they did in Afghanistan, where they succeeded but only up to a point. They never could really conquer the place because if the natives want you out badly enough and you can’t wipe them out you’re bound to wind up leaving sooner or later. So having failed at Plan A, Putin is now on Plan B, part of which is genocide.
Mearsheimer’s initial point about the reaction inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was bound to provoke is solid enough (and we bungled that, we just stoked Russian paranoia without providing the Ukrainians and Georgians with any protection), but as for NATO “expansion” being the cause of all this trouble I first have to point out that NATO didn’t expand outward on its own initiative. All those former Warsaw Pact nations and former Soviet republics wanted in so they’d have insurance against having to go through precisely what the Ukrainians are going through now. Were we wrong to let them in? Absolutely not. And looking forward to a post-war world, if the rest of us don’t lose heart and wind up selling the Ukrainians out, I say we need the Ukrainians in NATO. They’re good role models for the rest of us.
And I haven’t forgotten the Georgians. For a while they had more troops in Afghanistan than most NATO countries. We owe them something.
As soon as Ukraine gets the green light from the EU, half the population will decamp west anyway, along with any Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh etc etc with a Ukrainian grandparent or the cash to buy a Ukrainian passport. There’s already 70 thousand here in Ireland and most of them were never near any fighting whatsoever. I’ve started noticing quite a lot of high value Ukrainian cars driving round, even Porsches. We’re being played
logic or common sense seems not to be your strong side…
Neither the Ukrainians nor any other nation is monolithic, they are all individuals. Some decided to fight, but some (millions) decided or intend to leave and live another day… in a hopefully financially better circumstance than in Ukraine. Ukraine has been the poorest nation in Europe even before the war.
But I dont envy neither the ones who stay nor the ones who leave (to EU).
“If Ukraine becomes a failed stat”
No if. They are done, whichever way the war ends. Just like Libya and Iraq.
When Putin came to power, Russian life expectancy had fallen by over a decade, the economy had fallen apart, suicides had skyrocketed and oligarchs were stealing away billions to western countries that today talk of “democracy”.
Simultaneously, the military was completely inoperative and no threat. Despite this, it was exactly during this period that “defensive” NATO (the same block that launched despicable, destructive wars in Iraq and Libya) expanded all the way across Europe
Putin and co didn’t demand a new Russian empire, they pointed out that expanding NATO to Ukraine would be the last straw. All they wanted was a neutral Ukraine and cessation of hostilities towards Russian minorities (remember the war on Serbia, “war crime” trials etc? Same concept.)
The reasons Russia will be in the China camp has nothing to do with Putin, and everything to do with the West. And let’s be clear, you couldn’t care less if Russia became a vassal, just like you couldn’t care less for Russia when you propped up Yelstin and his looters.
The bottomline is very simple. China lacks energy and food. China is the West’s biggest enemy. And you solved both of their problems in one go, with your deceit and arrogance.
The nations of Eastern Europe hurried to get into NATO while they could, before Russia again got strong enough to threaten them and force them to submit to Russia instead. For some reason they did not trust Russia’s future peaceful intent. Sounds like a wise decision.
Anyway, Russia did not demand Ukrainian neutrality. They demanded control of Ukraine.
LOL, …
Ukraine was defacto in all but name a NATO country already, with all the NATO “advisers” and Nato compatibility stuff ongoing… The US installed insurrectionist hunta even rewrote the Ukrainian constitution, so that NATO membership is a definitive target.
Ukraine was and is not a full member of the club however, more like having much of the responsibility, but few of the rights… a classic vassal (of second or lesser class, unlike the first class vassals/EU)
Ukraine after the coup being neutral is really a funny joke. You are quite a comedian, I’ll give you that.
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So what you’re really saying is that Russia will implode, and the “real” Real Politik will involve a tug of war between the EU/US and China, over who gets what in Russia.
That actually makes more sense. Russia is no longer a significant power, and, never having been a true nation, will inevitably fragment.
We need to be ready to come to an amicable agreement on Russia with China. Taiwan is enough of a problem for us as it is.
Russia is a poor country. The far north is almost devoid of people, too. There isn’t much in it worth having, so I wouldn’t worry much about a tug of war
There’s an old saying: Russia is never as strong, as it looks, and never as weak, as it looks.Treating about Russia with China is not a real option. China can get the whole of it, why would it trade anything?
For a “failed state”, the Ukrainians have been awfully effective at defending themselves. It’s now Russia that is in danger of becoming a failed state with any previous progress destroyed. If Ukraine becomes part of NATO, it will be Putin’s fault for invading. The reason Russia and China are in any way aligned is because they are both despotic dictatorships in a world of democracies. Any looting Yeltsin might have done is utterly dwarfed by what Putin and his oligarchs have in foreign bank accounts.
Ukraine could have obtained the equivalent of the Article 5 guarantee by the US/Nato enabling her to become neutral with the assurance that in the event of hostilities breaking out involving Ukraine and Russia, Nato will come to Ukraine’s defence.
What Ukraine wanted and still wants is to become a real democracy. In fact the standard of living in Ukraine before the war was higher than in Russia. I don’t think NATO membership was their biggest goal.
I read in one interview that Russian soldiers stole practically everything from towns that they captured but they didn’t take robot vacuums like Roombas because they didn’t know what they were.
I agree. Blaming Putin’s war on Ukraine/’The West’ is just blaming the victim. Putin is blaming Ukraine for making him attack like abusers blame their victims for making them beat them. It’s nonsense. Ukraine was never a real threat to Putin. He just wants the USSR empire back, and this is one of the excuses.
This all also assumes that the people in these countries in Eastern Europe are owned by Russia like slaves instead of belonging to themselves.
I’m surprised that the top comments ignore the central message of the interview. What realpolitik implies is that it does not matter who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, who signed what and who broke his promises. What matters is whether the political goals we want to achieve are realistic or not, taking into account the circumstances and the assets we have.
Putin clearly failed in that respect, but this does not mean the West is doing better.
There are no realistic scenarios to end this conflict. That ship is gone.
What is your goal? To remove Putin from power and replace him with some kind of Jelcin or Navalnij, who will surrender and sign a peace treaty acknowledging the loss of Donbas and Crimea, and coming back to cooperation with the West as a humiliated underdog? Ridiculous. Aiming at this is even less realistic than hoping for a democratic Afghanistan. Didn’t you learn anything from that war (and the previous ones)?
What else then? To destroy Russia as a state? What then? A series of unpredictable dictators with nuclear weapons at hand fighting each other and the rest of the world? Do you want to see Prigojin and Kadirov and the likes as little Putins with nuclear power? What good is that?
The most likely outcome is that low-intensity conflict will go on, the front will be frozen at some point, while Russia will slowly become a Chinese vassal state, deeply hostile towards the West. The less likely outcome is that Putin will be eventually replaced by some real warlord, and limited nuclear conflict emerges with the same outcome, only with far more destruction.
In either case, Russia is doomed. At the same time, Europe (particularly Germany) is doomed as well, as most industrial activities won’t be competitive anymore given the new energy prices. That means, no defence industry either, so no possibility to create military power. This might be seen as a desirable outcome from the UK and US, only that it also means the US standing alone against China on the European front, with some “allies” who are nothing but a burden. This will eventually lead to the US giving up the European front to concentrate on the Pacific, leaving to Europe face its fate alone.
You might celebrate for a few years the victory of democracy in Herson, but if Western idealism keeps prevailing in foreign politics, sooner than we think the whole of Europe will become a huge Kabul airport.
As opposed to that scenario, realpolitik would imply some kind of peaceful coexistence with Russia, requiring compromises based on common sense and not dictated terms resulting from your (real, or presumed, does not matter) moral supremacy. Such compromises were reachable in the last decade (and were reached indeed, the Minsk agreement being the last one of them), but with the EU losing influence and the US turning back to idealistic politics driven by internal policy demand their time came to an end. Today, there is hard to see any possible solution. That was the point of the article, not some moralisation about who is wrong and who is right.
There is a lot of sense in what you say (apart from being a little too sure of yourself in your long-term forecasts), and we need people like Mearsheimer exactly to check what is actually achievable. Only the problem was always ‘peaceful coexistence’ on what terms? Russia seems to demand the respect and power that it had back when it was one of the two equal superpowers of the world – which would imply de facto control over not only the ex-soviet countries but a lot of further neighbours as well. The west would not be willing to accept that (never mind the neighbours themselves) – except for the nukes Russia is simply not that powerful. It may not have been handled well, but it was always a bit of a dilemma – arm yourself for defense and Russia feels threatened; stay disarmed and Russia is free to grab what its ego demands and reach out for more. The Minsk agreements failed because Russia effectively demanded de-facto control over Ukraine, Ukraine refused to accept it, and the west was not willing to do a Munich and hand over Ukraine for the sake of peace.
What common-sense compromise do you see that would have produced a stable peace rather than just a pause in Russian expansionism?
Personally I could see giving up Crimea and parts of the Donbas in return for Ukrainian EU membership and a stable peace with an end to further Russian expansionism as a price worth paying. Of course the people who actually live there and would have to pay the price may have very different ideas. But I do not think that was ever on offer. Just for starters, Russias would have to abandon TransDnistria as earnest of their lack of futher teritorial claims. Does not sound realistic, does it?
As I said before, I fully agree with Mearsheimer: there is no more chance for a negotiated peace. I think the Minsk agreement was the last real chance: keeping the Donbas in Ukraine, with special rights that would ensure that Ukraine can never become a NATO member. These days it would be impossible for Ukraine to give up any territory after so much sacrifice. The same is true for Russia, they won’t back off. The EU is screwed and simply does not matter anymore. We are looking ahead to a Westeros-style long winter.
The good thing is -as you’ve pointed out very correctly – that one can never be sure of any predictions to become true.
I disagree here with you and Mearsheimer. There still are possible diplomatic routes to a stop of the war or even lasting peace in Ukraine. The time is not ripe yet however. Just like the Russians gambled on a fast collapse of the Kiev regime and invaded with a comparatively tiny army, the US/West gambled as well, on a short- to midterm collapse of Russia, mostly economically but also through military exhaustion.
On both sides the hopes are still up high, of these options happening. However, once US realizes, that there is no hope to achieve enough weakening of Russia in economic or military terms, I see it backing off and drop its puppets in Ukraine like hot potatoes, as they have done to countless temporary allies before. In the end, I believe, Mersheimer is correct in the point, that the Ukraine, while of existential national interest for Russia, is not the same for US, but rather just a tool to weaken Russia. A destroyed Ukraine is in US view good enough of an outcome, compared with a functional Ukraine aligned with Russia.
Mearsheimer claims, this would be an unacceptable face-loss to the US at this point of time, after being invested at this level. However I claim, the US is not so vain, and behaves indeed according realistic power principles. They will shrug it off just like Afghanistan or Vietnam. Also they will tell the Russians: suck it up, lets be nice again, you did the same to us, when you armed and supported the Vietnamese, so it was fair game…
US might “loose” the Ukraine war, but even then they successfully separated the economies of Germany (EU) and Russia, so there stays a win for US.
Regarding the future of the economies, please remember that these are nonlinear issues. Germany for instance produced the most impressive military machine, that the world has seen, a mere decade after being totally ruined in the 20’s of the last century.
Looking macroscopically on the economics issues: with the improvements regarding A.I. much more cheap and capable automatisation in manufacturing and other industries will be possible. Thus the benefit of cheep labor will gradually be reduced and maybe completely lost (by China mostly) The same will be true for the military forces and the manpower there, which will be a lesser factor compared to the A.I. weapon systems. I dont believe in “THE” A.I. taking over the world, since A.I. consciousness seems to be a problem too hard to solve for now, but “dumb” A.I. will make radical changes in the next 50 years in the economies as useful (though dangerous) tools.
Once the costs of labor will get negligible, the cost and value of resources will rapidly rise in comparison. This is something Russia (and US) has comparatively in abundance, but China/EU have not. So Russia may get cosy, but CANNOT get dependent on China (or EU), Russia knows that, else it will have to hand over its resources basically just for pennies. And US knows that Russia knows that. Thus there will always be room for a reset and negotiations between US/Russia.
I hope very much that future reality will come closer to your predictions than to mine.
However, please note that today’s Ukraine from a US perspective is Afghanistan in 1985, not in 2005. Even better: the US is the champion of the Free World, Russians are bleeding, and top-sucker Germany is financing the whole show through 4-5 x energy prices while losing industrial competitiveness at international levels. This is such a sweet candy for US leaders that it will be really hard to give up on it even if the long-term consequences will clearly favour China. Very few decision-makers can afford to think in the long term.
with the risk of being “captain obvious”:
US WILL give it up, once(/if) the there is a diminished or negative return on the investment.
If they push too hard/too far, so that Germany (EU) collapses too fast/ too bad, Germany might make an U-turn and distance/free itself from US and re-approach Russia for cheap energy, just like Turkey is doing, where US miscalculated/overplayed, trying to overthrow Erdogan, so Turkey now is not a reliable factor for the US anymore, even though US is trying to reverse/keep in balance the situation there and is not pushing against Erdogan anymore.
So US would not give anything up, once it becomes clear, that there are no more gains (in weakening Russia by proxy of the Ukraine situation) possible, but the risk of loosing the won situation in the EU increases…
At that point “giving it up” just means: trying to stabilize and keep the won situation (full control) in EU.
As it happens, you can see a lot of parallels here with 1930’s Germany. A major power that has lost a war (the Cold War, in this case), gone through a terrible time economically, and insists on undoing the loss and going back to its rightful place – i.e. the strength and power they used to have. European countries back then tried quite hard to make ‘compromises based on common sense’ that would reconcile Germany with its current status and keep the peace – but they failed because nothing less than full restoration would be enough. How sure are you that today is different?
There are differences, too: Germany was a rising power with strong demographic and innovation potential, while Russia is a declining power with very few young men. Germany was seeking (and potentially able) to control Europe, Russia is nothing like that. Russia would have been fine in peace if left alone in its sphere of influence (see Huntington, 1995).
I see more similarities with 1914. We were living in a world of peace and prosperity, but that was not good enough, so we started a war that could have been avoided.
Good point, about the demographic. But then Germany wanted to make new conquests, whereas Russia merely wants to take back what it used to have, i.e.. the Warsaw pact.
I would like to hear your opinion. If ‘Russia would have been fine in peace if left alone in its sphere of influence‘, how big would that sphere of influence have to be? Which countries would have to be handed over for Moscow to control before Russia was willing to be satisfied with what it had? It is hard to judge this as a policy option without knowing that kind of detail. My guess would be that the Baltic states, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and maybe (as another poster commented) Kasakhstan would surely be on the shopping list. Finland and Poland would be question marks, if the chance was there. But hopefully you know more than I do.
What I really found noticeable was not that Russia could not accept NATO membership for Ukraine (that never sounded realistic to me anyway), but that allying with the (non-military) EU was also unacceptable. I wondered if under Minsk Ukraine would have ended up somewhere like East Germany, which, notoriously, was so neutral that it did not even interfere in its own internal affairs.
I know nothing… But my impression is that Russia has given up on the Baltics, let alone the rest of Europe. They wanted cooperation with Europe, not confrontation. Ukraine is very different, for geopolitical, historical, and cultural reasons. Obviously, if they had the potential, the Russians would take it all, with Berlin, Paris, and Madrid included – but they have no potential. I think their ambitions don’t go beyond ex-soviet territories, even with a military weak EU ahead. On the other hand, it’s not a rule that EU should have no military power. There are contact talks about the common defence force, that should have been constructed long ago. Poland right now is on its way to building an army that would deter any Russian attack. Germany could have done that decades ago. So the Russian threat to Europe could be easily handled, even without the US. It is really hard to see any German or Russian interest in the present conflict. They could have come to terms, but that would harm US (and UK) interests. It is well known, that the most important geopolitical strategy of the US is to prevent the creation of a strong power in the Eurasian heartland. That threat has been solved now for some decades unless peace is negotiated. Another reason not to reach any peace agreement.
Thanks for some good answers. I guess that this is as far as we can get. I am not really convinced. Would Russia really give up on the Baltics as long as St Petersburg and Kaliningrad are located where they are? I certainly do not think it is in the interest of anyone in Europe to have a strong power in the Eurasian heartland, particularly if that power is Russia. If Europe anyway needs an army that can deter a Russian attack, is it really smart to let Russia grow big and strong first?
There never was and there is NO indication that Russia wants to conquer Europe, unlike the ideologically driven soviet communists, which also wanted “only” to spread their ideology. Even then the eastern block countries were not swallowed/absorbed into Russia/USSR but were merely vassals, just as EU countries still now are vassals of US. Though most of the eastern block countries had (willingly or forced by the Reich) actively taken part in Germany’s attack on the USSR, Russia did NOT annex them after victory.
The only times when Russia invaded Europe, were, when they took Paris and Berlin, both after first being attacked and invaded by Napoleon and Hitler. Both times they left the conquered capitals voluntarily, without being beaten back.
East-Germany was kept as a vassal after victory over Germany, because of partly the ideological nature of the communist apparatchiks but mostly because the confrontation/cold war with the western powers was already foreseeable after victory over Germany. And if an active conflict had broken out, the battlefield would have been Germany and not already from the start the borderlands or even interior of USSR.
The only country in Europe which historically has rightful fears of Russian expansionist ideas is Turkey, because of the Russian historical stance regarding Constantinople/Istanbul. Russian Tsars saw themselves as the heirs of Byzantium and the rightful heirs of the Roman Tsardom, because of the marriage of a daughter of the Byzantine emperor to the Russian king Vladimir, when Vladimir accepted the orthodox christian faith for him and his country. But probably more importantly because of the straits where Istanbul is located. These straits can cut off Russia’s warm water ports in the Black Sea. Thus Turkey is not giving any reasons to Russia to pick up these ideas, and adheres minutely to the point of the treaty regarding Russian crossing rights in the straits.
It’s difficult to accept these ‘experts’ who need to be considered seriously. Invaded with 190,000K troops but yet the “special military operation” targets civilians, civilian infrastructure. Conducting war in a criminal manner has nothing to do with the threat of NATO, US Policy, or a limited operation as the ‘expert’ suggests, etc. All wars have their criminal nature to them, but Putin’s goal from the outset was to use “terror” as the strategic weapon of choice. Not nukes, not 190k troops…terror. I am in complete disagreement…Russia was never a threat, never will be a threat militarily. The Ukrainians have better logistics, command and control, leadership, and better training/delegated decision making within its noncommissioned officer corps, can fight a defensive war, and now Western weapons. How can these experts dispute that from the outset of the war, Ukraine was outnumbered 10:1 in everything from personnel, tanks, and aircraft? Aside from nukes, the ‘expert’ should consider not treating Russia as if it was some sort of military power. Russia is beaten militarily and “terror” only created misery among the civilian population. It is obvious that Russia wants negotiations to move forward (the hints are coming in loud and clear)–they are losing–there will be no nukes. Xi has pretty much told them that is off the table. When big daddy China calls, little Russia comes running with their hats in their hand.
Hmm … just like the UK has already become a “vassal state” of the USA …?Or the EU states (formerly sovereign countries) have become vassal states to Brussels. As for the many millions of Ukrainians “migrating west” … the west is already “full” of refugee/migrants and can no longer justify taking any more while thousands of their own citizens sleep in the streets.
You underestimate the Russian Federations ability to quickly rebuild Ukraine – at such time the Ukrainians will go flocking back to enjoy a superior Russian standard of living. Visited Moscow recently? Richer city than London or Paris!
Jeremy Bray
3 months ago
The main problem with Mearheimer is that Russia is not a great power in any real sense aside from possessing a nuclear arsenal and a lot of oil and gas. Are we expected to allow all nuclear powers the right to recover former colonies? Would a realist policy be to let the UK invade Ireland if it wanted to or France to recover its colonies to establish its geopolitical safety? What about great powers like Israel etc?
Not it doesn’t, because they can’t use that arsenal. If they use tactical nukes, NATO can crush them with conventional forces, if they use strategic nukes, the world ends. The weapons can not be used in any productive way.
The flaw in your reasoning is you assume that all participants are rational and using the same logic.
For example, if they use strategic nukes, the world does not exactly end – there would be survivors (I read, somewhere about 10-20% of population would survive).
Now think of it their way. Right now the West is more powerful because they are rich. After the nuke strikes the world playground would become more even where the more well-off (pre-strikes) players have lost the most. So, in relative terms, they (Russia) would lose less than the West…
So, they think the few survivors living underground “win”. Truly insane. Don’t they have any concern for the suffering and death they would experience?
Or more likely, you think this kind of intimidation will get you an unconditional surrender without a fight. Putin: “I’m insane, so you better do what I want.” Pathetic.
Oioioi, Irene…
Russians are people too and love their children just as anyone else.
Really strange that anyone needs to be reminded of that.
However, the game that the US and Russia are playing (who is gonna blink first) is not fun for anyone, if TEOTWAWKI is a possible outcome.
Obviously it is! Surrounded by dozens of states with many hundreds of millions of people who mostly loath the state Israel, and still they stand strong.
Regardless of what one may or may not think of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, Israel is objectively a great power indeed.
Much greater than Great Britain for instance… The “Great” in the name there is quite misleading.
The “Great” in the name there is quite misleading – to those who are ignorant of it’s meaning – Great as in Bigger, as in the Biggest Island of the British Islands.
Nah dude…
I rather think the reason that the word “Great” stuck has some historic roots in its hegemonial history as an empire… just like “Das Großdeutsche Reich”
Perry de Havilland
3 months ago
Where Mearsheimmer’s analysis falls apart completely is he’s fundamentally wrong about Russia’s motivations and ultimate objectives. There is nothing “realistic” about his position any more than Neville Chamberlain was “realistic” about Hitler. You can no more buy off Putin with Donbas & Crimea than Hitler could be bought off with the Sudetenland in 1938. That did not result in “peace in our time” and neither would appeasing Putin in 2008, 2014 or 2022, because that misunderstand Russian motivations.
This was *never* about Russia seeking a neutral Ukraine for fear of NATO, even though that is the RT (Russia Today) narrative aimed at westerners. But clearly Mearsheimmer is aware of the very different narratives aimed at Russians, the ones you read in RIA Novosti & all the output of the assorted “Russkiy Mir” publications and think-tanks. Those have been quite upfront about Russian geopolitics being about re-establishing Imperial Russia in a pretty literal sense.
A month into the war when Russian victory was still taken for granted (at least in Moscow), the fact Moldova was next was being opening talked about, the logical next step once Odessa was captured. Kazakhstan too is very much on the to-do list, and quite openly so.
The driver of Russian action has always been Russian perceptions of western moral and political weakness, regardless of the military realities. This sprang from various ministries of defence talking more about introducing gender neutral ranks & only recruiting minority pilots than building up deeper logistic stockpiles. A corrupt senile old fool in the White House, a classics spouting buffoon in Downing Street, a weirdo with a messiah complex in the Elysée, and a wide swath of the compromised German political class quite literally on the Russian payroll? From Russia’s perspective, the actual military balance must have seemed irreverent if the other side is so politically weak and culturally decadent they don’t have the stomach to take risks. All those nifty F-35s don’t count for anything if fear of Russia’s nukes means they’ll never be allowed to take off.
Frankly, can you blame Putin for thinking all the west would do was spend a few weeks clutching their pearls and making official grimaces after Russia took Kyiv in a coup de main?
And all this was married to Russia’s vastly inflated notion of their own capabilities, plus the assumption that even after Operation Orbital, they would still be facing the shambolic and corrupt Ukrainian army of 2014 rather than Valerii Zaluzhnyi and the very much reformed army of 2022 .
So no, Russia did not attack Ukraine because they feared it would join NATO, they attacked it because it was not in NATO, which is an entirely different proposition. There were open discussions on Russian TV a couple years ago about how Russia could occupy Swedish Gotland because why not?
And if the west did nothing substantive in 2022 the way they did nothing in 2014, more than a few Russians wondered out loud how solid was NATO? Regardless of predictable Polish howls of dismay, would Washington, London and Paris risk confronting Russia to save Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius? The more articles people like Mearsheimmer and his ilk wrote, the more observers in Russia concluded “probably not for the Baltics and certainly not for Kyiv”.
The “realists” position always meant at the very least Russia would once again border on Romania and Slovakia with interior supply lines. And that would once again place an Imperial Russia as a major political player at the heart of European affairs, rather than a problem out on Europe’s periphery. What could possibly go wrong with that? The “realists” like Mearsheimmer were and still are anything but realistic.
I totally agree! And good to hear so much about thinking within Russia, it seems to me that there’s far too little curiosity amongst Western journalists about actual mindsets within Russia.
In the 1980s Russia’s political leaders found the Taliban overthrow of the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan intolerable and a threat to Russian security. After years of conflict and huge Russian casualties the Russian people themselves made it clear that they didn’t think the winning the war worth the deaths of so many young soldiers and the war ended ( until the USA and UK decided to repeat the Russian mistake)
Dictators always think democracies are weak. Unfortunately for Russia, Biden and the rest aren’t as weak as they thought. Democracies are strong enough to embrace debate and controversy, which is what authoritarians can’t understand.
Well said. Democracies also allow us to get rid of corrupt and incompetent politicians and officials (eventually – not always as quickly as we’d like). Totalitarian states tend to promote based on loyalty and not competence and the incompetent and corrupt can hang around for decades. I’d go further – having too many competent subordinates in a dictatorship is actually dangerous for the leader. So you end up with poor leadership and decision making. Russia today is a case in point.
Roger Irwin
3 months ago
What Mearsheimer seems to ignore is that states that have been coerced into Russian subjectivity in the USSR days are determined not to return to Putin’s 2.0 version.
At any cost.
The West has made it clear that this is Ukraine’s call – when to stap, when to deal – how far they want to go. The West is limiting itself to support.
Another mistake is comparing Russian forces invading Ukraine with the Nazi invasion of Poland. Poland was well armed and ready with a large standing army.
Ukraine wasn’t, and all the indications are that Putin was aiming to roll into Kyiv in much the same way as the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague.
Of course someone with his background knows this. Dare I suggest the ‘opportunist’ is a more appropriate title than ‘realist’.
“all the indications are that Putin was aiming to roll into Kyiv in much the same way as the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague” – except that when the Russian tanks rolled into Prague they were supported by around 500,000 troops. Czechoslovakia was about 20% the size of Ukraine so the idea that Putin believed he could conquer and control Ukraine, a country with a population of 44 million, with an army of less than 200,000 is a ridiculous fantasy. More likely he hoped he could topple the Government and remove the ultra-nationalists who were in control despite never being elected and leave more reasonable people in control. Having failed he’ll settle for controlling the predominantly Russian speaking ares east of the Dnieper.
Thank you for putting things in perspective –
size matters –
Russias push against Kiew in the start of the war was clearly a decoy to give leeway for the push into east Ukraine.
Simple as that!
Ultra-nationalists? lol So, by your logic, Russia isn’t ultra-nationalist for wanting to control other countries? What is it, their divine right?
What makes you think the Russian speaking people in Ukraine even want Putin? Especially with all those mass graves to remind them what they’re getting? If they had really wanted to be in Russia, all they had to do before the war was walk across the border.
BTW Hate to disappoint you, but Zelensky was elected.
That Russia is still a Great Power.
The abject failure of every foreign adventure of Putin since 2012 shows Russia has little real agency in the world. Even in Syria most of the actual combat was done by Iran, and the country is still as divided as ever. Libya was an outright loss, and Ukraine…?
Putin’s brand of govt and warfare makes the nation uniquely incapable of leveraging even the resources it still controls. Naturally, he will soon be replaced. But it’s almost certain that whoever comes after him will be at least as delusional as he, if not more so.
every foreign adventure? the only ones they have been involved in was syria by invitation and they mainly provided air support in taking down isis. georgia which they swept through with ease in 2008, and now ukraine which is only now about to start.
libya had nothing to do with russia and was one of the many failed nato wars of the 21st century
Libya has nothing to do with Russia because Turkish drones defeated the Libyan faction backed by Russia.
Since 2014, Putina–and Russia–has known nothing but failure.
This is just the most egregious example.
The empire that failed.
“There is no way they could have conquered Ukraine with 190,000 troops….When the Germans invaded Poland, in 1939, they invaded with 1.5 million troops…This was a limited aim strategy”. The Germans also invaded Poland with hundreds of thousands of horses. Putin didn’t send in any. Is that also evidence of a limited aim strategy? Russia has invested heavily in military technology. In theory this should reduce reliance on raw manpower compared to invading armies of 83 years ago. In any case by December 1941 the Germany held France with just 100,000 occupying troops, with the cooperation of local civil authorities, which Putin thought he would get in Ukraine. It is clear that Putin intended to remove the democratically elected government of Ukraine, and impose a puppet regime to act in Russia’s interests, propped up by Russian troops. That is a conquest.
But it wasn’t, was it. What you’ve done is imagine someone’s thoughts, built a theory, thrown in a bit if history, then created an outcome, that didn’t happen. And you think you’ve proven Mersheimer moved the goal posts.
Well, he did invade, his choice of strategy is a matter of record, and he undoubtedly had a reason. The explanation given here is rational and plausible. What would your explanation be?
Considering how badly Russia is losing, Mearsheimer certainly isn’t right.
martin logan
3 months ago
The real question has nothing to do with Real Politik (which would actually mandate that Europe and America insure that Russia never dominates Ukraine).
The real question is:
What happens when a deluded Russian leadership is replaced by a psychotic one?
No, Putin isn’t crazy. He was just inside an information bubble that sealed him off from reality.
But the pro-war faction in Russia already sees that this crumpled up little man is incapable of winning. And with the Army totally discredited, non-state actors like Vagner and the Chechens are going to take more and more power. Prigozhin’s senseless attacks in Bakhmut are just a means of showing that only his faction can “save Russia.” The entire society needs to be mobilized–and therefore totally suppressed. The “sledgehammer approach.”
So, sit back and watch the horror show. Soon the symbol of Russia will be neither the hammer and sickle, nor the cross. It will be Prigozhin’s sledgehammer.
And this new era will make Stalin’s Russia seem like fin de siècle France.
Stalin had a bigger army. Russian forces are already exhausted just trying to conquer Ukraine. Millions of Russians have already fled across the borders. A “sledgehammer” will just cause more rebellion and chaos inside Russia–not a strategy for success.
James Kirk
3 months ago
Seeing 190,000 on the border, I said that’s nowhere near enough, Putin’s just sabre rattling. How wrong I was.
Putin had the chance to pull back when the sanctions started but no and now it’s a fight to the death.
This interview takes a long time to say, like the rest of us, he just doesn’t know.
The determining factor is going to be lack of supplies. Putin’s new “recruits” have almost no training, old weapons, no medical care, little shelter, and it’s getting cold. They aren’t fighting for their own homes and families, either. What do the soldiers get out of it?
A Russian journalist covers those questions in this article. In one case, it’s a plasma TV, but mostly because, in his words, Russians are slaves – they do whatever the brutal bosses tell them to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlI-qu7-4io
Which “coalition” is that ? The Russians don’t have many friends or allies here. And probably no longstanding, reliable allies.
Priscilla Seidler
3 months ago
This was absolutely fascinating, Freddie asking excellent questions and John Mearsheimer altogether brilliant, calm, reasoned, unemotional, objective. Would that we had diplomats or politicians like him. I would love to talk with him, especially to say that the reason certain countries have abandoned their liberalism (or liberal leaders), eg Italy, is because they are hugely disenchanted with where said liberalism has taken them (moral decay etc). Surely that’s obvious. Thank you, Freddie, for interviewing this marvellous man.
Simon Humphries
3 months ago
One of the problems for the so-called realist position of those like Mearsheimer is that the wishes of the people of the country being invaded, never seem to feature in the discussion. It’s just about big powers and how they might, or might not, move their chess pieces about the board. It’s certainly an approach to world politics – it just seems a pity that such people want to call themselves liberals.
Trouble is, we do live in that world when it comes to the kind of power struggle we have at the moment, say what’s anyone going to do if russia did fire a load of missiles at Poland tonight? We aren’t going to stop nato and Russia going to war are we? No one will ask us, its just not how the world works, that would be it, war, no referendum, no amount of protest would be able to prevent it, too late, you’re suddenly fighting for Europe, its already agreed nato would do that. Or if China or North Korea kick off? It sets in motion events far, far beyond control of the electorate in any given country. That’s why it’s a realist position. In war big powers play chess with all our shit. It’s not nice or pretty and no one gets a fair deal, but it’s always been the same through history. It’s just how it is. Then we build new and do it all over again. You can still hold a Liberal political view and consider the world in these terms.
There is much difference between description and prescription, but I doubt one can be justified in calling oneself a liberal without a belief that people have a right to choose their own futures
I feel maybe you can believe that people should be free to make their own choices but simultaneously recognise that’s not the world we’re living in when comes to choosing whether to go to war at the moment. Whatever you believe set it off or why, or whether it was right when russia went into Ukraine that was it. The Russian people didn’t choose, the Ukrainian people definitely didn’t choose, none of the people have been consulted on arms deals or who should do what with who, it’s now how we’re set up to deal with conflicts. It’s all top down command, military, shady, business. Its how our governments and military have operated for many years, we haven’t called to change it, it’s one of those parts of policy that just Is.
If you don’t like that or think that should change then that’s fair enough, that is a Liberal perspective, I personally think they are all mental and I can’t believe we’ve really got tanks fighting in Europe again, it should have been better dealt with by the un for a start, but I see that we are unlikely to now change course, events have pretty much overtaken us now to pull back, so we have no choice but to stick with what we have and hope to high heaven America and NATO can do this. I don’t like any of it, but I feel to understand it from the perspective what’s really going on you have try to analyse it without letting political bias skew your view,(which is hard I have a particular love for ranting about America I’ve discovered, makes me feel better about our own diabolical state of affairs I think :)) or you end up with an unrealistic picture of what is really happening. And that’s hard enough to build with the crazy that’s been flying around with covid as well. The world has gone officially mental.
When attacked, you have the right to defend yourself. The people of Ukraine could have chosen to surrender, but knew that would be a death sentence for their future. They still had a choice, and they made it.
But they could only make that choice because they had billions in dollars of gear from America in Europe. Otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to fight with, so they did not have a free choice, it was russia or America. That’s it.
yes. i certainly didn’t vote to send zelensky billions when we are about to implode over here. imo democrats are evil and republicans are worthless and both parties are full of warmongers who don’t seem to care that we are being invaded from the south.
Being an authoritarian is NOT the same as being a liberal. It’s the oposite of being a liberal. Only authoritarians think that people don’t have the right to determine their own futures.
Don’t you know what an alliance is? NATO is an agreement for mutual protection that the populations of those countries agreed to be part of. Without it, all of Europe would have been conquered by the Russian empire decades ago, and then Russia would have attacked the U.S. There’s strength in numbers.
You’re kidding yourself if you think you are powerless or a liberal. Learned helpelssness is not the same as being powerless. It’s not being willing to use the power you have.
I think you need to reread. You’re completely missing the point.
Marek Nowicki
3 months ago
He is a demagog. Besides I don’t take seriously anybody who say “Russians”. In totalitarian, cronies capitalism state run by repulsively rich mafia of ex KGB Guys and their cronies!!. These are NOT “Russians” ! They are criminals hanging to power because they know that outside of it is only one thing for them: ” unexpected death”.
I bet Asov give the kgb a run for their money too.
Andrew Stoll
3 months ago
This is all kindergarten stuff.
Imagine if Putin (and Xi) suddenly ended all this paranoia, aggression and warmongering and just proclaimed peace. They could make immediate and eternal hero’s names for themselves at home and abroad with still limited risks of repercussions! Rebuilding international relations, reparations.. all child’s play compared to the alternatives.
Just dreaming..
Chris W
3 months ago
Mearsheimer’s apparent clarity of thought – a great, academic, impersonal critique of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine falls down when he dismisses the China/Taiwan scenario as completely different because it has a direct effect on the USA.
Being American, it is easy to be clear and impartial and professorial about Europe because it is away in the distance.
That is part of the ‘realistic’ school of great power politics. Saying that Russia should be allowed to ‘have’ Ukraine because it is a great power is the same logic as saying that the US should stop China from taking Taiwan, because that is in the US interest as a great power. You cannot switch from raw power politics to morality when it suits you.
What is screwed up is assuming the people in Ukraine and Taiwan don’t have a say in what happens to them, that they’re just slaves to be owned by “great powers”. That’s not at all realistic. The locals resist invaders for however long it takes for the invaders to run out of resources and will to try to stay.
They don’t have a say, it’s that simple. It’s not nice or fair but it’s how it is. We won’t have a say if NATO and Russia end up fighting, the Taiwanese won’t have a say if China go for it, nor will they have a choice but to rely on Western powers to repel such an invasion. America is the only one big enough to square up to China, so they have no real choices. How America responds will be Americas decision not Taiwans. We are all ‘slaves’ to great powers to an extent. So you are not being realistic. Now it’s a different kettle of fish to say that they SHOULD have a choice which is fair enough and an entirely separate debate. And I’m afraid about as likely as pigs are to fly, I’m sorry but the world has NEVER worked in the way you would like it to. I can see why you would want it to be that way, but it’s just not how real geopolitics of big powers work.
I feel like you don’t get me, I’m not saying that they’re not fighting, or doing a good job but Ukraine ultimately was always sandwiched between Russia and the west, it was always at some point going to be a flashpoint, as has the east west divide always been. If the west didn’t send them weapons they could decide to fight but it would still be hopeless faced with potentially the whole of the Russian army. So they don’t have a choice to be COMPLETELY FREE, they are either indebted to and reliant on America and Europe or they would have no choice but to surrender to Russia. Do you get me? So really there is only two choices. My writing skills need work granted. When it comes to military conflicts, by that point diplomacy has broken down, bullets are flying regardless that alone limits your freedom of choice, the people could vote for no war, but putin would still flatten it, they could vote to not have china in Taiwan but it would make no difference. China would go for it if they wanted to. Am I rambling?
Much of what you say, sure, true. I was just pointing out that we always have a say – to deny that is to miss what makes us human, not animal. Other points – Ukraine chose to surrender it’s nukes, so the West promised to protect them, and Putin not to to invade. Putin lied, Ukraine was decent, so the West, and the World generally is supporting Ukraine and contemptuous of Putin. That’s the choice, the say of Ukrainians – and it will defeat that hood Putin. We are all ‘ slaves’ in some way or other, but as a Russian journalist said recently, few more so than the Russian people, who are treated like trash, or tools, by their leaders. Poor Russia, great people, terrible leaders.
I get you, Im not trying to defend russia or china or anyone, I try to maintain a sceptical view of absolutely everything, that requires a degree of cynicism. I am cynical, I’m on this forum as a millennial that is watching multi national corporations, multi national banks, global institutions and war destroy the world around me. I’m on here trying to decide how bad that is going to be, what the f*** is really going on and attempting to challenge extreme views that seem to be spiralling out of control into insanity. Right.
The original commenter I replied to decried the fact the people weren’t free to choose. It’s is disingenuous, woefully ignorant, to expect to discuss the warring mega powers of Geopolitics in these terms. That is my objection.
“Saying that Russia should be allowed to ‘have’ Ukraine because it is a great power is the same logic as saying that the US should stop China from taking Taiwan, because that is in the US interest as a great power.”
Surely saying that ‘Russian should be allowed to have Ukraine’ is the same logic as saying that ‘China should be allowed to have Taiwan’? And what about the other superpowers (nuclear) that don’t want Russia to have Ukraine or China to have Taiwan? Are they the wrong/unrealistic sort of superpower?
Last edited 3 months ago by Dominic A
Laurian
3 months ago
I am surprised how little do people in the West understand Russia (or Ukraine for that matter). The comments reveal a lot of armchair Eastern European historians denying Mearsheimer’s knowledge on the subject of Great Powers. It reminds me of the attacks against Ioannidis because his take on Covid didn’t fit with the position promoted in early 2020 by some powerful officials with unclear (as seen then) interests. Haven’t we really learned anything from the recent past? Can we at least agree that Mearsheimer might be at least partially right?
When exactly did you decide on Measheimer’s infallability and right to never be questioned? Probably about the time you decided to worship him as a god. Then you complain about OTHER people not learning anything from the past. lol
No. He’s always wrong, and he’s spectacularly wrong on this. And his disdain for the democratically elected governments of eastern Europe and their understandable, historical fear of the Russian bear is as obvious as it is disgusting.
Peter B
3 months ago
Freddie Sayers: “When I meet Mearsheimer, I am keen to focus on what we have learned since the February invasion began.”
I’m keen to understand what Mearsheimer has actually learned since the February invasion began. Nothing at all, ss far as I can determine. He is repeating the same nonsense he was back then. How an intelligent person can find nothing to learn from a year’s events in Ukraine astonishes me – I would be suspicious of anyone who has not learnt anything.
A year ago, I might have had a little sympathy for the Mearsheimer view that the West’s actions precipitated the crisis. But while we may have helped provided Russia with the opportunity to invade, the motive was Russian. It almost certainly would have happened at some point anyway.
And please stop using this ridiculous “realist” label for Mearsheimer. He’s the opposite of a realist.
P Branagan
3 months ago
‘To be a friend of the US can be dangerous, to be a friend is fatal’
H. Kissenger.
Oh boy will Europe learn how true that statement was, is and forever will be.
Even the deluded and bewildered are slowly beginning to realise that the US, in order to sustain it’s hegemony, wants to completely destroy the industrial base of Europe (think Nordstream!) and turn it into a cheap theme park for visiting Americans.
But failing that they’d settle to see it turned into a radioactive pile of rubble – anything to preserve the hegemony.
As another gracious and wise American – no less a person than Victoria Nuland – so pithely put it: ‘f**k the EU’.
(Sincere apologises to the more sensitive readers of Unherd for the crude language – it’s a word that would never pass my lips!)
Yes Sarolta – agree, I was then on the other side tempted to ask if the Mr. Fogh is working for his father…
Put that aside – Mersheimer said it clearly that we live in a environment in the west, where rationale and argument doesn’t count – only the collective west hegemonic “rules based rule” can be considered. Else you are a person non grata…
Have we seen that before??
Well, last time I came across Mr P Branagan, he was absolutely horrified at “MSM’s constant repetition of US government propaganda about the false accusations of mistreatment by the Chinese government of the Muslim Uighers”. Here he all upset at US plans to destroy the industrial base of Europe. I do think those views are remarkable enough to make one wonder about what drives him. They are certainly so far out in left field that refuting them by argument would take a few thousand pages – and be futile besides.
He does have a point, we aren’t helping them, so it is propaganda, on that same thread I shared a link to un whistle blowers, lady trying to help them through the un, finds out the UN ARE SENDING THEM BACK TO CHINA. Lady tries to stop it, the un send police out to her house. Whatever you want to back the war against China on, you might want to question what the bloody hell the un and our officials are playing at first. Un walked out on Russia and refused to negotiate. The un have much to answer for. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0018ljw/the-whistleblowers-inside-the-un
The accusations are true. So what. If we are sending them back, we can’t on the other hand pretend to be their saviour or pretend we care can we? We can’t go and liberate people we’ve just sent back from whence they came that’s just entirely stupid. So Branagan is correct, it’s just msm propaganda. If anything they are just a pawn in the game between us and China. The us is now playing saviour of the Muslim communities? Pull the other one.
This is more than incoherent, it’s also absurd. The “UN” walked out on Russia”??? what does that even mean? And what does the UN have to do with a Western response to Ukraine, or Ukraine at all? Ridiculous, incoherent nonsense.
Yes, the US is close to a practical maximum of what can be squeezed from the whole Ukrainian affair. There is no reason to spend more money on it. It might sound terrible for the EU on its way to -15% of GDP in a few years, but at least hot hostilities will end soon. Peace talks (Zelenski “forced” to sign the treaty by the greatest peace broker, the US). Collecting debt from Europe, Ukraine. Replenishing EU weapon arsenals for a good price. Selling LNG (for a great price). Selling chips to Russia. Importing a chunk of German industry in the US. Sucking brains. Done. Thanks, Ursula, great service.
I think there must be soon a number of books about all this with a subtitle “US f***s EU, version 3.0”
Quite an involed fantasy you have there. There never was any economic profit in giving Ukraine weapons. It was all about military strategy to defeat Putin’s dreams of conquest of the West before he got past Ukraine.
What the heck would he want in the West (EU) anyway? That’s a totally whacko supposition.
The people there are indoctrinated by the woke mind virus, which the average Russian is not fond of. The few Russians that were, already went to Europe with their mostly stolen money from Russia. Did them no good, as the fine Europeans were happy to confiscate their money and yachts…They wont be missed in Russia neither.
There are also no noteworthy resources there in EU (hence Europe will freeze this winter which will probably get much worse in the next winters, and governments tell people to shower less, German industrialists are sounding the alarms that their industrial base will break away….)
What would Russia need that to invade for? To finance it…? Thanks, but NO, thanks is what the average Russian thinks.
Your constant comparison of Russia/Putin to Hitler is so hilarious, that I am astonished that you nevertheless might find a few dummies to believe such low IQ propaganda.
Look on the maps people: Russia has plenty of territory and all resources. Unlike Hitlers Germany it has no need for Lebensraum or (nonexistent) resources of EU.
Mearsheimmer’s analysis makes sense to me. Good interview, thank you Freddie Sayers.
Answering – as I still cannot comment.
Very interesting and refreshing interview, yes. But I challenge Mearsheimer on one point: Russia did not just want the ‘neutrality’ of Ukraine. They wanted Ukraine to be under Russian political control, even if formally independent, a vassal state in the Russian empire, like Belarus. I think Putin himself said that he did not mind formal independence as long as the country was part of the Russian world. It was the idea of a functional independent Ukrainian state with close ties to the EU – militarily neutral or not – that Russia refused to accept. As one of their propagandists put it on Unherd ‘Get rid of the corrupt pro-western oligarchs, and have Ukraine run by a group of corrupt pro-Russian oligarchs instead. No need for war and suffering at all.’ The size of the Russian invasion force could have been sufficient to achieve that – Zelensky flees the invasion, some friendly oligarch takes over, and the Russian troops are enough to convince people to accept the new regime. Only the Ukrainians insisted on fighting.
I agree with you, there is no doubt in my mind Putin wants Ukraine back under Russian control. It seems to me the history of that area and Russia’s idea about itself makes that inevitable. Even Solzenitzyn was strongly against an independent Ukraine.
there is no evidence to support that claire, in fact everything thats happened over the years suggests the opposite as i point out in my reply above to rasmus
You might be right, but remember that politicians, including Putin, are just as likely to change course in life as anyone else. Circumstances change, eg, the Maidan revolution, Biden following Trump into the White House, Zelensky’s promises before his election and his turn around afterwards + Russia has played it’s part for good or ill. Politicians alter course all the time, they have to to survive. Putin’s intentions in 2015 may have been as you say but they were unlikely to remain the same.
You need to know you are trying to understand politicians from the politicians that you know of. It is certain that the politicians you know of cannot represents what politicians are, at least this does not fit for every politicians. Jump outside of the mind box.
Let’s not have the “mad Kaiser” theory again.
The issue since 2013 is Putin’s attempt to corral Ukraine into his abortive Eurasian Economic Union. The Sochi Olympics were designed to put the cherry on its top.
In a sense, his behaviour since has been to try to somehow resurrect that dead parrot. But his invasion has put the final nail in the coffin. Note how cold Tokayev was at their latest meeting.
Even with a destroyed Ukraine, Russia will be a crippled nation for decades to come.
If the Russian Federation had been so great, countries would have been trying to join instead of escaping.
LOL…
Countries are indeed running and stand in line to join brics,… a club of states… why should they join the state Russia itself anyway?
Has any state tried to join the US or UK lately… or ever?
Many, people and states, are very keen to join with USA, UK Europe, EU, NAFTA Japan, ASEAN etc that’s why these countries are the wealthiest, happiest, freest, and why they have immigration problems – as opposed to miserable Russia which has a massive emigration problem, and North Korea, which would have if they didn’t so effectively threaten anyone thinking about leaving with death or imprisonment.
Dude, dont let your superiority complex ruin your thinking.
Look up real world statistics. Russia is on balance a IMMIGRATION country, Top 3 in numbers for sure.
The point was not joining with a state, but join A state.
And even in joining WITH a state, Russia and its state clubs are superior right now… look at the line waiting to join BRICS,… e.g Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and many more
How many of states has the West (US+ca. 50 Vassals) succeeded to convince to JOIN the sanctions against Russia, within the 8 months (!) since they started??? Hint: a FAT zero…
Population of Russia has fallen by 4 million in the last 30 years (up to 2020), In the same period UK pop went up by 10 million and USA by 80 million. Russia is very keen to attract immigrants because of it’s population crisis:
https://fortune.com/2022/10/18/russia-population-historic-decline-emigration-war-plunging-birth-rate-form-perfect-storm/
If you ask the questions – how many immigrants relative to the population or geographic size? – Russia plummets down the list. Similarly, if you ask migrants where they’d like to emigrate to, Russia is fairly low on the list (1% of immigrants to US’s 25%):
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/these-are-the-countries-migrants-want-to-move-to/
Beware that your inferiority complex leads you into the well-worn Soviet defences – denial, rationalisation, repression, and projection.
Yeah dude, whatever your superiority complex wants you to believe, you’ll find some skewed data to support your fallacy…
Anyone can instead look up the raw data for himself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe#2013_UN_data
–> Russia is by far the first on the list as destination among European countries.
what evidence is there to support your claim regarding putin wanting ukraine under russian rule. since the war started in 2015 russia has tried its best to keep the country together under the minsk accords, even when the donetsk and luhansk regions carried out votes to separate from ukraine and applied to join russia putin said no and tried to keep minsk alive. this isnt the actions of a man who wanted to take over ukraine. also as pointed out in the article the military operation was a mere 190k personnel, hardly an invasion force intended to subdue an entire country.
190,000 men was plenty of force to subdue a willing country. Ukraine wasn’t willing to be subdued. Given the problems Russia has had supplying its 190,000 men, it probably couldn’t muster the men necessary to subdue an unwilling Ukraine, and it certainly couldn’t supply them.
Remember, the Nazis marched into the Rhineland a mere 20,000 strong — all the force the Nazi regime could muster in 1936. They were greeted jubilantly by the Rhinelanders.
The German General Staff were quaking in their boots. If either Britain or France had responded with force, the 20,000 men would have been toast. Neither Britain nor France did anything, and a jubilant Fuhrer was on his way to world domination.
Be warned.
either you didnt read what i wrote correctly or youre intentionally misinterpreting it and your making some comparisons that are not at all comparable at all, for example the rhineland is miniscule compared to the size of ukraine.
Excellent point! Upvotes don’t seem to be working.
Rhineland was/ is a pure German region (Land) and always belonged to Germany. The invasion by the Nazi Regime was so successful, because there was no resistance from the inhabitants and they were jubilant to be “freed”. Rhineland was occupied by the French because the Germans were behind their payment of the Reparations. So there is no comparison with the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops
I did say ‘Russian control’, not ‘Russian rule’.
First, that the conquest of Crimea and the Russian-fomented ‘insurgency’ in the Donbas were triggered by the Maidan, where Ukraine refused to join the Russian orbit and made a deal with the EU (*not* NATO). Second, that I see the Minsk accords as, effectively, a form of Russian control. The Donbas regions would be effectively ruled from Moscow – whatever the constitutional arrangements any local government there would be 100% dependent on Russian military force for its survival. And, being still part of Ukraine, those regions would give Moscow an effective veto over Ukrainian foreign and security policy. One of the disagreements that sank the Minsk accords, I seem to remember, was how much control Ukraine would have over elections in the Donbas, which is sort of suggestive. Ukrainian connection to the Russian economic system and forced disconnection from the Western one would do the rest. Once Ukraine was run by a pro-Russian (and likely corrupt) elite, it would be a safely Russian vassal state (like Belarus) without going to the trouble of actually conquering it. Which is of course why Ukraine was not willing to abide by the Minsk accords.
The kind of authoritarian kleptocracy Putin runs can’t survive unless it can keep its people focused on external threats, real and imagined, against which their fearless leader will protect them. A truly independent, prosperous Ukraine would, by its very existence, be a threat to such a regime. If Putin really wanted to encourage Slavic brotherhood that can be done without subjugating people.
He stated it explicitly in the paper he published. Just like Adolf – Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!
I agree with this assessment. It is no less consistent with political realism than Mearsheimer’s opinion and as you mention it better fits the facts such as troop levels and overall military strategy. The Russians were attempting to do what the Americans did in Iraq and Afghanistan and hoping their proximity and lack of moral scruples would allow them more success. Also, your point fits with the origin of the conflict, the 2014 revolution that ousted the pro-Russian Yanukovych. The Russians believed that the coup was backed by NATO and the US. The nearest analogy for the Americans would be if someone staged a coup and installed a Chinese/Russian pawn regime in Mexico or Canada. Obviously, the US would not and could not simply ignore this. They would, logically, attempt to bring a friendly government to power and bring the nation back into the American sphere of influence. Whether that rose to the level of military conflict would depend on specific circumstances, threat levels, the current domestic and geopolitical climate, etc.
Also, I am able to comment on some articles but not others. It’s very strange. I think it must be some computer bug.
I could quibble a bit. Ukraine did not belong to Russia before 2014, so it is not a question of bringing it ‘back’, and I do think it makes a difference that your ‘coup’ has been repeatedly legitimised by free elections. This was not some generals taking over, but a government falling to popular insurgency, like the Arab Spring.
Still, the parallel with Iraq and Afghanistan, while painful, is unfortunately rather apt.
A ‘coup’ is used to take away democracy and free elections. You have it backwards. The people of Ukraine are not slaves to be owned by Russians. They have a right to their own government that they control. So do the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. A “government” that is NOT elected is by definition illegitimate.
Near as I can see we agree about what is happening. What is it you think I am saying that you disagree with?
You’re correct in that subsequent history does vindicate the Maidan Revolution as more a popular revolution than a ‘coup’. Had the Yanukovych election been legitimate, future elections would have shown as much. Russia would, of course, contest that interpretation.
Sorry, since 1848 the US has had many unfriendly govts in Mexico. Some have been overtly Marxist.
Except for one questionable foray after a border raid, the US has tried to maintain good relations. And I recall a nation about 90 miles away that is as hostile as you claim Ukraine was to Russia.
The idea that Ukraine would immediately become a NATO missile base is simply disinformatin.
Zelensky only wanted in when he thought Russia would invade.
“Russia did not just want the ‘neutrality’ of Ukraine. They wanted Ukraine to be under Russian political control”
Strangely, this desire did not seem to become apparent till 2014.
For the very good reason that until 2014 Russia thought, not without reason, that they could get the control they wanted by political means. The Yanukovich government accepted to ditch the EU and opt for Russias economic sphere in return for Russian cash promises (and maybe some discreet threats?). Only Yanukovich could not carry his people with him so that his government fell and the plan fell through. On to plan B: Conquest of Crimea, send the ‘little green men’ into the Donbas, and use the Minsk accords to keep Ukraine under control. Only Ukraine refused to remain bound by the accords (the other side did not respect the details much either), so there was no stable control to get here either. On to plan C and invasion.
Governments only exist with the permission of their people. Unhappy people overthrow illegitimate governments.
No, they usually dont, they do however vote governments out in elections in functional democracies (quite few nowadays)… If a few % of radicals do try to do a insurrection, they usually end in prison, like 6th January…
Maidan was an exemption which confirmes the rule, and only succeeded because of outside help.
they usually don’t…until they do.
Yes indeed, a few % of the population can overturn a government, if they have radical (Nazis) prominently agitating among them… Especially if they are massively supported by foreign powers.
So governments, beware!
Putin beware! And boy he knows it, hiding from his own team, his own people, imprisoning and killing any of them who so much as hurt his feelings, and paying hacks and hackers to ‘create content’. Rarely in history has the distance between a mans ambition & self regard, and the reality, been so great, and so pathetic. Chekist loser punk.
Hey Dominic,
Are you still showering regularly?
I heard Putin ordered an even longer table to distance himself from his EU guests, once he heard, that EU countries advise their citizens to take less showers… He must have an overly sensitive nose…;-)
You want to tell that to the Canadian truckers or the Dutch farmers?
Because before 2014, Putin had a puppet government in Uraine that was under Russian political control.
Strangely, this desire was apparent, which makes you seem either ignorant, or a shill. Gary Kasparov was very vocal, before Putin even took power, in warning Russian and the World of Putin’s mindset and intention to ‘rebuild Russia’ using whatever means necessary (crime, aggression). The West largely ignored him, as they ignored Boris Nemstov, until Putin had him killed.
Just fully refresh Unherd page. It’s either ctrl+f5 or ctrl+r.
What makes me wonder is that Mearsheimer does not seem to take into account what the Ukrainians themselves wanted. We discuss the Russian point of view, West’s strategy etc and the will of the Ukrainian people is absent. Do Ukrainians want to be part of the EU or NATO or Russian Federation or …Starfleet? They should be able to join whatever organization they wish for.
Coming from a democratic tradition, I find inexplicable that lack of supporting the will of a Nation. Why Russian, Western or Chinese interests should block, at least in principle, Ukrainians to decide for themselves?
I have read dozens of articles in which the Ukrainian point of view is dismissed as non relevant. But, defending Democracy, we have first and above all ask the Ukrainian people how they wish to live.
as mearsheimer points out in his lectures, yes in an ideal world democracy should prevail, however we dont live in that ideal world. so this is when different rules need to come into play for the sake of the human race, and if that means ukraine doesnt get a say and has to stay neutral to save us all from being blown to smithereens then so be it
Keeping Ukraine demilitarised and out of NATO should not be a problem – provided of course they could trust Russia not to invade them. This is not about neutralisation, but about subjugation.
Unfortunately no one ever cares what Ukrainians want…
Starting with US proclaiming in 2007 at the NATO summit, that Ukraine will be part of NATO , when polls in Ukraine showed there was around 20% public support in Ukraine for joining…
You mean the US was going to incorporate Ukraine into NATO by force, against the will of the Ukrainian government? Or that the outcome of opinion polls trump government decisions?
What else is an election but a type of opinion poll.
That’s obvious nonsense. That was 14 years ago, and Ukraine still wasn’t part of NATO. Countries have to apply to be part of NATO. People of the country have to want to be part of NATO. It doesn’t get decided from the outside by a military invasion like Russian monsters prefer. Typical that a Russian troll would have no understanding of how NATO works. Freedom and democracy baffle people who prefer slavery to a brutal dictator.
This were not my words but the ones of US President GW Bush…
Anyone can go find them and read them for themself…
But awesome that you find the whole thing to be nonsense, totally agree, btw… GW Bush and all US governents since have been mostly whackos imho…
And the dude before Bush,.. with the cigar in the girl and “read my lips” lying, ah… yes: Clinton, BFF of Epstein was not better either…
The moves to bring Ukraine into NATO was led by the Ukrainian government – no, it was not a popular position until after 2014, when Putin showed himself and taught Ukrainian people why being part of NATO would protect them. I would imagine now that a large majority of Ukrainians would like to join, and wish they had. They probably also wished that they had not got rid of their nukes, as Putin reneged on his promise not to invade, whilst the West has not reneged on their promise to support Ukraine.
Moreover, the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO was generally a headache for NATO, which is why they delayed it.
Exactly! To the Mearsheimer’s of this world the desires of the little people are irrelevant. They have no agency at all. That’s real politik. The corollary is that “powers” have “legitimate” spheres of influence that others need to respect.
Because Mearsheimer agrees with the Russians that they own Ukraine instead of the people of Ukraine owning themselves and their country. He is all about power and dictatorship like a proper Putin tool. He thinks people should be forced to stay as slaves of the dictator in power.
Thank you Freddie for a really good interview. It would be good if you followed this up with an interview on Are sanctions working? Now it has become apparent how dependent on Russia we still are in Europe. To give a couple of examples 40% of Uranium supply still comes from Russia, 20% of LPG is is still coming from Russia etc etc
Nobody has done more to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers than President Putin. Russia appears well on its way to becoming a vassal state of China’s; just a bigger version of North Korea or Uganda. If Ukraine becomes a failed state, due either to Russian invasion or to its forced subjugation to Russia (“a neutral Ukraine” as Mearsheimer calls it), then many millions more of its population will migrate west, which in itself is a security threat to the rest of Europe. If little Estonia is to get the benefit of an article 5 guarantee, with the resulting possibility of nuclear war, it is not clear why Ukraine should not get the support of the US and UK as fellow parties of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, in which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear arsenal to Russia.
This is what came to mind for me as well, when he stated nationalism could also factor in to Russia’s efforts. I don’t see how you could know anything about Russia, or actual Russian people, and think this could be anything but a negative force.
To any Russian who felt like they were finally beginning to actually be a part of the wider world, to have opportunities and improvements to their lot in life – this war has been a devastating blow. I have heard people who fled talk about how homeless and hopeless they feel, like the Russia they knew and/or at least thought it was possible could one day become is now likely lost forever, at least in their lifetime.
This effort may have been seen as a restoration of greatness to someone like Putin – but to many, it was actually the death of Russian potential. They are now back to being a pariah, back to USSR, as it were – and other than the rallies Putin forces government employees to attend, or the online trolls he pays to push a narrative – I don’t hear a lot of Russians expressing any sort of nationalism. I hear a lot of despair and fatalism.
Yep. He said in the article that Russia planning to invade the Nordic states was only in the Western imagination. The idea that NATO was any type of offensive threat to Russia is absurd. Not even Putin believes it. You’re also right about the aspirations of the Russian people; They have no desire to invade Ukraine and restore greater Rus, they want to join the modern world as the proud nation they are.
Apart from anything else it’s just heartbreaking.
“The idea that NATO was any type of offensive threat to Russia is absurd. ”
Absolutely. Ask Serbia, Libya and Iraq.
There was absolutely nothing wrong about Ukraine joining NATO and US missiles literally next door to Moscow.
After all, recall how gracefully the US accepted Cuba’s right to join the Soviet bloc and Soviet missiles being based there.
You’re sounding a bit like a self-pitying Russian.
Since Russia already has NATO states on all its western borders, and Putin’s explicit reason for invading was that Ukrainians are really “just Russians,” it was actually the best way to get NATO missiles “literally on Russia’s doorstep.”
Wherever you put the border, NATO will alwasy be on teh other side.
Of course, one could then negotiate a treaty, as Reagan and Gorbachev did.
But invasions are so much more fun!
Ukraine never intended to join NATO before Putin attacked. The Ukrainians thought the Russians would abide by their prior agreement to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nukes.
If Putin is really concerned about war with NATO, he shouldn’t constantly be trying to cause one. If Putin is so concerned about missiles next door to Russia, he shouldn’t be taking actions almost guaranteed to cause just that. Is he really that stupid, or is it just you Russian trolls who are?
“Absolutely. Ask Serbia, Libya and Iraq”
NATO was not a threat to these countries, but to Milosevic, Gaddafi and Hussein.
Authoritarians; always confusing the country with the bossman.
Yeah!!! PURE LOGIC man…
Of course the death of 500.000 Iraqi children, that Albright claimed were an O.K. price to remove the henchman Hussein from Iraq were not a threat to the country Iraq… Never mind talking about victims other than children… These stoopid Iraqis should not take their deaths so personal… just business, baby. These dead kids if they had any sense of morality should instead sing as angels in heavenly choirs and praise the nobility and harmlessness of US/Nato.
Also never mind, that Saddam himself was an US stooge before, and massively supported by US to inflict death and destruction on the neighboring state Iran, just because the people choose to rather live under even the Ayatollahs, than the US stooge Shah, after the US and UK first overthrew the legally democratically elected prime minister Mossadegh, who did not want to continue to give US+UK Irans Oil basically for free…
Nah, the US (or its puppet self financing foreign legion NATO) is NO danger to anyone…
The people of Libya can totally confirm this! What the heck did they need that highest human development index (HDI) of all Africa for, before the benevolent Nato intervention???
HDI is so totally overrated, Libyan people now enjoy living in the mad Max world of warlords, where you never know if you still have to eat or if you even are alive the next day… MUCH more fun! Thanks, Nato!
Nato was never a danger to them, but brought them heaven on earth!
By your logic, Germany’s main threat mid C20th was not Hitler and his NSDAP, but the Allies – and the Allies are responsible for German deaths. Maybe they should be paying reparations to the German people? And did you conveniently forget, or not know, that NATO did not get into the Iraq War?
So you like to play naming games and are throwing in straw-man arguments.
Any reasonable person does not care if you call it “coalition of the willing” if it anyway is mostly US + her vassals in Nato.
How do you compare Germany with Libya?
Did Libya or Iraq declare war against US as Hitler did in 43? Note that the US did NOT even declare war on Germany before that (because of so called humanitarian reasons, “fight against evil”), but waited that Germany exhausted itself against Russia before they joined the fight to pick up Western Europe on the cheap…
You undermine everything else that you try to argue for by saying that Hitler declared war on the US in 1943 and claiming on that basis that the US waited until the Germans had exhausted themselves fighting the Russians before joing the war in Europe/North Africa. In fact, today is the 81st anniversary of Hitler’s declaration of war against the US, on December 11th 1941. At that stage the German invasion of the USSR had been highly successful, and most historians presume, logically, that Hitler in acting as he did must have thought completing the conquset of the country was simply a matter of time. You can’t expect to be taken seriously when you get such basics wrong: but then, you come across as someone who hates the US and is eager to take the opportunity to vent that hatred.
You are completely right! Thank you for the correction!
I remembered it wrong and confused it with the first US active fighting in Europe in 1943.
Wiki:
“The United States entered the war in the west with Operation Torch on 8 November 1942, after their Soviet allies had pushed for a second front against the Germans.”
–> in Africa, close to a year after declaration of war vs. US.
combined allied (US/UK/etc.) troops ca 100K vs . ca 125K axis forces (incl. lots of Vichy French, who surrendered/switched sides quite fast). At the same time the Axis had 3700K forces on Eatern Front vs ca. 3000K Soviets.
the US joined the bombing campaign in 1942:
“In mid-1942, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) arrived in the UK and carried out a few raids across the English Channel.”
“The first stepping stone for the Allied liberation of Europe was invading Europe through Italy. Launched on 9 July 1943…”
–>close to 2 years after Hitler declared war.
combined ally troops 160K, in Sicily vs. ca. 200K axis troops, later in Italy 180K allies vs 100K Axis.
Same time on Eastern Front: Axis forces 3700K vs Soviet 5200K.
Finally the main US thrust with significant numbers followed only in Normandy in 1944 almost 3 years after declaration of war:
“The second European front that the Soviets had pressed for was finally opened on 6 June 1944, when the Allies launched an invasion of Normandy.”
Allied forces (13 countries, mainly US UK) 1450K vs. Axis 380K (later 600K).
At the same time on the eastern front: 3370K Axis vs. 6800K Soviet.
So the US/western allies forces impact did never engaged more than 5% of Axis forces, until Normandy in 1944, when it was close to 20%
–> My point still stands, though I was clearly mistaken with the date of the declaration of war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_invasion_of_Sicily
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States_during_World_War_II#Europe_first
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)
And I dont hate US, far from it!
I just despise most actions of the US government in other countries, once it became the western hegemon after WWII, just as I despise most of the actions of the eastern hegemon, the communist Party in Soviet Russia.
Sorry double post, did not see the above in the thread so I rewrote, but more detailed:
Playing with names?
So how exactly is it different when you call US +Vassals the “Coalition of the willing” instead of US+Nato, if it is overwhelmingly the same countries?
Another straw-man argument from you with throwing Hitler-Germany into the mix…
So how exactly does Hitler-Germany equate to Iraq or Libya?
With Iraq US had to invent the false testimony of incubator atrocities by the Iraqis, just to convince their own population, that Saddam is now bad invading Kuwait and not doing the exact same as before, when invading Iran, when the West supported him with even giving him chemical weapons he used against the Kurds…
What did Libya do, that was even in the slightest comparable to Germany?
Not to mention that US did not fight against Germany (for “humanitarian reasons”, “fight against evil”) until Germany themselves declared war on US and defacto US started fighting only when Germany has exhausted themselves and the soviet Union…
LOL… While checking to edit my double post, I noticed that I received 2 negative “likes” on both of them within minutes, between refreshing to check if they are in the thread…
Looking down further I seemingly received the exact same 2 negative likes on ALL of my posts, even from yesterday… while the post I was responding to, received always 2 positive likes at the same time…
LOL… nice job with your double/triple accounts you sockpuppet! (thumbsup)
And there we go… ROTFLMAO
Looking in to the thread again I seemingly got 5-6 further negative likes on ALL my ca. 30 comments in this tread in the these 30 minutes between checking. The same positives likes went to the posts I answered to, if I was arguing against it… While other comments barely moved in their likes in this time.
Dude, don’t you have anything better to do?
You could at least try to do the manly thing, to defeat my posts with arguments. ;-D
Just came back to see the progress…
Seems after clicking most of my posts into the red within an hour the dude stopped… Now almost no move in likes for 2 hours. Did his mouse break down clicking?
LOL
Here we go again…
He bought a new mouse!
Another 6-7 negatives on all my comments within the last hour.
Though this sockpuppet’s intellectual skill to argue may be lacking, you’ve got to admire his energy in creating additional accounts and clicking all these likes/dislikes. Kudos to him!
Good effort, Someone’s flipping the votes on here…..
NATO is the greatest threat to peace in Europe, just as the US is the greatest threat to peace in the world.
The greatest terrorist country on the planet, bar none, is the good ol’ USA.
Putin is only concerned with his own greatness as “owner” of the Russian Federation. He wants to expand his ownership. He has no concern for the welfare of the Russian people.
Having no concern for their people is true of many, if not most, politicians. Those who do care about their people stand out.
Ukraine surrendered “its” nuclear weapons because, since Ukraine was part of USSR, the nuclear weapons were actually part of the Russian arsenal. It was understood by all parties that NATO would not expand to the east.
So what belonged to the ‘Union’ automatically became Russian after the break-up? Those were NOT the terms of the USSR break-up.
Nor should they have been. A lot of Soviet technology, nuclear and otherwise, was developed in Ukraine, not Russia.
And any which way, Ukraine did agree to disarm in exchange for assurances over the protection of its border.
If such agreements are seen to be worthless, then the world will soon realise just how easy it is for tinpot countries to build nuclear arsenals.
Russia never attacked Ukraine for decades, until Obama began his brainless move to overthrow Ukraine’s elected government.
In fact, Russia leased Crimea from Ukraine, and paid as agreed, for many years.
Then the black Marxist (aka Obama) came in and in 2014, began to destroy Ukraine through his foolish policies.
Russia comprised 51% of the population of the USSR in 1989. If a partnership is wound up, a 51% shareholder doesn’t get to keep all the key assets, potentially to use them against their former partners. Ukraine received security assurances from the US, UK and Russia in 1994 in exchange for surrendering to Russia the nuclear weapons deployed within its borders, which Russia had already recognised. In those circumstances, potential NATO membership for Ukraine did not arise. As Russia has now reneged on the security assurances it then gave, making the achievement of similar nuclear non-proliferation agreements in the future much less likely, the US and UK have a legitimate interest in the security of Ukraine.
You got a document for that “understanding?” It’s certainly not in the text of the agreement.
What is in the text of the agreement is the statement that all of the signatories will respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine, refrain from the use of force or economic coercion against Ukraine, and not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or any other non-nuclear state.
treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/v3007.pdf, pages 168-171
Russia broke all these openly published agreements when it invaded Crimea in 2014 and again when it went into Ukraine proper last February. Ukraine only applied to join NATO after Crimea, and who can blame them?
Your argument is so feeble, you should be ashamed.
The Budapest memorandum was null and void after the US and EU staged the coup and insurrection against a legally elected Ukrainian government with the so called Maidan “revolution”. This was a clear breach against the memorandum and its agreement to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. The US/EU disrespect and thus destruction of the Budapest memorandum went even as far as Victoria Nuland deciding who shall be next president/prime-minister in Ukraine…
Agreements are there for ALL sides to respect them. If one side first does not but breaches it and then accuses the other, that it IN TURN as well does not respect it (Russia taking Crimea), then this is pure hypocrisy and shows a shameful lack of understanding of pure logic.
The US/EU did not stage a revolution. The Ukrainians did that all by themselves – at most the US/EU made some promises. Besides there have been several legally elected Ukrainian governments since 2014. All of them had the option to undo that supposed ‘coup’, yet none of them did. Anyway. do you really think that the FSB did not interfere on the other side? That would put Russia as much in the wrong. Finally, just check the memorandum. It says nothing about the memorandum being null and void if any of the signatories should be unhappy with the way future Ukrainian governments are formed.
You are just looking for pretexts.
You wrote that ironically?
The political party which has been legally in government before the insurrection has been declared illegal by the hunta installed by US, as well as any party which had a similar program. That party had more than 50% of the population before the coup..
Members of parliament have been lynched, any opposing mass media forbidden… Dozens of People have been burned ALIVE (without any consequence for the perpetrators TILL TODAY, 8 years after. Overall a nice democratic atmosphere for “legal elections” after the coup…
But still, Zelensky came only to power because he promised peace with Russia in his campaign… look it up yourself.
Or you can stay in Lala-land…
Looks like Russia will go the way of Serbia.
Nobody planned it that way, but some nations just aren’t meant to be.
LOL…
Amazing how delusional people can be!
You, just like the US/Western governments have totally lost contact to reality.
Yeah, sure you’ll do to Russia as you did to Serbia!?!?!…. 😀
Well, Albright mentioned once how it was unfair that Russia owns so much real estate in Siberia, that it does not really “need”… And US pundits have tried to circulate the idea how Russia needs to be “decolonized” (aka reduced to a small territory around Moscow),…
LOL again…
If even small Serbia had had a few nukes US would not have dared to touch her, just like NKorea now…
Sure US, as world champion producer of “collateral damage” everywhere it goes and philanthropic sponsor of human rights institutions like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, would have groaned and moaned, huffed and puffed about how “Hitlerite the demonic Serbs” were, and all of the “international Community” (=US+Vassals) would have joined the choir….but they would not have touched Serbia.
Russia has more nukes than US and could turn it into glowing ash… Be carefull how much you want to bite of Russia like of YU/Serbia, you might regret it one day.
Putin bootlicker.
Any arguments of substance? Or do you do just ad hominem attacks?
As if. You Russian trolls are such terrible liars. Nobody ever planned to invade Russia in modern times, and that still won’t happen even after what you have done.
Russians make their own troubles and blame it on other people. No one will invade, BUT: You have made yourselves pariahs. No one will trust you to keep agreements. No one will do business with you, either. Europe was set to buy all your gas and be your trading partner, and you threw all that in the garbage for fantasies of empire. You’re your own worst enemies.
LOL. Delusional.
Though Putin proposed a “common European House” from Lissabon to Vladivostok, Russia sure does not necessarily need neither EU money nor EU love, if it comes with the price of being treated very disrespectfully.
Russia has options, more then EU has. You are completely disconnected from reality, if you think that US+UK+puddles (EU and the few other vassals) are the REAL “international community”.
Russia is totally selfsufficient in all its needs. EU is NOT, which will be an unpleasant thing to watch this winter.
Serbians are scary – like Russians – they seem to be unable to rise above their pathetic liitle delusions of grandeur – stuck in some kind of megalomaniac obsession. Bad news for anyone in their vicinity. in an ideal world natural selection would have thinned their ranks, maybe it is -but it is taking WAY too long….
LOL.
Nice analysis (from a hobbyist psychiatric?).
Lots of projection going on in your post.
But seriously, you should have a shrink look into that racist genocidal dreams you write about…
Best wishes and get well soon!
Pot.kettle.black award.
You get the whataboutism award.
First of all, since I didn’t do a “whatabout”. But more important, I agree with YOU. It’s those you were arguing with who deserve the pot.kettle.black award. If you look closely, you’ll see my comment was to the delusional vojin subasic.
The pot calling the kettle black seems to to be per definition a “whataboutism” argument!
But I see the usual lazy “whataboutism” reply itself as a total non-argument, rather is any “whataboutism” reference the best way to out oneself as a hypocrite…
Yanukovych was ousted by a majority of the Ukrainian Parliament after plans were found that he planned to kill many of the protestors by sniper guns. He was also secretly planning to change the Ukrainian Constitution.
Putin’s puppet government was NOT legitimate. The present government was legally elected. There was nothing in that agreement about Russia keeping control of Ukraine’s government by dictatorship.
There is no a document for that “understanding “.
However, James Baker (then the United States Secretary of State) gave a verbal promise to Eduard Shevardnadze (then Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union) that NATO would not expand Eastwards during negotiations regarding the situation with the sudden collapse of Eastern Germany (DDR or GDR). It was not written on paper, but it was said with a few people present in the room including interpreters.
I cannot judge to what extent it was a legally binding statement. However, it seems that the Russians viewed it as a morally binding one.
The problem is: it was made to the Soviets, when many present nations were still in the Union. When it broke up, as sovereign states, they were free to do what they wanted.
So true. As if James Baker had the power to decide for Eastern Europeans what they were permitted to do in perpetuity.
spot on…The top and bottom is that if you start a war you own all of it… what your side does and what the other side do, and what non involved nations or people do.
All of this is on Putin and his own already ramshackle country is suffering as well. I agree with the article that 190,000 wasn’t meant to seize and hold the country, but it was meant to kill Zelensky and others, decapitate the state and insert client politicians , and they messed that up.
it seems to me that Putin knows EXACTLY what he is doing – ie turning the Ukraine into a rubbish dump at minimal expense to the Russians – because they cant risk attacking inside Russia. Damned easy to sit on the safe sidelines firing endless rockets into Ukraine knowing that they wont fire back -p cant lose unfortunately – this should have been sorted years ago- but we all got sidetracked by that super ultra killer bug from our other global megalomaniacs. The US, are of course, also megalomaniacs but at least they have the problem of democracy to cause a little hauling of the reins ….
You got a document for that “understanding?” It’s certainly not in the text of the agreement.
What is in the text of the agreement is the statement that all of the signatories will respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine, refrain from the use of force or economic coercion against Ukraine, and not use nuclear weapons against Ukraine or any other non-nuclear state.
treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/v3007.pdf, pages 168-171
Russia broke all these openly published agreements when it invaded Crimea in 2014 and again when it went into Ukraine proper last February. Ukraine only applied to join NATO after Crimea, and who can blame them?
Your argument is so feeble, you should be ashamed.
Sorry for the double post.
It needed repeating.
Er, that was something called the USSR–not Russia.
The latter is half the size, with a much smaller miltiary force.
And the treaty stating that is…where?
Outrageous BS. Pure Russian agitprop. Ukraine surrendered its nukes after Russia agreed to respect its sovereignty. Putin broke that promise long before the invasion. And Meirsheimer’s idiotic claim about 190,000 Russians not being enough is 20/20 hindsight. Before the invasion, he (and most others) thought Ukraine would fold in a week, so more troops weren’t required. The Germans did NOT think that about the Poles in 1939.
He is a demagogue and useful idiot. On the positive note: He understands Mafia. He is from Chicago….
As I recall the agreement, Ukraine would be an independent state with that condition guaranteed by the US, UK and Russia. There was no “understanding” given the guarantee made that step unnecessary. Russia violated the agreement in 2014, even more so today.
In 2014 it seemed more a contest of which criminal gangs were to operate and where. The current Ukrainian government has decided to clean out a large number of those gangs.
you cite the 1994 agreement however you neglect to mention the agreement russia had at the end of the cold war, twhere nato would not expand east of the elbe. if we hadnt have broken that agreement we wouldnt be in this mess right now.
Which “we”? You can’t have an agreement that the people it is made about never agreed to. Where is the document, and where are the signatures of the democratically ELECTED governments of those Eastern European countries that supposedly agreed to never join NATO? Russians think they can make slaves of other people in other countries.
Not joining NATO was also obviously a mistake, because those are the only countries vulnerable to Russian invasion. Thus the rush of unaligned nations to join NATO for protection from Russia.
The idea that Putin was never trying to conquer Ukraine is nonsense. He thought he could do it with a lot fewer troops than he really needs, wishful thinking because he still doesn’t have as many troops as he really needs. The opportunity for peace, if we are to take Putin seriously, never existed barring Ukraine’s unconditional surrender on Day One. A cease fire now would simply allow him to lick his wounds and build up his forces for another attack later on. What alternative is there now but for Russia to suffer humiliation on the battlefield and economic ruin at home until it can no longer continue its war effort?
Yes, Mearsheimer is using Putin’s failure to date to achieve his war aims to retrospectively spin that they were never his war aims in the first place.
Yes he seems to be spinning furiously to match events to his theory.
My opinion is that Putin was thinking Belarus, not Chechnya or Syria. He intended to remove the Ukrainian govt and replace it with a Russian-friendly regime, in a short period of time. Given that that hasn’t happened he’s now thinking Chechnya or Syria.
The problem is that he is no longer thinking or listening to sane advisors.
if all the Russions want to do is trash Ukraine – THEY CANNOT LOSE ….
His argument fell over right at the start when he said:
“They made no effort to conquer all of Ukraine. They didn’t even come close. “
The whole point of the paratroopers taking the airport at Kiev was to quickly capture and decapitate the Ukraine leadership and insert their own puppets. So of course they were trying to conquer all of Ukraine through this approach.
I sense that he’ll state anything to promote his theory.
That’s real close to what they did in Afghanistan, where they succeeded but only up to a point. They never could really conquer the place because if the natives want you out badly enough and you can’t wipe them out you’re bound to wind up leaving sooner or later. So having failed at Plan A, Putin is now on Plan B, part of which is genocide.
Mearsheimer’s initial point about the reaction inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was bound to provoke is solid enough (and we bungled that, we just stoked Russian paranoia without providing the Ukrainians and Georgians with any protection), but as for NATO “expansion” being the cause of all this trouble I first have to point out that NATO didn’t expand outward on its own initiative. All those former Warsaw Pact nations and former Soviet republics wanted in so they’d have insurance against having to go through precisely what the Ukrainians are going through now. Were we wrong to let them in? Absolutely not. And looking forward to a post-war world, if the rest of us don’t lose heart and wind up selling the Ukrainians out, I say we need the Ukrainians in NATO. They’re good role models for the rest of us.
And I haven’t forgotten the Georgians. For a while they had more troops in Afghanistan than most NATO countries. We owe them something.
As soon as Ukraine gets the green light from the EU, half the population will decamp west anyway, along with any Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh etc etc with a Ukrainian grandparent or the cash to buy a Ukrainian passport. There’s already 70 thousand here in Ireland and most of them were never near any fighting whatsoever. I’ve started noticing quite a lot of high value Ukrainian cars driving round, even Porsches. We’re being played
As sympathetic as I am to the Ukrainian cause I also understand why some EU leaders are wary of letting them in. That will have to occur in stages.
Why would they leave after fighting so hard to keep their land? That makes no sense.
logic or common sense seems not to be your strong side…
Neither the Ukrainians nor any other nation is monolithic, they are all individuals. Some decided to fight, but some (millions) decided or intend to leave and live another day… in a hopefully financially better circumstance than in Ukraine. Ukraine has been the poorest nation in Europe even before the war.
But I dont envy neither the ones who stay nor the ones who leave (to EU).
“If Ukraine becomes a failed stat”
No if. They are done, whichever way the war ends. Just like Libya and Iraq.
When Putin came to power, Russian life expectancy had fallen by over a decade, the economy had fallen apart, suicides had skyrocketed and oligarchs were stealing away billions to western countries that today talk of “democracy”.
Simultaneously, the military was completely inoperative and no threat. Despite this, it was exactly during this period that “defensive” NATO (the same block that launched despicable, destructive wars in Iraq and Libya) expanded all the way across Europe
Putin and co didn’t demand a new Russian empire, they pointed out that expanding NATO to Ukraine would be the last straw. All they wanted was a neutral Ukraine and cessation of hostilities towards Russian minorities (remember the war on Serbia, “war crime” trials etc? Same concept.)
The reasons Russia will be in the China camp has nothing to do with Putin, and everything to do with the West. And let’s be clear, you couldn’t care less if Russia became a vassal, just like you couldn’t care less for Russia when you propped up Yelstin and his looters.
The bottomline is very simple. China lacks energy and food. China is the West’s biggest enemy. And you solved both of their problems in one go, with your deceit and arrogance.
The nations of Eastern Europe hurried to get into NATO while they could, before Russia again got strong enough to threaten them and force them to submit to Russia instead. For some reason they did not trust Russia’s future peaceful intent. Sounds like a wise decision.
Anyway, Russia did not demand Ukrainian neutrality. They demanded control of Ukraine.
True. Ukraine was neutral before the invasion, so Putin already had what he claims he wanted.
LOL, …
Ukraine was defacto in all but name a NATO country already, with all the NATO “advisers” and Nato compatibility stuff ongoing… The US installed insurrectionist hunta even rewrote the Ukrainian constitution, so that NATO membership is a definitive target.
Ukraine was and is not a full member of the club however, more like having much of the responsibility, but few of the rights… a classic vassal (of second or lesser class, unlike the first class vassals/EU)
Ukraine after the coup being neutral is really a funny joke. You are quite a comedian, I’ll give you that.
.
So what you’re really saying is that Russia will implode, and the “real” Real Politik will involve a tug of war between the EU/US and China, over who gets what in Russia.
That actually makes more sense. Russia is no longer a significant power, and, never having been a true nation, will inevitably fragment.
We need to be ready to come to an amicable agreement on Russia with China. Taiwan is enough of a problem for us as it is.
Russia is a poor country. The far north is almost devoid of people, too. There isn’t much in it worth having, so I wouldn’t worry much about a tug of war
LOL…. (Facepalm)
Thank you!
Just much ignorance. Compare:
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/current-account
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account
West has debt, russia has a flush account, see how bad it is?
There’s an old saying: Russia is never as strong, as it looks, and never as weak, as it looks.Treating about Russia with China is not a real option. China can get the whole of it, why would it trade anything?
Putin bootlicker.
For a “failed state”, the Ukrainians have been awfully effective at defending themselves. It’s now Russia that is in danger of becoming a failed state with any previous progress destroyed. If Ukraine becomes part of NATO, it will be Putin’s fault for invading. The reason Russia and China are in any way aligned is because they are both despotic dictatorships in a world of democracies. Any looting Yeltsin might have done is utterly dwarfed by what Putin and his oligarchs have in foreign bank accounts.
Ukraine could have obtained the equivalent of the Article 5 guarantee by the US/Nato enabling her to become neutral with the assurance that in the event of hostilities breaking out involving Ukraine and Russia, Nato will come to Ukraine’s defence.
What Ukraine wanted and still wants is to become a real democracy. In fact the standard of living in Ukraine before the war was higher than in Russia. I don’t think NATO membership was their biggest goal.
I read in one interview that Russian soldiers stole practically everything from towns that they captured but they didn’t take robot vacuums like Roombas because they didn’t know what they were.
They wouldn’t have needed NATO if Russia had kept the 1994 agreement, so of course it wasn’t their biggest goal.
If you’re in an alliance, you’re not neutral. That makes no sense.
I agree. Blaming Putin’s war on Ukraine/’The West’ is just blaming the victim. Putin is blaming Ukraine for making him attack like abusers blame their victims for making them beat them. It’s nonsense. Ukraine was never a real threat to Putin. He just wants the USSR empire back, and this is one of the excuses.
This all also assumes that the people in these countries in Eastern Europe are owned by Russia like slaves instead of belonging to themselves.
Now they belong to the American arms dealers instead.
I’m surprised that the top comments ignore the central message of the interview. What realpolitik implies is that it does not matter who is the good guy and who is the bad guy, who signed what and who broke his promises. What matters is whether the political goals we want to achieve are realistic or not, taking into account the circumstances and the assets we have.
Putin clearly failed in that respect, but this does not mean the West is doing better.
There are no realistic scenarios to end this conflict. That ship is gone.
What is your goal? To remove Putin from power and replace him with some kind of Jelcin or Navalnij, who will surrender and sign a peace treaty acknowledging the loss of Donbas and Crimea, and coming back to cooperation with the West as a humiliated underdog? Ridiculous. Aiming at this is even less realistic than hoping for a democratic Afghanistan. Didn’t you learn anything from that war (and the previous ones)?
What else then? To destroy Russia as a state? What then? A series of unpredictable dictators with nuclear weapons at hand fighting each other and the rest of the world? Do you want to see Prigojin and Kadirov and the likes as little Putins with nuclear power? What good is that?
The most likely outcome is that low-intensity conflict will go on, the front will be frozen at some point, while Russia will slowly become a Chinese vassal state, deeply hostile towards the West. The less likely outcome is that Putin will be eventually replaced by some real warlord, and limited nuclear conflict emerges with the same outcome, only with far more destruction.
In either case, Russia is doomed. At the same time, Europe (particularly Germany) is doomed as well, as most industrial activities won’t be competitive anymore given the new energy prices. That means, no defence industry either, so no possibility to create military power. This might be seen as a desirable outcome from the UK and US, only that it also means the US standing alone against China on the European front, with some “allies” who are nothing but a burden. This will eventually lead to the US giving up the European front to concentrate on the Pacific, leaving to Europe face its fate alone.
You might celebrate for a few years the victory of democracy in Herson, but if Western idealism keeps prevailing in foreign politics, sooner than we think the whole of Europe will become a huge Kabul airport.
As opposed to that scenario, realpolitik would imply some kind of peaceful coexistence with Russia, requiring compromises based on common sense and not dictated terms resulting from your (real, or presumed, does not matter) moral supremacy. Such compromises were reachable in the last decade (and were reached indeed, the Minsk agreement being the last one of them), but with the EU losing influence and the US turning back to idealistic politics driven by internal policy demand their time came to an end. Today, there is hard to see any possible solution. That was the point of the article, not some moralisation about who is wrong and who is right.
That gets an upvote.
There is a lot of sense in what you say (apart from being a little too sure of yourself in your long-term forecasts), and we need people like Mearsheimer exactly to check what is actually achievable. Only the problem was always ‘peaceful coexistence’ on what terms? Russia seems to demand the respect and power that it had back when it was one of the two equal superpowers of the world – which would imply de facto control over not only the ex-soviet countries but a lot of further neighbours as well. The west would not be willing to accept that (never mind the neighbours themselves) – except for the nukes Russia is simply not that powerful. It may not have been handled well, but it was always a bit of a dilemma – arm yourself for defense and Russia feels threatened; stay disarmed and Russia is free to grab what its ego demands and reach out for more. The Minsk agreements failed because Russia effectively demanded de-facto control over Ukraine, Ukraine refused to accept it, and the west was not willing to do a Munich and hand over Ukraine for the sake of peace.
What common-sense compromise do you see that would have produced a stable peace rather than just a pause in Russian expansionism?
Personally I could see giving up Crimea and parts of the Donbas in return for Ukrainian EU membership and a stable peace with an end to further Russian expansionism as a price worth paying. Of course the people who actually live there and would have to pay the price may have very different ideas. But I do not think that was ever on offer. Just for starters, Russias would have to abandon TransDnistria as earnest of their lack of futher teritorial claims. Does not sound realistic, does it?
As I said before, I fully agree with Mearsheimer: there is no more chance for a negotiated peace. I think the Minsk agreement was the last real chance: keeping the Donbas in Ukraine, with special rights that would ensure that Ukraine can never become a NATO member. These days it would be impossible for Ukraine to give up any territory after so much sacrifice. The same is true for Russia, they won’t back off. The EU is screwed and simply does not matter anymore. We are looking ahead to a Westeros-style long winter.
The good thing is -as you’ve pointed out very correctly – that one can never be sure of any predictions to become true.
I disagree here with you and Mearsheimer. There still are possible diplomatic routes to a stop of the war or even lasting peace in Ukraine. The time is not ripe yet however. Just like the Russians gambled on a fast collapse of the Kiev regime and invaded with a comparatively tiny army, the US/West gambled as well, on a short- to midterm collapse of Russia, mostly economically but also through military exhaustion.
On both sides the hopes are still up high, of these options happening. However, once US realizes, that there is no hope to achieve enough weakening of Russia in economic or military terms, I see it backing off and drop its puppets in Ukraine like hot potatoes, as they have done to countless temporary allies before. In the end, I believe, Mersheimer is correct in the point, that the Ukraine, while of existential national interest for Russia, is not the same for US, but rather just a tool to weaken Russia. A destroyed Ukraine is in US view good enough of an outcome, compared with a functional Ukraine aligned with Russia.
Mearsheimer claims, this would be an unacceptable face-loss to the US at this point of time, after being invested at this level. However I claim, the US is not so vain, and behaves indeed according realistic power principles. They will shrug it off just like Afghanistan or Vietnam. Also they will tell the Russians: suck it up, lets be nice again, you did the same to us, when you armed and supported the Vietnamese, so it was fair game…
US might “loose” the Ukraine war, but even then they successfully separated the economies of Germany (EU) and Russia, so there stays a win for US.
Regarding the future of the economies, please remember that these are nonlinear issues. Germany for instance produced the most impressive military machine, that the world has seen, a mere decade after being totally ruined in the 20’s of the last century.
Looking macroscopically on the economics issues: with the improvements regarding A.I. much more cheap and capable automatisation in manufacturing and other industries will be possible. Thus the benefit of cheep labor will gradually be reduced and maybe completely lost (by China mostly) The same will be true for the military forces and the manpower there, which will be a lesser factor compared to the A.I. weapon systems. I dont believe in “THE” A.I. taking over the world, since A.I. consciousness seems to be a problem too hard to solve for now, but “dumb” A.I. will make radical changes in the next 50 years in the economies as useful (though dangerous) tools.
Once the costs of labor will get negligible, the cost and value of resources will rapidly rise in comparison. This is something Russia (and US) has comparatively in abundance, but China/EU have not. So Russia may get cosy, but CANNOT get dependent on China (or EU), Russia knows that, else it will have to hand over its resources basically just for pennies. And US knows that Russia knows that. Thus there will always be room for a reset and negotiations between US/Russia.
Interesting – much as we disagree overall.
I hope very much that future reality will come closer to your predictions than to mine.
However, please note that today’s Ukraine from a US perspective is Afghanistan in 1985, not in 2005. Even better: the US is the champion of the Free World, Russians are bleeding, and top-sucker Germany is financing the whole show through 4-5 x energy prices while losing industrial competitiveness at international levels. This is such a sweet candy for US leaders that it will be really hard to give up on it even if the long-term consequences will clearly favour China. Very few decision-makers can afford to think in the long term.
with the risk of being “captain obvious”:
US WILL give it up, once(/if) the there is a diminished or negative return on the investment.
If they push too hard/too far, so that Germany (EU) collapses too fast/ too bad, Germany might make an U-turn and distance/free itself from US and re-approach Russia for cheap energy, just like Turkey is doing, where US miscalculated/overplayed, trying to overthrow Erdogan, so Turkey now is not a reliable factor for the US anymore, even though US is trying to reverse/keep in balance the situation there and is not pushing against Erdogan anymore.
So US would not give anything up, once it becomes clear, that there are no more gains (in weakening Russia by proxy of the Ukraine situation) possible, but the risk of loosing the won situation in the EU increases…
At that point “giving it up” just means: trying to stabilize and keep the won situation (full control) in EU.
As it happens, you can see a lot of parallels here with 1930’s Germany. A major power that has lost a war (the Cold War, in this case), gone through a terrible time economically, and insists on undoing the loss and going back to its rightful place – i.e. the strength and power they used to have. European countries back then tried quite hard to make ‘compromises based on common sense’ that would reconcile Germany with its current status and keep the peace – but they failed because nothing less than full restoration would be enough. How sure are you that today is different?
There are differences, too: Germany was a rising power with strong demographic and innovation potential, while Russia is a declining power with very few young men. Germany was seeking (and potentially able) to control Europe, Russia is nothing like that. Russia would have been fine in peace if left alone in its sphere of influence (see Huntington, 1995).
I see more similarities with 1914. We were living in a world of peace and prosperity, but that was not good enough, so we started a war that could have been avoided.
Good point, about the demographic. But then Germany wanted to make new conquests, whereas Russia merely wants to take back what it used to have, i.e.. the Warsaw pact.
I would like to hear your opinion. If ‘Russia would have been fine in peace if left alone in its sphere of influence‘, how big would that sphere of influence have to be? Which countries would have to be handed over for Moscow to control before Russia was willing to be satisfied with what it had? It is hard to judge this as a policy option without knowing that kind of detail. My guess would be that the Baltic states, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, and maybe (as another poster commented) Kasakhstan would surely be on the shopping list. Finland and Poland would be question marks, if the chance was there. But hopefully you know more than I do.
What I really found noticeable was not that Russia could not accept NATO membership for Ukraine (that never sounded realistic to me anyway), but that allying with the (non-military) EU was also unacceptable. I wondered if under Minsk Ukraine would have ended up somewhere like East Germany, which, notoriously, was so neutral that it did not even interfere in its own internal affairs.
I know nothing… But my impression is that Russia has given up on the Baltics, let alone the rest of Europe. They wanted cooperation with Europe, not confrontation. Ukraine is very different, for geopolitical, historical, and cultural reasons. Obviously, if they had the potential, the Russians would take it all, with Berlin, Paris, and Madrid included – but they have no potential. I think their ambitions don’t go beyond ex-soviet territories, even with a military weak EU ahead. On the other hand, it’s not a rule that EU should have no military power. There are contact talks about the common defence force, that should have been constructed long ago. Poland right now is on its way to building an army that would deter any Russian attack. Germany could have done that decades ago. So the Russian threat to Europe could be easily handled, even without the US. It is really hard to see any German or Russian interest in the present conflict. They could have come to terms, but that would harm US (and UK) interests. It is well known, that the most important geopolitical strategy of the US is to prevent the creation of a strong power in the Eurasian heartland. That threat has been solved now for some decades unless peace is negotiated. Another reason not to reach any peace agreement.
Thanks for some good answers. I guess that this is as far as we can get. I am not really convinced. Would Russia really give up on the Baltics as long as St Petersburg and Kaliningrad are located where they are? I certainly do not think it is in the interest of anyone in Europe to have a strong power in the Eurasian heartland, particularly if that power is Russia. If Europe anyway needs an army that can deter a Russian attack, is it really smart to let Russia grow big and strong first?
Ah well. Qui vivra, verra.
There never was and there is NO indication that Russia wants to conquer Europe, unlike the ideologically driven soviet communists, which also wanted “only” to spread their ideology. Even then the eastern block countries were not swallowed/absorbed into Russia/USSR but were merely vassals, just as EU countries still now are vassals of US. Though most of the eastern block countries had (willingly or forced by the Reich) actively taken part in Germany’s attack on the USSR, Russia did NOT annex them after victory.
The only times when Russia invaded Europe, were, when they took Paris and Berlin, both after first being attacked and invaded by Napoleon and Hitler. Both times they left the conquered capitals voluntarily, without being beaten back.
East-Germany was kept as a vassal after victory over Germany, because of partly the ideological nature of the communist apparatchiks but mostly because the confrontation/cold war with the western powers was already foreseeable after victory over Germany. And if an active conflict had broken out, the battlefield would have been Germany and not already from the start the borderlands or even interior of USSR.
The only country in Europe which historically has rightful fears of Russian expansionist ideas is Turkey, because of the Russian historical stance regarding Constantinople/Istanbul. Russian Tsars saw themselves as the heirs of Byzantium and the rightful heirs of the Roman Tsardom, because of the marriage of a daughter of the Byzantine emperor to the Russian king Vladimir, when Vladimir accepted the orthodox christian faith for him and his country. But probably more importantly because of the straits where Istanbul is located. These straits can cut off Russia’s warm water ports in the Black Sea. Thus Turkey is not giving any reasons to Russia to pick up these ideas, and adheres minutely to the point of the treaty regarding Russian crossing rights in the straits.
Brilliant analysis thanks.
It’s difficult to accept these ‘experts’ who need to be considered seriously. Invaded with 190,000K troops but yet the “special military operation” targets civilians, civilian infrastructure. Conducting war in a criminal manner has nothing to do with the threat of NATO, US Policy, or a limited operation as the ‘expert’ suggests, etc. All wars have their criminal nature to them, but Putin’s goal from the outset was to use “terror” as the strategic weapon of choice. Not nukes, not 190k troops…terror. I am in complete disagreement…Russia was never a threat, never will be a threat militarily. The Ukrainians have better logistics, command and control, leadership, and better training/delegated decision making within its noncommissioned officer corps, can fight a defensive war, and now Western weapons. How can these experts dispute that from the outset of the war, Ukraine was outnumbered 10:1 in everything from personnel, tanks, and aircraft? Aside from nukes, the ‘expert’ should consider not treating Russia as if it was some sort of military power. Russia is beaten militarily and “terror” only created misery among the civilian population. It is obvious that Russia wants negotiations to move forward (the hints are coming in loud and clear)–they are losing–there will be no nukes. Xi has pretty much told them that is off the table. When big daddy China calls, little Russia comes running with their hats in their hand.
Hmm … just like the UK has already become a “vassal state” of the USA …?Or the EU states (formerly sovereign countries) have become vassal states to Brussels. As for the many millions of Ukrainians “migrating west” … the west is already “full” of refugee/migrants and can no longer justify taking any more while thousands of their own citizens sleep in the streets.
You underestimate the Russian Federations ability to quickly rebuild Ukraine – at such time the Ukrainians will go flocking back to enjoy a superior Russian standard of living. Visited Moscow recently? Richer city than London or Paris!
The main problem with Mearheimer is that Russia is not a great power in any real sense aside from possessing a nuclear arsenal and a lot of oil and gas. Are we expected to allow all nuclear powers the right to recover former colonies? Would a realist policy be to let the UK invade Ireland if it wanted to or France to recover its colonies to establish its geopolitical safety? What about great powers like Israel etc?
its exactly the fact that russia has a nuclear arsenal of such a scale that it can destroy the world that does make them a great power.
Not it doesn’t, because they can’t use that arsenal. If they use tactical nukes, NATO can crush them with conventional forces, if they use strategic nukes, the world ends. The weapons can not be used in any productive way.
The flaw in your reasoning is you assume that all participants are rational and using the same logic.
For example, if they use strategic nukes, the world does not exactly end – there would be survivors (I read, somewhere about 10-20% of population would survive).
Now think of it their way. Right now the West is more powerful because they are rich. After the nuke strikes the world playground would become more even where the more well-off (pre-strikes) players have lost the most. So, in relative terms, they (Russia) would lose less than the West…
So, they think the few survivors living underground “win”. Truly insane. Don’t they have any concern for the suffering and death they would experience?
Or more likely, you think this kind of intimidation will get you an unconditional surrender without a fight. Putin: “I’m insane, so you better do what I want.” Pathetic.
Oh, seriously. Think what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Oioioi, Irene…
Russians are people too and love their children just as anyone else.
Really strange that anyone needs to be reminded of that.
However, the game that the US and Russia are playing (who is gonna blink first) is not fun for anyone, if TEOTWAWKI is a possible outcome.
As if a tiny country like Israel is a great power. lol
Obviously it is! Surrounded by dozens of states with many hundreds of millions of people who mostly loath the state Israel, and still they stand strong.
Regardless of what one may or may not think of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, Israel is objectively a great power indeed.
Much greater than Great Britain for instance… The “Great” in the name there is quite misleading.
The “Great” in the name there is quite misleading – to those who are ignorant of it’s meaning – Great as in Bigger, as in the Biggest Island of the British Islands.
Nah dude…
I rather think the reason that the word “Great” stuck has some historic roots in its hegemonial history as an empire… just like “Das Großdeutsche Reich”
Where Mearsheimmer’s analysis falls apart completely is he’s fundamentally wrong about Russia’s motivations and ultimate objectives. There is nothing “realistic” about his position any more than Neville Chamberlain was “realistic” about Hitler. You can no more buy off Putin with Donbas & Crimea than Hitler could be bought off with the Sudetenland in 1938. That did not result in “peace in our time” and neither would appeasing Putin in 2008, 2014 or 2022, because that misunderstand Russian motivations.
This was *never* about Russia seeking a neutral Ukraine for fear of NATO, even though that is the RT (Russia Today) narrative aimed at westerners. But clearly Mearsheimmer is aware of the very different narratives aimed at Russians, the ones you read in RIA Novosti & all the output of the assorted “Russkiy Mir” publications and think-tanks. Those have been quite upfront about Russian geopolitics being about re-establishing Imperial Russia in a pretty literal sense.
A month into the war when Russian victory was still taken for granted (at least in Moscow), the fact Moldova was next was being opening talked about, the logical next step once Odessa was captured. Kazakhstan too is very much on the to-do list, and quite openly so.
The driver of Russian action has always been Russian perceptions of western moral and political weakness, regardless of the military realities. This sprang from various ministries of defence talking more about introducing gender neutral ranks & only recruiting minority pilots than building up deeper logistic stockpiles. A corrupt senile old fool in the White House, a classics spouting buffoon in Downing Street, a weirdo with a messiah complex in the Elysée, and a wide swath of the compromised German political class quite literally on the Russian payroll? From Russia’s perspective, the actual military balance must have seemed irreverent if the other side is so politically weak and culturally decadent they don’t have the stomach to take risks. All those nifty F-35s don’t count for anything if fear of Russia’s nukes means they’ll never be allowed to take off.
Frankly, can you blame Putin for thinking all the west would do was spend a few weeks clutching their pearls and making official grimaces after Russia took Kyiv in a coup de main?
And all this was married to Russia’s vastly inflated notion of their own capabilities, plus the assumption that even after Operation Orbital, they would still be facing the shambolic and corrupt Ukrainian army of 2014 rather than Valerii Zaluzhnyi and the very much reformed army of 2022 .
So no, Russia did not attack Ukraine because they feared it would join NATO, they attacked it because it was not in NATO, which is an entirely different proposition. There were open discussions on Russian TV a couple years ago about how Russia could occupy Swedish Gotland because why not?
And if the west did nothing substantive in 2022 the way they did nothing in 2014, more than a few Russians wondered out loud how solid was NATO? Regardless of predictable Polish howls of dismay, would Washington, London and Paris risk confronting Russia to save Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius? The more articles people like Mearsheimmer and his ilk wrote, the more observers in Russia concluded “probably not for the Baltics and certainly not for Kyiv”.
The “realists” position always meant at the very least Russia would once again border on Romania and Slovakia with interior supply lines. And that would once again place an Imperial Russia as a major political player at the heart of European affairs, rather than a problem out on Europe’s periphery. What could possibly go wrong with that? The “realists” like Mearsheimmer were and still are anything but realistic.
First rate analysis.
I totally agree! And good to hear so much about thinking within Russia, it seems to me that there’s far too little curiosity amongst Western journalists about actual mindsets within Russia.
In the 1980s Russia’s political leaders found the Taliban overthrow of the Soviet puppet regime in Afghanistan intolerable and a threat to Russian security. After years of conflict and huge Russian casualties the Russian people themselves made it clear that they didn’t think the winning the war worth the deaths of so many young soldiers and the war ended ( until the USA and UK decided to repeat the Russian mistake)
Dictators always think democracies are weak. Unfortunately for Russia, Biden and the rest aren’t as weak as they thought. Democracies are strong enough to embrace debate and controversy, which is what authoritarians can’t understand.
Well said. Democracies also allow us to get rid of corrupt and incompetent politicians and officials (eventually – not always as quickly as we’d like). Totalitarian states tend to promote based on loyalty and not competence and the incompetent and corrupt can hang around for decades. I’d go further – having too many competent subordinates in a dictatorship is actually dangerous for the leader. So you end up with poor leadership and decision making. Russia today is a case in point.
What Mearsheimer seems to ignore is that states that have been coerced into Russian subjectivity in the USSR days are determined not to return to Putin’s 2.0 version.
At any cost.
The West has made it clear that this is Ukraine’s call – when to stap, when to deal – how far they want to go. The West is limiting itself to support.
Another mistake is comparing Russian forces invading Ukraine with the Nazi invasion of Poland. Poland was well armed and ready with a large standing army.
Ukraine wasn’t, and all the indications are that Putin was aiming to roll into Kyiv in much the same way as the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague.
Of course someone with his background knows this. Dare I suggest the ‘opportunist’ is a more appropriate title than ‘realist’.
“all the indications are that Putin was aiming to roll into Kyiv in much the same way as the Soviet tanks rolled into Prague” – except that when the Russian tanks rolled into Prague they were supported by around 500,000 troops. Czechoslovakia was about 20% the size of Ukraine so the idea that Putin believed he could conquer and control Ukraine, a country with a population of 44 million, with an army of less than 200,000 is a ridiculous fantasy. More likely he hoped he could topple the Government and remove the ultra-nationalists who were in control despite never being elected and leave more reasonable people in control. Having failed he’ll settle for controlling the predominantly Russian speaking ares east of the Dnieper.
Thank you for putting things in perspective –
size matters –
Russias push against Kiew in the start of the war was clearly a decoy to give leeway for the push into east Ukraine.
Simple as that!
Total nonsense. No one gets one-third of their army, including its best units, chewed up in a decoy. DOES NOT HAPPEN.
Just as the retreat from Kharkiv and Kherson were decoys.
When he retreats from all of Ukraine, his master plan will be complete.
There are no ultra-nationalists in the Ukrainian Gov’t. That’s Russian propaganda.
Ultra-nationalists? lol So, by your logic, Russia isn’t ultra-nationalist for wanting to control other countries? What is it, their divine right?
What makes you think the Russian speaking people in Ukraine even want Putin? Especially with all those mass graves to remind them what they’re getting? If they had really wanted to be in Russia, all they had to do before the war was walk across the border.
BTW Hate to disappoint you, but Zelensky was elected.
Ukraine: On patrol with the far-right National Militia – BBC Newsnight – YouTube
PETER HITCHENS: Granny gets her gun – from a bunch of shameless neo-Nazis | Daily Mail Online
Yes ultra nationalists. You are so badly informed its embarrassing.
Zelenskyy was elected. Moreover, far from throwing flowers at Russian troops, Russian speaking areas like Kharkiv greeted them with NLAWs & artillery.
Mersheimer is consistently wrong about everything.
What has he been proved wrong in?
That Russia is still a Great Power.
The abject failure of every foreign adventure of Putin since 2012 shows Russia has little real agency in the world. Even in Syria most of the actual combat was done by Iran, and the country is still as divided as ever. Libya was an outright loss, and Ukraine…?
Putin’s brand of govt and warfare makes the nation uniquely incapable of leveraging even the resources it still controls. Naturally, he will soon be replaced. But it’s almost certain that whoever comes after him will be at least as delusional as he, if not more so.
I wrote a comment here which I then thought better of, and wished to delete. But apparently this is not allowed.
every foreign adventure? the only ones they have been involved in was syria by invitation and they mainly provided air support in taking down isis. georgia which they swept through with ease in 2008, and now ukraine which is only now about to start.
libya had nothing to do with russia and was one of the many failed nato wars of the 21st century
Libya has nothing to do with Russia because Turkish drones defeated the Libyan faction backed by Russia.
Since 2014, Putina–and Russia–has known nothing but failure.
This is just the most egregious example.
The empire that failed.
“they swept through with ease in 2008”
You might it sound like a beautiful performance by the Bolshoi …..
Read the article. It is a master class of goal post moving.
I read it again. Where has he moved the goal posts?
“There is no way they could have conquered Ukraine with 190,000 troops….When the Germans invaded Poland, in 1939, they invaded with 1.5 million troops…This was a limited aim strategy”. The Germans also invaded Poland with hundreds of thousands of horses. Putin didn’t send in any. Is that also evidence of a limited aim strategy? Russia has invested heavily in military technology. In theory this should reduce reliance on raw manpower compared to invading armies of 83 years ago. In any case by December 1941 the Germany held France with just 100,000 occupying troops, with the cooperation of local civil authorities, which Putin thought he would get in Ukraine. It is clear that Putin intended to remove the democratically elected government of Ukraine, and impose a puppet regime to act in Russia’s interests, propped up by Russian troops. That is a conquest.
Actually it was a rather inept attempt at “Blitzkrieg “, but the motive was there, as you rightly say.
If Russia invested heavily in military technology it all got stolen.
“That is a conquest.”
But it wasn’t, was it. What you’ve done is imagine someone’s thoughts, built a theory, thrown in a bit if history, then created an outcome, that didn’t happen. And you think you’ve proven Mersheimer moved the goal posts.
Well, he did invade, his choice of strategy is a matter of record, and he undoubtedly had a reason. The explanation given here is rational and plausible. What would your explanation be?
The conversation is “conquest”, not “invade”.
which roughly translates to ‘Mearsheimer doesnt agree with me so hes wrong, wrong, wrong’
Considering how badly Russia is losing, Mearsheimer certainly isn’t right.
The real question has nothing to do with Real Politik (which would actually mandate that Europe and America insure that Russia never dominates Ukraine).
The real question is:
What happens when a deluded Russian leadership is replaced by a psychotic one?
No, Putin isn’t crazy. He was just inside an information bubble that sealed him off from reality.
But the pro-war faction in Russia already sees that this crumpled up little man is incapable of winning. And with the Army totally discredited, non-state actors like Vagner and the Chechens are going to take more and more power. Prigozhin’s senseless attacks in Bakhmut are just a means of showing that only his faction can “save Russia.” The entire society needs to be mobilized–and therefore totally suppressed. The “sledgehammer approach.”
So, sit back and watch the horror show. Soon the symbol of Russia will be neither the hammer and sickle, nor the cross. It will be Prigozhin’s sledgehammer.
And this new era will make Stalin’s Russia seem like fin de siècle France.
Stalin had a bigger army. Russian forces are already exhausted just trying to conquer Ukraine. Millions of Russians have already fled across the borders. A “sledgehammer” will just cause more rebellion and chaos inside Russia–not a strategy for success.
Seeing 190,000 on the border, I said that’s nowhere near enough, Putin’s just sabre rattling. How wrong I was.
Putin had the chance to pull back when the sanctions started but no and now it’s a fight to the death.
This interview takes a long time to say, like the rest of us, he just doesn’t know.
I think the key determinant will be coalition loyalty. WIll the army turn on him or nay?
The determining factor is going to be lack of supplies. Putin’s new “recruits” have almost no training, old weapons, no medical care, little shelter, and it’s getting cold. They aren’t fighting for their own homes and families, either. What do the soldiers get out of it?
A Russian journalist covers those questions in this article. In one case, it’s a plasma TV, but mostly because, in his words, Russians are slaves – they do whatever the brutal bosses tell them to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlI-qu7-4io
Which “coalition” is that ? The Russians don’t have many friends or allies here. And probably no longstanding, reliable allies.
This was absolutely fascinating, Freddie asking excellent questions and John Mearsheimer altogether brilliant, calm, reasoned, unemotional, objective. Would that we had diplomats or politicians like him. I would love to talk with him, especially to say that the reason certain countries have abandoned their liberalism (or liberal leaders), eg Italy, is because they are hugely disenchanted with where said liberalism has taken them (moral decay etc). Surely that’s obvious. Thank you, Freddie, for interviewing this marvellous man.
One of the problems for the so-called realist position of those like Mearsheimer is that the wishes of the people of the country being invaded, never seem to feature in the discussion. It’s just about big powers and how they might, or might not, move their chess pieces about the board. It’s certainly an approach to world politics – it just seems a pity that such people want to call themselves liberals.
Trouble is, we do live in that world when it comes to the kind of power struggle we have at the moment, say what’s anyone going to do if russia did fire a load of missiles at Poland tonight? We aren’t going to stop nato and Russia going to war are we? No one will ask us, its just not how the world works, that would be it, war, no referendum, no amount of protest would be able to prevent it, too late, you’re suddenly fighting for Europe, its already agreed nato would do that. Or if China or North Korea kick off? It sets in motion events far, far beyond control of the electorate in any given country. That’s why it’s a realist position. In war big powers play chess with all our shit. It’s not nice or pretty and no one gets a fair deal, but it’s always been the same through history. It’s just how it is. Then we build new and do it all over again. You can still hold a Liberal political view and consider the world in these terms.
There is much difference between description and prescription, but I doubt one can be justified in calling oneself a liberal without a belief that people have a right to choose their own futures
I feel maybe you can believe that people should be free to make their own choices but simultaneously recognise that’s not the world we’re living in when comes to choosing whether to go to war at the moment. Whatever you believe set it off or why, or whether it was right when russia went into Ukraine that was it. The Russian people didn’t choose, the Ukrainian people definitely didn’t choose, none of the people have been consulted on arms deals or who should do what with who, it’s now how we’re set up to deal with conflicts. It’s all top down command, military, shady, business. Its how our governments and military have operated for many years, we haven’t called to change it, it’s one of those parts of policy that just Is.
If you don’t like that or think that should change then that’s fair enough, that is a Liberal perspective, I personally think they are all mental and I can’t believe we’ve really got tanks fighting in Europe again, it should have been better dealt with by the un for a start, but I see that we are unlikely to now change course, events have pretty much overtaken us now to pull back, so we have no choice but to stick with what we have and hope to high heaven America and NATO can do this. I don’t like any of it, but I feel to understand it from the perspective what’s really going on you have try to analyse it without letting political bias skew your view,(which is hard I have a particular love for ranting about America I’ve discovered, makes me feel better about our own diabolical state of affairs I think :)) or you end up with an unrealistic picture of what is really happening. And that’s hard enough to build with the crazy that’s been flying around with covid as well. The world has gone officially mental.
When attacked, you have the right to defend yourself. The people of Ukraine could have chosen to surrender, but knew that would be a death sentence for their future. They still had a choice, and they made it.
But they could only make that choice because they had billions in dollars of gear from America in Europe. Otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to fight with, so they did not have a free choice, it was russia or America. That’s it.
yes. i certainly didn’t vote to send zelensky billions when we are about to implode over here. imo democrats are evil and republicans are worthless and both parties are full of warmongers who don’t seem to care that we are being invaded from the south.
Hey, yeah got a feeling the us and UK ships are frantically bailing water out at the moment, see the down votes, most people are in denial.
Being an authoritarian is NOT the same as being a liberal. It’s the oposite of being a liberal. Only authoritarians think that people don’t have the right to determine their own futures.
Don’t you know what an alliance is? NATO is an agreement for mutual protection that the populations of those countries agreed to be part of. Without it, all of Europe would have been conquered by the Russian empire decades ago, and then Russia would have attacked the U.S. There’s strength in numbers.
You’re kidding yourself if you think you are powerless or a liberal. Learned helpelssness is not the same as being powerless. It’s not being willing to use the power you have.
I think you need to reread. You’re completely missing the point.
He is a demagog. Besides I don’t take seriously anybody who say “Russians”. In totalitarian, cronies capitalism state run by repulsively rich mafia of ex KGB Guys and their cronies!!. These are NOT “Russians” ! They are criminals hanging to power because they know that outside of it is only one thing for them: ” unexpected death”.
the ukraine oligarchs are not much better. bunter hiden anyone??
I bet Asov give the kgb a run for their money too.
This is all kindergarten stuff.
Imagine if Putin (and Xi) suddenly ended all this paranoia, aggression and warmongering and just proclaimed peace. They could make immediate and eternal hero’s names for themselves at home and abroad with still limited risks of repercussions! Rebuilding international relations, reparations.. all child’s play compared to the alternatives.
Just dreaming..
Mearsheimer’s apparent clarity of thought – a great, academic, impersonal critique of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine falls down when he dismisses the China/Taiwan scenario as completely different because it has a direct effect on the USA.
Being American, it is easy to be clear and impartial and professorial about Europe because it is away in the distance.
That is part of the ‘realistic’ school of great power politics. Saying that Russia should be allowed to ‘have’ Ukraine because it is a great power is the same logic as saying that the US should stop China from taking Taiwan, because that is in the US interest as a great power. You cannot switch from raw power politics to morality when it suits you.
What is screwed up is assuming the people in Ukraine and Taiwan don’t have a say in what happens to them, that they’re just slaves to be owned by “great powers”. That’s not at all realistic. The locals resist invaders for however long it takes for the invaders to run out of resources and will to try to stay.
They don’t have a say, it’s that simple. It’s not nice or fair but it’s how it is. We won’t have a say if NATO and Russia end up fighting, the Taiwanese won’t have a say if China go for it, nor will they have a choice but to rely on Western powers to repel such an invasion. America is the only one big enough to square up to China, so they have no real choices. How America responds will be Americas decision not Taiwans. We are all ‘slaves’ to great powers to an extent. So you are not being realistic. Now it’s a different kettle of fish to say that they SHOULD have a choice which is fair enough and an entirely separate debate. And I’m afraid about as likely as pigs are to fly, I’m sorry but the world has NEVER worked in the way you would like it to. I can see why you would want it to be that way, but it’s just not how real geopolitics of big powers work.
“They don’t have a say, it’s that simple”
Nonetheless, they seem to be expressing themeselves, with words and bullets.
I feel like you don’t get me, I’m not saying that they’re not fighting, or doing a good job but Ukraine ultimately was always sandwiched between Russia and the west, it was always at some point going to be a flashpoint, as has the east west divide always been. If the west didn’t send them weapons they could decide to fight but it would still be hopeless faced with potentially the whole of the Russian army. So they don’t have a choice to be COMPLETELY FREE, they are either indebted to and reliant on America and Europe or they would have no choice but to surrender to Russia. Do you get me? So really there is only two choices. My writing skills need work granted. When it comes to military conflicts, by that point diplomacy has broken down, bullets are flying regardless that alone limits your freedom of choice, the people could vote for no war, but putin would still flatten it, they could vote to not have china in Taiwan but it would make no difference. China would go for it if they wanted to. Am I rambling?
Much of what you say, sure, true. I was just pointing out that we always have a say – to deny that is to miss what makes us human, not animal. Other points – Ukraine chose to surrender it’s nukes, so the West promised to protect them, and Putin not to to invade. Putin lied, Ukraine was decent, so the West, and the World generally is supporting Ukraine and contemptuous of Putin. That’s the choice, the say of Ukrainians – and it will defeat that hood Putin. We are all ‘ slaves’ in some way or other, but as a Russian journalist said recently, few more so than the Russian people, who are treated like trash, or tools, by their leaders. Poor Russia, great people, terrible leaders.
I get you, Im not trying to defend russia or china or anyone, I try to maintain a sceptical view of absolutely everything, that requires a degree of cynicism. I am cynical, I’m on this forum as a millennial that is watching multi national corporations, multi national banks, global institutions and war destroy the world around me. I’m on here trying to decide how bad that is going to be, what the f*** is really going on and attempting to challenge extreme views that seem to be spiralling out of control into insanity. Right.
The original commenter I replied to decried the fact the people weren’t free to choose. It’s is disingenuous, woefully ignorant, to expect to discuss the warring mega powers of Geopolitics in these terms. That is my objection.
“Saying that Russia should be allowed to ‘have’ Ukraine because it is a great power is the same logic as saying that the US should stop China from taking Taiwan, because that is in the US interest as a great power.”
Surely saying that ‘Russian should be allowed to have Ukraine’ is the same logic as saying that ‘China should be allowed to have Taiwan’? And what about the other superpowers (nuclear) that don’t want Russia to have Ukraine or China to have Taiwan? Are they the wrong/unrealistic sort of superpower?
I am surprised how little do people in the West understand Russia (or Ukraine for that matter). The comments reveal a lot of armchair Eastern European historians denying Mearsheimer’s knowledge on the subject of Great Powers. It reminds me of the attacks against Ioannidis because his take on Covid didn’t fit with the position promoted in early 2020 by some powerful officials with unclear (as seen then) interests. Haven’t we really learned anything from the recent past? Can we at least agree that Mearsheimer might be at least partially right?
When exactly did you decide on Measheimer’s infallability and right to never be questioned? Probably about the time you decided to worship him as a god. Then you complain about OTHER people not learning anything from the past. lol
Q.E.D.
No. He’s always wrong, and he’s spectacularly wrong on this. And his disdain for the democratically elected governments of eastern Europe and their understandable, historical fear of the Russian bear is as obvious as it is disgusting.
Freddie Sayers: “When I meet Mearsheimer, I am keen to focus on what we have learned since the February invasion began.”
I’m keen to understand what Mearsheimer has actually learned since the February invasion began. Nothing at all, ss far as I can determine. He is repeating the same nonsense he was back then. How an intelligent person can find nothing to learn from a year’s events in Ukraine astonishes me – I would be suspicious of anyone who has not learnt anything.
A year ago, I might have had a little sympathy for the Mearsheimer view that the West’s actions precipitated the crisis. But while we may have helped provided Russia with the opportunity to invade, the motive was Russian. It almost certainly would have happened at some point anyway.
And please stop using this ridiculous “realist” label for Mearsheimer. He’s the opposite of a realist.
‘To be a friend of the US can be dangerous, to be a friend is fatal’
H. Kissenger.
Oh boy will Europe learn how true that statement was, is and forever will be.
Even the deluded and bewildered are slowly beginning to realise that the US, in order to sustain it’s hegemony, wants to completely destroy the industrial base of Europe (think Nordstream!) and turn it into a cheap theme park for visiting Americans.
But failing that they’d settle to see it turned into a radioactive pile of rubble – anything to preserve the hegemony.
As another gracious and wise American – no less a person than Victoria Nuland – so pithely put it: ‘f**k the EU’.
(Sincere apologises to the more sensitive readers of Unherd for the crude language – it’s a word that would never pass my lips!)
Aha, so are you working for Moscow rather than Beijing? Or just generally anti-west?
What a truly original and constructive comment…
Yes Sarolta – agree, I was then on the other side tempted to ask if the Mr. Fogh is working for his father…
Put that aside – Mersheimer said it clearly that we live in a environment in the west, where rationale and argument doesn’t count – only the collective west hegemonic “rules based rule” can be considered. Else you are a person non grata…
Have we seen that before??
Well, last time I came across Mr P Branagan, he was absolutely horrified at “MSM’s constant repetition of US government propaganda about the false accusations of mistreatment by the Chinese government of the Muslim Uighers”. Here he all upset at US plans to destroy the industrial base of Europe. I do think those views are remarkable enough to make one wonder about what drives him. They are certainly so far out in left field that refuting them by argument would take a few thousand pages – and be futile besides.
He does have a point, we aren’t helping them, so it is propaganda, on that same thread I shared a link to un whistle blowers, lady trying to help them through the un, finds out the UN ARE SENDING THEM BACK TO CHINA. Lady tries to stop it, the un send police out to her house. Whatever you want to back the war against China on, you might want to question what the bloody hell the un and our officials are playing at first. Un walked out on Russia and refused to negotiate. The un have much to answer for.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m0018ljw/the-whistleblowers-inside-the-un
It may be propaganda – but the accusations are true, not false.
The accusations are true. So what. If we are sending them back, we can’t on the other hand pretend to be their saviour or pretend we care can we? We can’t go and liberate people we’ve just sent back from whence they came that’s just entirely stupid. So Branagan is correct, it’s just msm propaganda. If anything they are just a pawn in the game between us and China. The us is now playing saviour of the Muslim communities? Pull the other one.
It’s all nonsense. The only industrial base that is getting destroyed is Russia’s.
exactly.
You are a completely naive idiot.
Comprehensive analysis of the energy crisis:
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Todays-Energy-Crisis-Is-Unlike-Anything-Weve-Ever-Seen-Before.html
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Europes-Multi-Trillion-Euro-Energy-Derivatives-Market-Is-Under-Scrutiny.html
Germany is already on its knees
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/three-stages-germanys-emergency-gas-plan-2022-07-10/
You will find we are in very big trouble.
This is more than incoherent, it’s also absurd. The “UN” walked out on Russia”??? what does that even mean? And what does the UN have to do with a Western response to Ukraine, or Ukraine at all? Ridiculous, incoherent nonsense.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ViaBYRnWHFM
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2022/3/2/dozens-of-diplomats-walk-out-on-lavrovs-un-speech
Not very diplomatic is it, can’t talk if you walk out.
It was more constructive than the garbage it was responding to.
Ahhhh we are being targeted by over zealous Americans are we? Excellent I love a ruck.
Yes, the US is close to a practical maximum of what can be squeezed from the whole Ukrainian affair. There is no reason to spend more money on it. It might sound terrible for the EU on its way to -15% of GDP in a few years, but at least hot hostilities will end soon. Peace talks (Zelenski “forced” to sign the treaty by the greatest peace broker, the US). Collecting debt from Europe, Ukraine. Replenishing EU weapon arsenals for a good price. Selling LNG (for a great price). Selling chips to Russia. Importing a chunk of German industry in the US. Sucking brains. Done. Thanks, Ursula, great service.
I think there must be soon a number of books about all this with a subtitle “US f***s EU, version 3.0”
I would buy that book especially if you write it like that comment 🙂 brilliant.
It might make an interesting piece of fiction, but hardly brilliant.
I’ve never seen a critique of a hypothetical book before. Thanks, but I’d still hypothetically buy it.
Idjit 1 likes idjit 2.
Bet that took ages to come up with.
Quite an involed fantasy you have there. There never was any economic profit in giving Ukraine weapons. It was all about military strategy to defeat Putin’s dreams of conquest of the West before he got past Ukraine.
What the heck would he want in the West (EU) anyway? That’s a totally whacko supposition.
The people there are indoctrinated by the woke mind virus, which the average Russian is not fond of. The few Russians that were, already went to Europe with their mostly stolen money from Russia. Did them no good, as the fine Europeans were happy to confiscate their money and yachts…They wont be missed in Russia neither.
There are also no noteworthy resources there in EU (hence Europe will freeze this winter which will probably get much worse in the next winters, and governments tell people to shower less, German industrialists are sounding the alarms that their industrial base will break away….)
What would Russia need that to invade for? To finance it…? Thanks, but NO, thanks is what the average Russian thinks.
Your constant comparison of Russia/Putin to Hitler is so hilarious, that I am astonished that you nevertheless might find a few dummies to believe such low IQ propaganda.
Look on the maps people: Russia has plenty of territory and all resources. Unlike Hitlers Germany it has no need for Lebensraum or (nonexistent) resources of EU.