The World After the Ukraine War, John Mearsheimer #realpolitik

Steamed on June 16th, 2022
Source: https://youtu.be/qciVozNtCDM

John Mearsheimer, a political analyst in International Politics discusses the current Russian invasion of Ukraine whilst exploring the potential causes and consequences of the crisis.

In this lecture, Prof. Mearsheimer will aim to focus on both the origins of the war in Ukraine and some of its most important consequences. He will argue that the crisis is largely the result of the West’s efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Russian leaders viewed that outcome as an existential threat that had to be thwarted. While Vladimir Putin is certainly responsible for invading Ukraine and for Russia’s conduct in the war, Prof. Mearsheimer states that he does not believe he is an expansionist bent on creating a greater Russia. Regarding the war’s consequences, the greatest danger is that the war will go on for months if not years and that either NATO will get directly involved in the fighting or nuclear weapons will be used — or both. Furthermore, enormous damage has already been inflicted on Ukraine. A prolonged war is likely to wreak even more devastation on Ukraine.

Prof. John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago.

By any measure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine represents a profound security risk for the world. It raises fundamental issues about the basic principles that underwrite the current international order and it threatens the specter of an entrenched, high-risk Great Power conflict. How is this fast-evolving crisis best addressed? Does it demand a resolute and relentless push by the West to punish, isolate and degrade Putin’s Russia economically, politically, and militarily? Or is a solution to be found in acknowledging Russia’s security needs and finding ways to mutually de-escalate the war, sooner not later? Which of these different strategies stands the best chance of success? And how ultimately is this conflict best resolved?

International Relations scholar and offensive realist John Mearsheimer has blamed the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for the current crisis in Ukraine. Mearsheimer, who has been critical of US foreign policy since the Cold War, said in an interview with The New Yorker that NATO’s eastward expansion and its establishment of “close ties” with Ukraine have increased the chances of war between the US and Russia.
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He said that the roots of the current crisis have their origins in 2008 when NATO agreed to admit Georgia and Ukraine. “The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand,” Mearsheimer notes. During the same year, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Mearsheimer also notes that the European Union’s (EU) efforts to integrate Ukraine into its fold have unsettled Russia, which views the prospect of a “pro-American liberal democracy” at its doorstep as a grave security threat. According to him, the three core concerns of Russia are EU expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

Keeping this in mind, Mearsheimer posits that Ukraine joining the EU, and NATO, and becoming a democracy would be seen by Moscow as “categorically unacceptable.” A better way of approaching this situation, he says, is if Ukraine just became a democracy and had friendly ties with the US, rather than joining the EU and NATO. Ukraine “could probably get away with that,” Mearsheimer argues.

When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think because if you take a stick and poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate,” he emphasized. Regarding Ukraine, Russia has taken a leaf out of the US playbook, Mearsheimer said, referring to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which that the US will not tolerate a foreign power bringing military forces into the region.

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