John Mersheimer: America and its allies are the main responsible for the war in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine started due to the West’s inattention to Moscow’s security concerns and the expansion of NATO forces near the borders of Russia. On February 21 of last year (March 2, 1400), the President of Russia recognized the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in the Donbas region, and three days later, he launched a military operation, which he called a “special operation”, against Ukraine. In this way, the tense relations between Moscow and Kiev changed to a military confrontation.

During this period, the member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO), including the United States, by abandoning the diplomatic option to establish peace, continued this war-mongering with huge military support to Kiev, and by equipping Ukraine with advanced and heavier military weapons, openly They follow the Kremlin’s provocation policy. Now, to investigate the details of this war and the reasons for its occurrence, the Young Journalists Club has arranged an interview with John Mersheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago and one of the figures of prominent American prominent in this field, a part of which you will see below. How do you analyze it?

John Mersheimer: The war in Ukraine is a multidimensional disaster that is likely to get much worse in the foreseeable future. When a war is successful, little attention is paid to its causes, but when the outcome is disastrous, understanding how it happened becomes very important. People want to know: How did we end up in this terrible situation?

I have witnessed this phenomenon twice in my lifetime – first with the Vietnam War and second with the Iraq War. In both cases, Americans wanted to know how their country could have miscalculated so badly. Considering that the United States and its NATO allies played a decisive role in the events that led to the war in Ukraine – and are still playing a central role in directing that war – it is appropriate to assess the responsibility of the West for this disaster.

Today I raise two main arguments. First, the United States is primarily responsible for creating the crisis in Ukraine. Nor can it be denied that America’s allies are partly responsible, but they are largely following Washington’s lead on Ukraine. My key point, however, is that the United States has pursued policies toward Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as an existential threat to their country—a point they have repeatedly made for several years. Specifically, I’m talking about America’s obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and turning it into a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. The Biden administration has been reluctant to remove the threat through diplomacy, and in fact has recommitted to bringing Ukraine into NATO by 2021. Putin responded to this American policy by attacking Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Second, the Biden administration has reacted to the outbreak of war by doubling down on Russia. Washington and its Western allies are committed to the decisive defeat of Russia in Ukraine and the imposition of comprehensive sanctions to severely weaken Russian power. The United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war will likely drag on for months, if not years. In the process, Ukraine, already badly damaged, will suffer even more. In addition, there is a risk of escalation of war, as NATO may be drawn into the war and nuclear weapons may be used. We live in dangerous times.

-How true do you think the words of the West about Putin to start this war?

John Mersheimer: It is widely and firmly believed in the West that Putin is solely responsible for the Ukraine crisis and certainly the current war. He is said to have imperialist ambitions, meaning that he wants to conquer Ukraine and other countries as well – all in order to create a greater Russia that bears some resemblance to the former Soviet Union. In other words, Ukraine is Putin’s first goal, but not his last. As one researcher put it, he is “acting on a sinister, old belief: to wipe Ukraine off the world map.” Given Putin’s purported goals, Finland and Sweden joining NATO and increasing their force levels in Eastern Europe to This alliance is quite logical.

While this narrative is repeated over and over in the mainstream media and by nearly every Western leader, there is no evidence to support it. As far as the purveyors of conventional wisdom provide evidence, it has little bearing on Putin’s motivation for invading Ukraine. For example, some insist that he said that Ukraine was an “artificial state” or that it was not “a real state”. However, such vague comments say nothing about his reason for going to war. The same is true of Putin’s statement that he sees Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” with a shared history. Others note that he called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the century.” Of course, Putin also said: “He who does not lose the Soviet Union has no heart.” “Whoever wants to return it has no brain.” Others, however, point out that he said that “modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia, or more precisely by Bolshevik, Communist Russia.” But as he continued in the same speech: “Of course, we cannot change the events of the past, but at least we must accept them openly and honestly”. was Russia, evidence must be provided that, first, he considered it a desirable goal, second, he considered it a practical goal, and third, he intended to pursue it. There is no evidence in the public record that Putin had in mind, let alone that he intended to end Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of Greater Russia, when he sent troops into Ukraine on February 24.

In fact, there is considerable evidence that Putin has recognized Ukraine as an independent state. In his July 12, 2021 article on Russia-Ukraine relations, which conventional wisdom often cites as evidence of his imperial ambitions, he tells Ukrainians: “You want to create your own country: welcome.” “There is only one answer: respectfully,” he writes about Russia’s treatment of Ukraine. He ends the long article with the words: “And what Ukraine will be – it’s up to its citizens to decide.” It is difficult to reconcile these statements with the claim that he wants to integrate Ukraine into Greater Russia.

In the same article on July 12, 2021, and again in an important speech on February 21, 2022, Putin emphasized that Russia accepts “the new geopolitical reality that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.” He repeated the same point a third time on February 24, 2022, when he announced that Russia would invade Ukraine. He also clarified that “our plan is not to occupy Ukrainian territory” and that he respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, but only to a certain extent: “Russia cannot feel secure and developed while facing a constant threat from Ukrainian territory. “This is the threat from Ukraine today.” Basically, Putin was not interested in making Ukraine a part of Russia. He was interested in making sure that this did not become a “springboard” for Western aggression against Russia, about which I will say more shortly.

One might argue that Putin was lying about his motives, that he was trying to hide his imperial ambitions. As it turns out, I’ve written a book about lying in international politics – Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics – and it’s clear to me that Putin wasn’t lying. For starters, one of my main findings is that leaders don’t lie to each other very much. They mostly lie to their people. As for Putin, whatever one thinks of him, he has no history of lying to other leaders. Although some claim that he often lies and cannot be trusted, there is little evidence that he ever lied to foreign audiences. In addition, he has repeatedly expressed his thoughts on Ukraine over the past two years and has always emphasized that his main concern is Ukraine’s relations with the West, especially NATO. He has never mentioned that he wants to make Ukraine a part of Russia. If this behavior is part of a massive deception campaign, it would be unprecedented in recorded history.

Perhaps the best indicator of Putin’s unwillingness to conquer and absorb Ukraine is the military strategy that Moscow has employed since the beginning of the campaign. The Russian army did not try to conquer all of Ukraine. This required a classic blitzkrieg strategy aimed at quickly conquering all of Ukraine with armored forces supported by tactical air power. However, this strategy was not practical because there were only 19,000 soldiers in the invading Russian army, which is too small a force to defeat and occupy Ukraine, which is not only the largest country between the Atlantic Ocean and Russia, but also has a very small force. . With a population of over 40 million people, it is not surprising that the Russians pursued a strategy of limited objectives that focused on capturing or threatening Kiev and seizing a large swath of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. In short, Russia did not have the ability to conquer all of Ukraine, let alone the rest of Eastern Europe.

Putin and other Russian leaders surely understand from the Cold War that Occupying countries in the era of nationalism are always a prescription for endless troubles. The Soviet Union’s experience in Afghanistan is a prime example of this phenomenon, but Moscow’s relationship with its allies in Eastern Europe during the Cold War is more debatable. The Soviet Union had a huge military presence in the region and was involved in the politics of almost every country there. However, those allies were always a thorn in Moscow’s side. The Soviet Union suppressed a major uprising in East Germany in 1953, then invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968—all to keep these countries in line. There were serious problems in Poland in 1956, 1970 and again in 1980-1981. Although the Polish authorities dealt with these events, as a reminder that intervention may be necessary. Albania, Romania, and Yugoslavia routinely posed problems for Moscow, but Soviet leaders tended to tolerate their misbehavior because their location made them less important to NATO deterrence.

How about contemporary Ukraine? It is clear from Putin’s July 12, 2021 article that he understood at the time that Ukrainian nationalism was a powerful force, and that the civil war in Donbass, which had been ongoing since 2014, had contributed greatly to the poisoning of relations between Russia and Ukraine. He certainly knew that the invading Russian forces would not be welcomed by the Ukrainians with open arms, and that it would be difficult to conquer Ukraine if Russia had the forces to conquer the entire country.

Finally, it’s worth noting that hardly anyone argued that Putin had imperial ambitions from the time he took office in 2000 until the Ukraine crisis first erupted on February 22, 2014. In fact, the Russian leader was an invited guest at the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the organization. Putin’s opposition to the announcement had almost no effect on Washington, since Russia was then weak enough to prevent further NATO expansion, just as it was weak enough to halt expansion in 1999 and 2004.

-What is your view on the future of this war?

John Mersheimer: The relations between Russia and the West are so poisoned that it will take years to restore them. Meanwhile, that deep hostility will fuel instability around the world, especially in Europe. Some say there is a silver lining: relations between Western countries have improved significantly, transatlantic relations, NATO and the European Union are in better shape than ever. That’s true now, but there are deep cracks beneath the surface and they’re likely to reveal themselves over time. For example, relations between Eastern and Western European countries are likely to worsen as the war drags on.

Finally, this conflict is already hurting the global economy in major ways, and this situation is likely to worsen over time. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Diamond says we need to prepare for an “economic storm.” These economic shocks affect the politics of every Western country, weakening liberal democracy and strengthening its opponents on both the left and the right.

In conclusion, the current conflict in Ukraine is a huge disaster, which, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, will lead people around the world to search for its causes. Those who believe in facts and logic will quickly realize that the United States and its allies are primarily responsible for this long-running incident. The April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO led to conflict with Russia. The Bush administration was the main architect of this fateful choice, but the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have doubled down on this policy at every step, and America’s allies have dutifully followed Washington. Although Russian leaders have made it abundantly clear that Ukraine’s entry into NATO means crossing “the clearest of red lines,” the United States has simply refused to acknowledge Russia’s deepest security concerns and has instead moved relentlessly to turn Ukraine into a Western bastion on Russia’s border. did.

The sad truth is that if the West did not follow NATO’s expansion into Ukraine, it is unlikely that there would be a war in Ukraine today and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine. In essence, Washington played a leading role in leading Ukraine down the path of destruction. History will judge the United States and its allies very harshly for their very stupid policy on Ukraine.

John Mersheimer is a professor of political relations at the University of Chicago. He is an American political scientist and researcher of international relations who belongs to the realist school of thought. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation. Mearsheimer is best known for developing the theory of aggressive realism, which describes interaction between great powers as driven primarily by a rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system. Based on his theory, Mersheimer believes that China’s growing power will likely put it at odds with the United States.

In his 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer argues that the Israel lobby has a disproportionate influence on US foreign policy. His recent work focuses on US-China relations and Western involvement in the Ukraine war.