Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
newyorker.comThis is the critical, falsifiable prediction, to my mind:
Putin "understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. He can’t do that. What he’s doing in Ukraine is fundamentally different. He is obviously lopping off some territory. He’s going to take some territory away from Ukraine, in addition to what happened with Crimea, in 2014. Furthermore, he is definitely interested in regime change. Beyond that, it’s hard to say exactly what this will all lead to, except for the fact that he is not going to conquer all of Ukraine. It would be a blunder of colossal proportions to try to do that.
"Q: I assume that you think if he were to try to do that, that would change your analysis of what we’ve witnessed.
"Absolutely. My argument is that he’s not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine."
I generally agree with this article - and the videos of him and Chomsky saying many of the same things back in 2014/15 and earlier and later. As long as we're cool that Putin still holds ultimate and most of the blame.
I think this means that you believe Putin is staying, right?
I give it a 0.0005% chance.
But the situation might change -- the world is baying for blood -- we might get it.
Biden holding strong for now, but tonight he only agreed not to start WWIII in the Ukraine skies -- maybe somewhere else tho.
I'm interested in how willing we (the US) and the rest of the world are to terrorize the people of Ukraine, Russia, and other places just to allow our (US) billionaires to have a lever of control their (RU) billionaires.
Meanwhile, India and China are like...what's this going on now, chaps? Oh, we were busy watching Olympics re-runs. Something going on??
This has got to be Kissinger's last attempt to destroy the world -- 98 and still going strong.
Hrrm. Don't know about India. If you'd have watched ADSB Exchange you could have seen 4 Indian Lockheed C-17 Globemasters go from Dehli to Bukarest; Romania.
Interestingly flying westward, avoiding Pakistan, then diagonally through Iran, and then Turkey. At this time 3 of them are still in the air, 2 maybe 45 minutes away over the Black Sea near Istanbul, and the last one over Iran next to Sirjan.
Doesn't look like watching Olympics to me.
edit: I wrongly assumed they'd all have Bukarest as destination because of having almost the same tracks.
The second one touched down in Budapest, Hungary at UTC 14:23.
The third one in Rzeszów–Jasionka Airport, Poland at UTC 14:41.
The fourth one still en route to whereever, passing north of Lake Van, Turkey atm (UTC 14:46)
Still, that's not watching reruns of the Olympics, whatever it is.
Fourth and last one made it to Bukarest, Romania again at UTC 16:20, while the first one just entered northern Iran on its way back home.
They may not be the only ones, could be they did that in the last days also, but I didn't focus on them because they weren't lined up like today. Can't say for sure.
If the current situation in Ukraine is non-aggressive, I guess the aggressive stuff will glow in the dark or have dead flies laying on dead bodies?
So we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the Soviet Union.
There's no need to "invent" what Putin has very clearly told us in his public speeches. Recreating "historical Russia in the form of the Soviet Union" is the stated goal of what Mearsheimer apparently considers to be Putin's bold act of non-aggression this past week.
What a mindfuck. Only an intellectual can come up with argumentation like this.
Not sure that’s borne out, though his gist is along those lines.
> It’s hard to say whether he’s going to go after the rest of Ukraine because—I don’t mean to nitpick here but—that implies that he wants to conquer all of Ukraine, and then he will turn to the Baltic states, and his aim is to create a greater Russia or the reincarnation of the Soviet Union. I don’t see evidence at this point that that is true.
Putin may be simply testing what can be done in a deliberate fashion. Armies need wars to fight in order to stay in shape. He got Crimea pretty easily, so like a cat that got a first piece off the table he might be seeing how big a piece he can manage. We don’t know how much of Putin’s imagery is literal and how much is to just set a tone and narrative for what he does do.
In 2014 it did seem a bit over-the-top to suggest that Ukraine should join NATO to me. The analogy of Mexico joining the Warsaw Pact seems apt. Ukraine has been free all along to say “we like elections, but no thank you to NATO” knowing how Russia sees things. We’ll see how this plays out. This may just be the opening gambit in a multi-round game for the next several years.