Quote (Meanwhile @ Jan 18 2023 05:42pm)
^ferdia
If you want a technical point: Russian troop movements prove John Mearsheimer wrong. Putin’s shifting of Russian troops away from NATO’s borders and into Ukraine proves Russia hardly felt threatened.
Another teriible point that the guy is not a magic genius:
In a September 2015 conference, Mearsheimer's question of Putin's interest in conquering Ukraine. He declared verbatim on this subject: "If you really want to destroy Russia, you should encourage him to conquer Ukraine. Putin is far too smart to try to do so"
Checkmate.
sorry i only saw this now (please dont ask me why i scrolled back lol). ehmm i dont know much about this John Mearsheimer, but i think i will buy his 2007 book to be a bit mroe informed on a certain topic. i see he stated it would be unwise of ukraine to give up its arsenal (he apparently said this before this occured). i note also "He also dismisses democratic peace theory, which claims that democracies never or rarely go to war with each other.["
i also agree with this:
"Night watchman in Mearsheimer's terminology is a "global hegemon", a theoretical impossibility according to The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.[27] Nevertheless, in 1990, Mearsheimer mentioned the existence of a "watchman". Democracies lived at peace because "America's hegemonic position in NATO ... mitigated the effects of anarchy on the Western democracies and induced cooperation among them ... With the United States serving as a night watchman (emphasis added), fears about relative gains among the Western European states were mitigated ..."[18]
Afterwards, Mearsheimer did not mention the "watchman" for some time. A decade later, he described the "international anarchy" as having not changed with the end of the Cold War, "... and there are few signs that such change is likely any time soon. States remain the principal actors in world politics and there is still no night watchman standing above them."[27] Five more years later, Mearsheimer confirmed that "in an anarchic system there is no night watchman for state to call when trouble comes knocking at their door."[28]
Precisely two decades after Mearsheimer had detected the watchman in the world for the last time, he rediscovered the watchman, which exists and keeps Europe at peace. The article "Why Is Europe Peaceful Today?" unambiguously answers, "The reason is simple: the United States is by far the most powerful country in the world and it effectively acts as a night watchman."[29] "
on Ukraine :
"2014 Crimean crisis
Mearsheimer had warned in 1993 that a nuclear-free Ukraine would remain exposed to the danger of Russian attempts at reconquest. In 2014, he retrospectively criticized the geopolitical reorientation of the United States under Bill Clinton since 1995 due to its monopolistic and hegemonic orientation. With the intention of weakening the government of Russia, he said, NATO was planned to be extended to Russia's borders. Accordingly, in an article in Foreign Affairs in August 2014, he assigned the main blame for the outbreak of the conflict to the United States and its Western allies.[72]"
my god the worlds most influential realist of his generation agree's with my position. wow, thanks for linking this name to me, i guess i should read a bit of his stuff. How is this guy viewed currently ? I guess western minds villify him. I have some reading to do i guess.
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"2014 Crimean crisis
Mearsheimer had warned in 1993 that a nuclear-free Ukraine would remain exposed to the danger of Russian attempts at reconquest. In 2014, he retrospectively criticized the geopolitical reorientation of the United States under Bill Clinton since 1995 due to its monopolistic and hegemonic orientation. With the intention of weakening the government of Russia, he said, NATO was planned to be extended to Russia's borders. Accordingly, in an article in Foreign Affairs in August 2014, he assigned the main blame for the outbreak of the conflict to the United States and its Western allies.[72]
Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.
The narrative that Russia had only been waiting for opportunities to annex Ukraine is seen as erroneous by Mearsheimer.
The U.S. and European political elites had been caught unprepared by the events "because they attach little importance to the logic of realism in the 21st century and assume that European unity and freedom can be guaranteed by means of liberal principles such as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy."
The U.S., aware of Russia's rejectionist stance, which is understandable because of Russia's security interests, would have pushed for the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO and supported the democratization of Ukraine. Mearsheimer considers Putin's reaction understandable because Ukraine (as a non-aligned state) is "indispensable" as a buffer for Russia's security needs. Mearsheimer compared NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, led by NATO, and the planned inclusion of Ukraine to the hypothetical scenario of a Chinese military alliance in North America: "Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico."
Mearsheimer argued in a piece for Foreign Affairs that Russia's annexation of the Crimea was fueled by concerns that it would lose access to its Black Sea Fleet naval base at Sevastopol if Ukraine continued to move towards NATO and European integration. Mearsheimer concluded that US policy should shift to recognize Ukraine as a buffer state between NATO and Russia, rather than attempt to absorb Ukraine into NATO.[72] Mearsheimer's article provoked Michael McFaul and Stephen Sestanovich to publish their response in the November/December 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs.[73]
Mearsheimer sees NATO's eastward expansion as a dangerous provocation of Russia. He invokes George F. Kennan as one of the first critical admonishers who warned in 1998 of the danger of war as a result of eastward enlargement. Mearsheimer attributes the political mistakes to the lack of political realism or the great influence of the "liberal hegemony" school of thought in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The only sensible way out of the crisis, he said, is to soberly factor in Russia's security interests, like those of any other power. Ukraine, he said, must accept the role of buffer or bridge given to it by its geostrategic situation. Anything else, he said, was abstract and meaningless in terms of Realpolitik. The West's constructive cooperation with Russia is of great importance for solving important existing and upcoming problems and should not be put at risk, he said. Mearsheimer also named the weapons and "advisors" the U.S. is providing to lead Ukraine into a "civil war." In response to the Brookings Institution's 2015 recommendation to provide weapons to Ukraine to increase the cost of an attack to Putin,[74] Mearsheimer replied in The New York Times that the strategic importance is so great to Russia that it will continue the conflict at any cost, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons.[75] Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul counterargued in his Foreign Affairs response piece, that in 2014, Russian foreign policy was not a reaction to the United States, but was based on the internal Russian dynamics.[76] "
my god i agree with all of that.
This post was edited by ferdia on Jan 18 2023 04:09pm