Comments on New Yorker interview with John Mearsheimer
The New Yorker has a good interview with John Mearsheimer in which they discuss why Putin invaded Ukraine:
Why John Mearsheimer Thinks Donald Trump Is Right on Ukraine.
The interviewer, Isaac Chotiner, thinks Putin invaded because of his imperial ambitions. Mearchsheimer thinks the invasion was in response to NATO expansion that the Russians perceived as a strategic threat. Mearsheimer says, “We [the U.S.] forced Putin to launch a preventive war to stop Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO.”
Mearsheimer is a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Chicago. He is known as a “realist.”
Chotiner presents several seemingly imperialistic quotations from Putin and from Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin. These quotations say that Russia wants to reclaim lost territory and Ukraine is not a separate nation. Chotner quotes Dugin as saying some extremely nationalistic things such as “Truth and God are on our side. We are fighting the absolute evil, embodied in Western civilization, its liberal-totalitarian hegemony, in Ukrainian Nazism.” And he said that Russian civilization will not “be complete until we have united all Eastern Slavs and all Eurasian brothers into a common big space.” Mearsheimer says Dugin is not Putin’s brain, and there’s no evidence that Putin wanted war before NATO provoked it.
There’s a lot more history they could have discussed — e.g., decades of U.S. support for regime change operations in Eastern Europe and Ukraine; opposition by senior U.S. diplomats to NATO expansion, with warnings that it would provoke a war; U.S. support for the 2014 Maidan coup; CIA involvement (reported by the NY Times, Washington Post, and The New Yorker); and U.S. arming of far-right militias that were attacking Russian speakers.
Chotiner says to Mearshsimer: “If Ukraine was a member of NATO, it wouldn’t necessarily be a threat to Russia. I mean, maybe in Putin’s mind it would be.” But would the U.S. allow Russia to have armed client states along its borders? NATO had already expanded into multiple former Soviet Bloc countries, and the U.S. has a history of overthrowing and bombing Russian allies in Afghanistan (1980s), Serbia, Syria, and Libya. The U.S. was aggressively trying to expand NATO into Georgia and Ukraine. NATO expansion violated verbal promises given to Soviet leaders at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union.
If the situation were reversed — as with the Cuban Missile Crisis — the U.S. would have invaded, bombed or threatened war much earlier.
There’s no denying that Putin has said things that sound imperialistic. In the heat of war, and for internal political reasons, politicians say untoward things. For example, here are statements made by recent U.S. presidents:
Bill Clinton: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”Barack Obama: “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed, and it will be true for the century to come.”
Barack Obama: “When trouble comes up anywhere in the world, they don’t call Beijing. They don’t call Moscow. They call us.”
Joe Biden said: “I’m running the world … we are the essential nation of the world.”
Donald Trump (speaking of Syria): “We’re keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil,”
Donald Trump (speaking of Iran): “I’ve written them a letter, saying I hope you’re going to negotiate because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them. There are two ways in which Iran can be handled – militarily, or you make a deal.”
Moreover, if we judge countries by their actions and not just by their words, then consider that the U.S. has its empire of 750 overseas military bases. Consider, too, the scores of countries that the U.S. invaded, bombed, and occupied worldwide since the end of WWII. For example, the U.S. has been occupying 1/3 of Syria (the parts with oil) for about a decade. It still has troops in Iraq. Russia’s invasion was along its borders, in a country with close historical and linguistic ties to Russia, and in response to U.S. regime change operations, a coup, and arming of anti-Russian militias. Ukraine’s eastern provinces are Russian speaking and voted multiple times to align with Russia.
U.S. hypocrisy is stunning.
Putin also made clear in several speeches that a neutral Ukraine without western arms or NATO membership was what he wanted. The peace deal that was almost reached in the spring of 2022, but that was stymied by western leaders, had a neutral Ukraine as its major requirement.
Putin’s occasional imperialistic-sounding statements don’t undermine the argument that NATO expansion was reckless and that it failed to respect Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Both sides can be wrong in a conflict.
Moreover, just as the U.S. likes to expand its “empire” of allied states, so too does Russia. And it especially wants a buffer zone along its borders. Given the chance, or a provocation, Putin might even take over more countries. U.S. actions make such behavior more likely. NATO expansion provoked the very war that is being used to justify NATO’s continued existence and expansion.
But I’m no fan of Putin. He is a brutal autocrat. Nor am I a fan of Saddam Hussein. But, as with Iraq, so with Russia: the U.S. should have backed off. Putin had a lot of trouble invading over Ukraine. There is no evidence that he has plans to invade other countries. For decades Russia wanted to integrate with the West, but the U.S. and NATO needed an enemy. If the U.S. provokes conflict in the Balkans, Russia may take action. When all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail. And if someone threatens you, you strike back.