What Huehuecoyotl said.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. It makes sense for Ukraine to want to join the West. That would be good for Ukraine, they’d probably benefit a lot. But Russia won’t let it join the West, which sucks for Ukraine. As Mearsheimer says:
Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep. Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports. Putin is playing hardball.
So the choice for Ukraine isn’t between joining the West and becoming a prosperous liberal democracy and being some sort of neutral buffer state. It’s a choice between trying to join the West and having the Russians wreck your country to keep that from happening and backing off that ambition and becoming a neutral buffer state.
What if Ukraine becoming a prosperous liberal democracy creates pressure on Russia to become a prosperous liberal democracy?
What‘s keeping Russia from invading anyway?
Russia would rather burn a country to the ground than let it become a liberal democracy? Sounds like a country with heinously evil leadership that should be universally condemned by any right thinking person!
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Sanctions, strategic ambiguity on the part of the US as to if it would actually meet such an invasion with force, etc. But my whole point is that trying to welcome Ukraine into NATO makes conflict more likely, not less. So we shouldn’t do that!
You must not be aware of Russia-Ukraine treaty that dictated nuclear arms transfer and territorial sovereignty. Nothing in there prevented Ukraine joining whatever alliance whatsoever, and it was agreed to after the the dissolution of USSR, and supposed episode between Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the US diplomat doing negotiations. I.e. Ukraine did not violate it by seeking membership in NATO and EU, yet russia did violate it by annexing Crimea and sending troops to Donbass.
No promises by the US were ever signed, or could have possibly been agreed upon between only those two parties. Other NATO members would have had to sign as well.
Putin thinking that he should just be gifted a buffer zone for pillaging is just delusional thinking by someone who has no other options to staying in power. But thanks for blaming check notes every president since Bush Sr for apparently expanding NATO as if it were an empire rather than a pact of mutual defense.
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Bush Sr promised Yeltsin that NATO expansion would stop with the Poland round. Sure did teach the Russians to make sure to get stuff in writing from US Americans. You’re right that Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama were all equally horrible and short-sighted in their desire to expand NATO. Trump asked some interesting questions about the utility of NATO in the post-Soviet environment, but then bizarrely started expanding Obama’s support for Ukraine, sending lethal arms to them. Biden seems to be following in the neoliberal/neocon footsteps of Clinton, Bush, and Obummer.
How about erasing that ambiguity by letting Ukraine join NATO?
You claim there is nothing in it for the US/NATO and i disagree. Keeping Russia from expanding is a worthwhile geopolitical goal.
That’s not the thesis though. The thesis is the West caused the issue, which it didn’t. Ukraine has been attempting to pull out of Russian orbit with NATO being a point of friction but not the only one.
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That would erase ambiguity, but it would escalate the armed conflict in Ukraine and make a long, bloody proxy war inevitable.
Or Russia could stop invading neighboring countries
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Yes, NATO isn’t the only issue. EU membership and generally joining the Western Liberal Democracy Club are the other two ambitions that Russia was dead-set against. And you’re right that who’s to blame depends on your frame of reference. Mearsheimer’s frame of reference is that great powers will try to become regional hegemons, it’s eminently rational for them to do so, and so they’ll lash out at other great powers that try to interfere in their natural sphere of influence. So you get the Monroe Doctrine and whatever you want to call what Putin is doing with Georgia and Ukraine. You can say the US is to blame for opposing a missile base in Cuba or that Russia is to blame for opposing a possible NATO naval base in Crimea, but from that frame of reference that’s like blaming the leopard for eating the antelope.
russia takes crimea and invades georgia
this is all america’s fault
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I’ve been saying this!
No indeed. The prospect of a Soviet presence in Cuba is what prompted the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
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I don’t think it would make a long, bloody proxy war inevitable. I think it would have a significant chance of leading to WW3, though.
Trying to welcome non-whites into full citizenship in the US makes conflict more likely, not less. So we shouldn’t do that!
This take strikes me as sophisticated sophistry. NATO isn’t in the cards for Ukrainian atm. The issue is whether Russia gets to run Ukraine as a puppet state to satisfy the aims of its dictator.
Should we go to war to defend the right of Ukraine not to be a puppet state? Probably not. But Russia has no legitimate claim to Ukraine other than the fake nationalist claptrap that substitutes for Russian history.
I don’t know how all this will shake out, but it will not be to the long term benefit of Russia. Claims of encirclement have always been the pretext for bad guys in European wars.
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Haven’t read this yet, but I trust it a lot more than a dicy lecture from a foreign policy hack.
Edit: read it and it provides essential context for the discussion.