If you want to spend 15 minutes reading his perspective, this is good summary.
If you don’t want to read the whole thing here’s a couple of the more important points:
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The biggest takeaway from everything that’s happened so far is that Russia has no idea how to actually use their military equipment. They’re not “can’t do jumping jacks” levels of incompetent but they’re not much better either.
In the situation you describe, we should be calling the police and letting the authorities deal with the crimes that are taking place. What’s the prescription in the anarchic framework of international relations? For Russia’s monstrous crime of aggressive war there are no police to call or courts to seek justice in.
Same scenario, but the batterer is a city cop and the ex-wife befriends or lets say starts dating a county sheriff. It’s all hypothetical of course, but the Dr’s example encapsulates the issue quite well.
I’m asking about the solution: there is none right now, as far as I can see. Given that helplessness of stopping Russia’s terrible crime or even getting justice for it down the road, Mearsheimer’s recommendation for the last eight years that Ukraine find a modus vivendi with Russia rather than trying to align with the West seems reasonable.
Victim blaming the Ukrainian people for wanting out of toxic relationship with Russia sure seems counterproductive to devising any sort of meaningful solution that doesn’t end with their complete subjugation to totalitarian rule, imo.
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the solution is clearly unity against the aggressor and no fly zones.
War with Russia, in other words. Thankfully Biden isn’t so foolish.
watching a suicide bomber rape a woman isn’t a moral option.
The thing is, Putin is a bully. Unless you punch him square in his shit he’ll continue the same behavior.
I think that if Ukraine had followed Mearsheimer’s advice there probably wouldn’t have been war. Turning Ukraine into Belarus probably would have been preferable to war but I don’t live there so I don’t know.
But what productive solution are you proposing as an alternative?
The people of Ukraine do live there and they seem to disagree with you pretty strongly.
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What if the removal of Yakunovych was not an illegal coup?
Conflicts like this cannot be analyzed in a vacuum.
Ukraine not following Mearsheimer’s advice to lay down and become vassal state → goes into all out war → loses a few thousand civilians or more → has their cities destroyed → helps topple the Putin regime → gets Marshal plan money from the west to rebuild = Worth it.
Live free or die.
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Accepting Ukraine into the EU and NATO before it got this far would have been a good start in hindsight. Now that he’s invaded Ukraine there should be an army of forensic accountants poring through mountains of shell company records looking for the billions he’s laundered through the global financial system.
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belarus is experiencing massive repressions and political killings. at least it’s not war is precisely the propaganda line about stability that putin and lukashenko use. at some point it becomes obvious that you and meiasuremeyer are just repeating the core of their propaganda.
in other words, we now have the answers to leo tolstoys greatest question. war, what is it good for? stopping a madman.
What do you mean, we have the UN as the police and sanctions to carry out justice.
Oh those are useless or often do more harm than good? I guess it’s a pretty good analogy then.
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Expecting Ukraine to just take it from Russia after Russian committed a genocide where they starved the entire population and 3-5 million people died would be like expecting Israel to just let reincarnated Hitler take them over without a fight.
It’s a nonsensical position.
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