What qualifies as “talk about”?
First of all, Mearsheimer’s realism isn’t prescriptive, it’s descriptive. He’s saying this is how states act. Understanding that’s how states act can give you tools and insights into how to shape a wise foreign policy, but both an isolationist and an interventionist could take useful insights from the offensive realism framework. I suppose even a psychotic lunatic interventionist like you describe could as well, but who cares?
1 Like
I meant that there isn’t a deeply internalized cultural awareness of the brutality and genocide of the Eastern Front like there is with the Holocaust in American culture.
You can tell by how often everyone nauseatingly references the holocaust as a point of comparison for anything for some reason.
the public was having the debate on whether to involve themselves in the war, because the european situation was devolving quite fast. yes there were people in US screaming to appease hitler, but that doesn’t mean the public wasn’t aware of atrocities before, during, and especially AFTER the war.
What? His entire thesis is that this is how Ukraine and USA should have acted, and the war is their fault for not doing so. The descriptive part is him saying that Russia’s actions were inevitable conveniently in hindsight. But of course it wasn’t inevitable. If it was, you and most of the people agreeing with Mearsh wouldn’t have failed to predict it.
1 Like
I can only definitively speak to mine and my daughters education, but I’m pretty sure in the US while we learn tons about the Holocaust and the war from the US/UK perspective we learn very little about the Eastern front and the atrocities committed by both the Germans and the Russians against each other’s populations.
I recall pretty much only learning about Stalingrad and the Russian order to shoot their own troops. I had no idea that millions of citizens and POWs were killed by both sides.
3 Likes
He was saying that Russia is going to act in a certain way, wreck Ukraine instead of letting it join the west. This is offensive realism describing how Russia is going to act. His criticism of US policy is for failing to recognize that’s how Russia was going to act or not caring that it would provoke a war. The former is the US foreign policy elites bumbling around the world with Toddler Brain, the latter is cynical cold warriorism that only cares about weakening Russia, who cares about the cost to Ukraine. It seems like he leans towards the Toddler Brain theory but I don’t think you can rule out the latter possibility either.
I think his thesis is that it is entirely the fault of the US because Ukraine is a non-hegemon that doesn’t matter in the big picture.
It’s like watching youtub comments describe what they think is the strategy a poker player was using in a hand
2 Likes
Idk, the thesis that Russia will always seek to dominate Ukraine because it always has seems uncontroversial imo. To the extent that Europe and the US are to ‘blame’ – not making clear to Russia that the cost would be prohibitive was a condition that contributed to it happening, and could arguably be seen as a huge diplomatic failure. Otoh, our ability to convince Putin of anything is questionable.
I think Mearsheimer would say Russia seeks to dominate Ukraine because of geography, that this would be the case no matter what Russia’s domestic politics look like, which I interpret to mean Putin is irrelevant.
Yeah, I don’t think he’s wrong about that exactly, since like Catherine the great Russia has ‘needed’ to control everything east of the Vistula to feel secure. And the Baltic states. And everything on the Black sea down to Turkey. And that’s just Europe.
But Putin is relevant in that his command structure (extremely brutal autocracy) makes it hard for him to get accurate information from his people. We make a credible case he doesn’t want to believe, his yes men say ‘no boss, you’re right, they’re bluffing’ is totally possible imo.
Mearsheimer’s failure is to not take into account that the people Russia has been murdering for generations couldn’t join NATO fast enough. These are just people trying to protect themselves from a centuries old menace. Russia made its own bed. It’s method of imperialism has failed it, and it’s death throes are (unsurprisingly) as violent and brutal as it’s successes were. This may be as much the last war of 19th century imperialism as much as it’s the last conflict of the cold war.
https://twitter.com/TadeuszGiczan/status/1517513214900199424
Mearsheimer’s stance taken to its logical conclusion, which he’s too smart to say out loud.
What the fuck are you talking about? John has been against arming Ukraine for many many years.
This is the opposite of Mearsheimer in a way. This suggests Ukraine can choose to stop the war. Mearsheimer believes Ukraine has no agency in this war and it only continues because the West, and specifically the United States, wish for it to continue.
Because his logical conclusion is that they should just lie back and accept whatever Russia does to them. To become Belarus or much worse. But Mearsh doesn’t come out and say it, which allows people like you to blurt out, “He didn’t say that!”
Right, which means w/o the West, Russia would own the whole of Ukraine. They would become Belarus, where dissent is crushed worse than in Russia, and people speak in whispers.
It’s a very cynical point of view that life under a regime like that is no better than life in a Western-facing democracy. Or at least the latter isn’t worth trying to help a country like Ukraine when they buy into essentially the American dream.
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1517661222107234304
And Belarus is even worse.
Of course he says that. He says that countries that are right next to great powers need to take great care to not offend those powers. He said that Ukraine needs to find a modus vivendi that Ukraine and Russia both find acceptable.