John Mearsheimer On Who Gains The Most From The Ukraine-Russia War & What Could End Putin's Assault

so the russia ukraine conflict is going to approach 50 days uh later this week and someone who has been uh predicting this or at least warning about this for a number of years now is professor john mirsheimer he's the wendell harrison distinguished professor of political science at the university of chicago and one of the most renowned uh scholars of international relations in the world thank you very much professor meerschaim of speaking with us it's my pleasure to be here so let me start off by asking you you're one of the few international scholars uh who's been warning about this potential invasion of ukraine that russia is getting provoked by nato's eastwood expansion uh and that at some point putin will be forced to respond and now he has um 50 days into this war what is your assessment of how far this bar has come what putin's motivations were to to start it in the first place and the reaction of the western world to this point well let's just start by talking about why putin did what he um what he has done uh my view all along has been that this crisis which now is an actual war is all about the west's efforts to make ukraine a western bulwark on russia's borders uh it all started back in april 2008 at the nato summit in bucharest where nato announced that ukraine and georgia would become members of nato at some point the russians and putin in particular made it unequivocally clear at that time that this was crossing a red line this was unacceptable this represented an existential threat to russia they made that very clear uh the crisis broke out on february 22nd 2014 and the west responded by doubling down and when president biden moved into the white house in january of 2021 he went further than the trump administration did in backing ukraine and we in effect were crossing a red line we were presenting an existential threat to the russians and the russians made this unequivocally clear to us and we continued to double down and the end result is on february 24th of this year putin invaded ukraine now many people say that putin invaded ukraine because he wants to conquer ukraine and integrate it into a greater russia he's interested in recreating the soviet union this is nonsense there's no evidence to support that this is all about nato expansion and more generally the west's efforts to make ukraine a bulwark a western bulwark on russia's borders so if that was the objective uh that putin wanted to send out a message to the west to nato and to ukraine that ukraine's membership of nato for him is anathema it's an existential threat as you said uh a limited war a war which would have lasted a few weeks like what we saw in crimea in 2014 would have sent that message across now as we approach the 50th day and we're getting increasingly these reports of you know mass crimes in bucha and at the railway station a few days ago uh where does that leave putin just in terms of the objective that he set out to achieve and where he's placed now is he worse off today than he was 50 days ago well it's very hard to say because this war has not played itself out yet there's no question that he was pursuing what i would call a limited aim strategy he wanted to conquer some territory in ukraine mainly in the east and he was interested in either regime change or getting the existing regime to change its policy with regard to joining nato or joining the west there's no question that the russian military forces have run into a buzzsaw with the ukrainians and this is because nato and especially the united states has been supporting ukraine all along and trying to turn ukraine into a de facto member of nato that's why ukraine has performed so well on the battlefield so the russians have had their hands full but the russians are doubling down now and where this all leads is very hard to say and you just want to remember the russians view what's happening in ukraine as an existential threat and if the russians lose in ukraine and at the same time the west succeeds it's strangling the russian economy there'll be very powerful pressures brought to bear on putin to escalate the crisis to possibly use nuclear weapons now i want to be very clear i'm not making the argument that that is likely i'm just saying that is a real possibility you want to remember putin views this set of events that's taking place in ukraine as an existential threat and when states face existential threats the historical record is very clear here they pursue risky policies so i think we're in dangerous waters here because it's not clear the russians are going to prevail so you talked about nuclear weapons and we've seen sort of rhetoric around that tactical nukes we've already seen in this war uh you know cluster bombs being used hypersonic missiles being used uh we had peskov a few weeks ago suggesting that if russia were to be threatened if it's an existential threat as you said are the tactical nukes cannot be ruled out uh where would be that red line so far the rest of the world is looking at this war as a limited conflict it's limited to russia and ukraine where is that red line which if it is crossed then the west uh either through the united states or its european partners will have to inevitably uh get into this conflict with with boots on the ground where is that red line well it's hard to say definitively where the red line is but it's very clear that if the ukrainian military does very well against the russian military in the upcoming offensive that the russians are going to launch in eastern ukraine and the russian forces are really being clobbered by all these ukrainian drones and javelin missiles and so forth and so on and that all this western intelligence that's being provided to the ukrainians is a huge force multiplier if the russian military begins to fall apart uh i think you're then going to be in a very dangerous situation and if at the same time the russian economy is really beginning to hurt and is even on the verge of collapsing i think at that point the russians will think very seriously about trying to rescue the situation with nuclear weapons again i'm not saying that's likely but i believe the west is playing with fire here and and more importantly what we're doing is we're leading ukraine down the path to destruction i mean if you look at what's happening in ukraine this is a catastrophe and i've argued from the beginning right i argued back in the early 1990s i was virtually the only person in the west who argued that ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons because i said there was always a possibility that someday the russians would come knocking and those nuclear weapons would be an excellent deterrent is every indian watching this show fully understands but the west foolishly made ukraine give up its nuclear weapons then the west foolishly led ukraine to poke the russian bear in the eye with nato expansion causing this crisis and then once the crisis broke out the west pushed ukraine to double down and the west itself doubled down and the end result is ukraine is getting wrecked um now coming to you know this this conflict has gone on for almost two months now uh there are reports that vladimir putin is getting impatient because the initial strategy which you said was either a regime change or to get this regime to back off on nato commitments uh that doesn't seem to have played out according to plan so he's changed his objectives now to quote-unquote deliberation of dunbas and possibly getting direct access uh to the black sea by capturing ports like mario um what are you picking up in terms of you know putin's brought in a new uh general to lead uh the operations in eastern ukraine somebody who was uh in charge of the operations in syria uh he's supposedly given a deadline may 9th which is victory day to to achieve this limited objective uh do you reckon that that it would be possible at all that putin would uh get his troops to to to get some kind of limitary by v-day i don't think so i think first of all the russian army has not performed well at all and it's hard to believe that that's going to change overnight just because they put a new general in charge it could gradually change over a process of months but i don't see an overnight change the other thing is if the russian military does well against the ukrainians the americans will go to great lanes as will the europeans west europeans and east europeans to help the ukrainians rescue the situation you want to remember that we're in a situation here where the russians feel that they can't lose and the americans and their european allies feel that they can't lose it would be a humiliating defeat for the united states and especially for president biden if we were to lose this war and russia to was to win a great victory so we will go to great lengths to keep ukraine fighting you know as i've often said we're going to fight to the last ukrainian and the russians are going to fight like crazy to make sure that they don't lose so the question you have to ask yourself is where does this all end and to argue it's likely to end by may 9th i don't think so and in fact there are a number of reasonable people in the united states and in western europe who are arguing that this war is likely to go on for years uh it may go on at a lower level than it's now going on but this you know that this war could go on for many years and if you ask me this is a prescription for disaster uh because the potential for an accident or some sort of incident that brings the west into the fight uh or creates a situation where nuclear weapons are used is always there and a war that's long uh facilitates big trouble it's interesting you say this war could go on for for a number of years of course with vladimir putin anything is possible but if you were to compare his previous military operations whether it was crimea or even in georgia the south ossetia one uh those didn't last more than a few weeks uh so two questions one given what we've seen of the russian military uh and and the sort of beating it's it's taken over the last uh a month and a half uh do you see the the propensity to continue this for uh for a longer time or b do you see that putin now reassessing and making his limited objectives the liberation of donbass and direct access to the sea and then saying okay we've won because even when he invaded on the 24th of february he called it a special military operation it was not characterized as a war or a great patriotic war as we've seen in the past well a number of points first of all you compared this conflict in ukraine with what happened in georgia in august 2008 and you pointed out quite correctly that was a quick war and of course when the russians took crimea uh in march of 2014 uh that happened very quickly there was hardly any fighting this is a fundamentally different situation because the americans are backing the ukrainians the americans abandoned the georgians in 2008 and the georgians were on their own and they lost quickly in 2014 with regard to crimea we didn't help ukraine fight to keep crimea here the united states and its european allies or its nato allies are deeply involved in the fight and as you know the united states has an enormous amount of sophisticated technology it's an enormously rich country and it can do a lot to help ukraine stay in the fight and i think that's what's happening here now with regard to putin putin has to stay in the fight he can't lose it would be a disaster for him politically but it would be a disaster for his country again he views this as an existential threat so putin in my opinion is not going to quit i don't see the americans quitting and i don't think the ukrainians have the the agency by themselves to stop this one and for that reason i find it hard to see how this one comes to an end anytime soon now i may be wrong i've been wrong on a number of occasions in predicting how international events will play out and i hope that i'm wrong here i hope that they work out some sort of peace agreement and this war is put to rest but i would not bet a lot of money on it and i don't know many people who think that uh i'm wrong on this one but again i may be what may that peace agreement if at all one would happen what may be the broad contours of that peace agreement what what would putin want to see uh in that peace agreement for him to say okay let's stop with those students yeah that's a great question i mean i believe that the solution to this whole problem has been there from the beginning and the problem that we now face is it's hard to implement but the solution is that ukraine abandons any interest any interest in becoming a part of nato and becoming a western bulwark on russia's border that means that the solution is for ukraine to become a neutral country and to work out some sort of modus vivendi with russia uh the fact is that russia is a very powerful state it's much more powerful than ukraine it can do enormous damage to ukraine as we're witnessing and therefore it's sad to say but it's true the ukrainians really don't have much choice to accommodate the russians to a large extent poking a stick in the russian's eye is a prescription for disaster so a neutral ukraine is the solution and it's been the solution all along but i don't see how you get in neutral ukraine at this point in time because a neutral ukraine would be a victory for russia would be a victory for ukraine too but the problem is it would make the americans the americans and their european allies very unhappy because ukraine would then not be in nato and furthermore inside of ukraine itself it would make the far right very unhappy this is why zielinski has remarkably little maneuver room because on his right are a large number of ukrainians who don't want him to make any concessions to the russians and those far right elements in ukraine coupled with america's unwillingness to see russia win in any way means that ukraine itself is unlikely to be able to push for neutral country uh one of the fallouts professor mayor scheimer of this uh maybe it was not a consequence at this point but certainly uh we've seen uh events play out in that way uh is a coming together in a much more closer uh partnership between china and russia uh what may be the long-term sort of implications of that because even during the cold war uh the soviet union in china there was a division between them so uh that that was that was okay by america because they didn't want the soviet union and china to come together whereas now uh given the way this war has played out and the chinese president and the russian president have called their relationship a friendship without limits uh how worrisome would it be for the west and in particular for america if china and russia will come together in some form of a long-term strategy partnership for the united states there is one serious threat in the world today and it's china it is not russia china is a pure competitor it threatens to be a regional hegemon in asia the united states should be focusing laser-like on china it should be working overtime to think about how to contain china and at the same time it should be working with russia as an ally to help contain china india russia the united states should all be on the same side of the ledger all bent on containing china because china has the potential to be a remarkably powerful country instead what the united states has foolishly done is it has picked a fight with russia it is bogged down in eastern europe it has done remarkably little in asia especially in east asia to explain to its allies how it plans to contain china because it's too busy thinking about how to fight the russians and we shouldn't be fighting the russians we should be working to have some sort of alliance with the russians again all for the purposes of containing china but we're not doing that this tells you very simply that there's one winner as a result of this ukraine war and that winner is china one final word where does that leave countries like india india has its own reservations and concerns with aggressive chinese behavior i'm sure you followed the developments at our northern border over the last couple of years and now with this whole russia ukraine situation there seems to be the feeling that india and the united states who are also strategic partners may not necessarily be on the same page after all india is abstained from all the votes at the united nations even joe biden called india somewhat shaky his words uh do you see some kind of a rupture there and and do you what is the elbow room for countries like india which are stacked up against china i don't think that american unhappiness with india and and there's no question the biden administration is unhappy with india as uh president biden made clear to mr modi yesterday so we're unhappy or the administration is unhappy but it doesn't matter very much the united states needs india the united states has a rich history of having fundamental disagreements with india and we've gotten used to that but more importantly we need india for purposes of containing china so i don't think there's any serious danger of a rupture in relations uh between the two countries i think from india's point of view it is not a good thing that the americans are bogged down in eastern europe and have lost sight of the importance of the china threat because india the united states and russia as i said before should all be on the same page vis-a-vis china we're in this rather bizarre situation where it makes no strategic sense for the united states to be trying to drive a wedge between india and russia if anything we should be happy that they're working together but we can't be because we are in this remarkably foolish war in ukraine and you want to remember we're not doing any of the actual fighting now but we are deeply involved we're doing everything but the fighting and all of our sort of intellectual capital is being focused on eastern europe now we're not thinking about how to deal with china and again this is uh from our point of view a terrible situation but you never want to lose sight of the fact that it's ukraine that is paying the greatest price here this country is being destroyed and i argued long ago that this is what would happen right i'm not saying that this is justified i'm just saying that this is what happens when you poke a great power like russia in the eye and you present it with an existential threat you do not want to underestimate how ruthless great powers can be and this includes the united states of america as well as russia when they think they're facing an existential threat and again vladimir putin thinks he's facing an existential threat and in my opinion that makes him very dangerous all right professor john meerscheiber is always a pleasure speaking with you thank you very much for your time it was my pleasure

Channel: CRUX

Views: 1,202,092

Keywords: russia ukraine war, russia vs ukraine, ukraine, russia, ukraine war, russia vs ukraine 2022, russian ukraine news, russia ukraine conflict explained, Vladimir Putin, Putin Zelensky, Zelensky, John J Mearsheimer, NATO, Ukraine war nato, NATO responsible, War on Ukraine, Mariupol death, Ukraine war death, mearscheimer

Id: XgiZXgYzI84

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/callmekizzle]

Oh let me guess, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc.

It’s almost like america isn’t the good guy here.

[u/mouse_Jupiter]

Personally, I oppose U.S. AND Russian imperialism. Just because the US has a Monroe Doctrine doesn’t make it right for the Russians to have one. They’re both in the wrong.

Imposing heavy economic sanctions against the aggressor, funneling arms to the defender and welcoming refugees is a model on how to oppose such imperialism. Perhaps others will do it to the US when necessary in the future.

[u/The1stCitizenOfTheIn]

gotta love the NATO shills in the chomsky subreddit

[u/Snoo-83964]

Oh God, imagine citing Mearsheimer without a hint of irony as a credible source…

[u/klowder42]

Dr Mearsheimer predicted that this war is likely to last much longer and that the US prefers to fight to the last Ukrainian. Chomsky has been saying the latter as well.

[u/HudsonRiver1931]

the US gains enormously from this, if they didn't plan it they should have.