John Mearsheimer responds to criticism of his Ukraine theory

how do you see the debate people are having regarding your theory that the west has been cornering russia which led to the latter's invasion or war against ukraine well i think that uh in the west especially in europe and the united states the mainstream media rejects my argument almost completely and instead of blaming nato and the west for precipitating this crisis they prefer for obvious reasons to blame vladimir putin i would note to you by the way if you look at the western hemisphere the united states has a monroe doctrine the united states does not believe that countries in the western hemisphere have a right to have their own foreign policy during the cuban missile crisis when i was young we did not believe that cuba had the right to invent invite the soviets to put missiles in cuba the same basic principle that the united states applies in the western hemisphere is the one that the russians are applying vis-a-vis ukraine the russians view ukraine becoming a part of nato as an existential threat this is why going back to april 2008 putin drew a line in the sand he said this is not going to happen this is a threat to our survival and everything that has happened since then fits that basic paradigm now here's the thing you keep on saying existential threat but now the question is who would be able to come into the brain of president putin to understand exactly what's the definition of existential threat he thinks that the idea of nato on russia's doorstep in ukraine presents a military and political threat to sit that is simply unacceptable so i think in this case there's not much question what he means when he says it's an existential threat now i will point out to you that there are a good number of people in the west who say that it's not an existential threat that nato's presence in ukraine does not threaten russia's survival my response to them is i don't care what they think the only thing that matters is what vladimir putin thinks and if putin and his lieutenants think it's an existential threat we ought to be very careful in dealing with him because he has thousands of nuclear weapons one of the reasons for your argument you cited earlier is that russia is not looking at taking over kiev and yet people have been looking at the military actions that russia took over there in that city and beyond so how do you see the reality this is your theory many questions well i think if you actually look at the russian military operation it fits very neatly with my theory because the conventional wisdom the argument that the u.s government and the u.s media makes is that putin was interested in conquering all of ukraine and making it part of russia it is clear as you say that he tried to capture kiev and he failed but even if he had succeeded if you couple capturing kiev with the other gains that the russians made on the ground it does not even come close to conquering all of ukraine tell me more about how do you think this situation could come to an end what is the best scenario and the worst scenario uh i can only say that i don't see how this comes to an end and and this is the reason russia cannot afford to lose the united states on the other hand has decided that it is going to number one defeat russia inside of ukraine and furthermore we're going to strangle russia's economy so here we have a situation where russia has to win and the united states has to win you know both sides can't win so what's the solution i don't know so peace is not inside at all peace is not in sight law and i i would note to you that there are a number of people in the united states across the political spectrum who believe that this war is going to go on for years now i hope that's not true i hope there's something that's going to happen that's going to change all this that we cannot foresee but absent that i cannot tell you a happy story about how this ends you

Channel: CGTN

Views: 374,837

Keywords: CGTN, News, US, Ukraine, Russia, expert, war, Military, American, Russian, Diplomacy, Mearsheimer, Putin, NATO

Id: 74iAMskV68Y

Length: 5min 14sec (314 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/sickof50]

Fact: Russia did not "fail to capture Kiev," he withdrew troops as a good faith offering during the peace talks.