Why Russia-Ukraine War May End In A Frozen Conflict & Why US Should Focus On China: John Mearsheimer

all right it's been over a year now since the Russia Ukraine War Began no one expected the war to last this long but now that it has and now there are emerging shifting Sands if you will of geopolitics we've seen the recent visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping to Moscow so is there a U.S and its allies on the one side and China and Russia on the other side a sort of block emerging if you will much like what we saw during the Cold War and if it indeed is then what do neutral countries like India do and the most important question the million dollar question how does this war likely end joining me now is the man who predicted that this war would begin in the first place that NATO was giving Putin no choice but to launch this attack in the first place as professor John mirchimer he's the head of Department of politics at the University of Chicago thank you very much for speaking with us here on the news 18 Network my pleasure to be here all right let me start off with this question uh it's been over a year now since this War Began there doesn't seem to be an end in sight and what's worse is that neither side neither Ukraine nor Russia seems to want to move towards any kind of Engagement or dialogue or eventually move to a ceasefire in a negotiated settlement in your view Professor Mishima how do you see this war likely ending because that's the million dollar question that stop of everyone's mind well I think when people talk about the War ending they think about some sort of final settlement some peace agreement that both sides agree to I think that's impossible in this case I think that the best that we can hope for is a frozen conflict it seems to me quite clear at this point in time that the Russians will win in the sense that they will end up conquering a large chunk of Ukrainian territory the ukrainians are not going to take all the territory back the Russians are going to end up with a large chunk of territory and Ukraine is going to end up as a dysfunctional rub State and the fact is that the West won't accept that and the ukrainians won't accept that and the Russians won't accept a retreat where you go back to the status quo Auntie so nobody is going to be content with any meaningful piece of agreement that one might think up and both sides are going to be interested in altering the status quo even more in their favor but at some point they'll just Tire of all this fighting and the end result is you'll get a frozen conflict not unlike the one that you have along the 38th parallel in Korea so tell me if this conflict were to freeze right now as you said Russia right now controls anywhere between 15 to 20 25 percent of Ukrainian territory territory it did not have before this War Began last year uh that of course is unacceptable either to Ukraine or to the United States and its uh allies so the question then being asked is zielinski and team have to accept any kind of settlement their only settlement is if Putin and his troops will draw back to a pre-24th February 2022 position as it existed which means none of the Ukrainian territory that they currently control is under Russian control and that of course is unacceptable to Putin again I'll come back to the question what gives them well there is no solution to this problem that's the territorial problem that you're describing which is only one of the two big problems here the other question is what about Ukrainian neutrality the Russians went to war to begin with because they did not want Ukraine in NATO they did not want Ukraine as a western bulwark on Russia's borders well the fact is that the ukrainians want to be part of the West and at this point in time they're a de facto member of NATO and in any future agreement they're going to want some sort of security guarantee from the west and this is unacceptable to the Russians so the point here is not only do you have a fundamental disagreement that you can't solve over territory which is what you described but you also have fundamental disagreement over the status of Ukraine vis-a-vis the West which can't be resolve solved either do you believe that the most likely or most plausible sort of solution to this conflict is Russia keeps what it has or more or less of what it has right now which is done by a straight line uh through the Sea of azov into Crimea and then access to the Black Sea and that acts as some kind of a buffer state if you will between Ukraine which like you said is de facto a NATO member right now and Russia do you think that's the likeliest or most plausible scenario in a path to peace well I think the key here is that this territory that the Russians have conquered uh is not going to be a buffer State it's being incorporated into Russia it's going to be part of Russia so you're still going to have a situation where Russia and Ukraine are opposite each other they share a border that they're fighting across and there's nothing I see that's going to change that there's not going to be any buffer State here and given that there's no territorial settlement you're not going to get a peace agreement so as I said before I think the best you could hope for is a frozen conflict and that Frozen Conflict by the way is likely to turn into a hot Conflict at points down the road we do not underestimate what a disastrous situation we are now facing in Ukraine this is amazing major conflict that has no solution and has Ripple effects all over the world what do you mean what what is your take on Vladimir Putin announcing that he intends to place uh tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus uh do you think that this is a threat or is it more than that should the West take him seriously do you believe that he's trying to use Belarus as some kind of a launching pad if you will for a potential nuclear attack if things were to go south on the battlefield for him no I think that he's doing two things here one is I think that the Russians are worried about Belarus and they're worried about a possible war between Poland and Belarus uh and they're putting nuclear weapons in there into Belarus to make it clear uh that they believe that a deterrent strategy is absolutely essential from Russia's point of view and then the second thing I believe they're doing is they're just sending a very subtle message to the West that nuclear weapons remain on the table and if the West pushes too hard the Russians might very well use nuclear weapons the Russians have a deep-seated interest in using the threat of nuclear war as a way of limiting what the West can do it's very clear that divide Administration and European leaders understand they can only push the Russians so far because the Russians have nuclear weapons and this move move just reminds Western leaders once again that Russia has nuclear weapon and it might seriously contemplate using them if necessary all right I want to talk a little bit about what Prime Minister Modi said at the SEO Summit to Mr Putin uh saying that this is not the era of War it's an era of of Peace the Indian economy has turned out to be a bright spot amidst all the global uncertainties that we're seeing uh considering the fact that India shares a decades-old relationship with Russia and has continued to buy oil in fact substantially much more oil today than before When The War Began do you see India uniquely placed with its sort of relationships enmeshed with the United States and its partners and Russia on the other hand to try and see if it can play the role of a peacemaker or has this conflict gone too far beyond anyone's reach or control or even potential mediation there's no way India can play any meaningful role as a peacemaker because there's no deal that the Indians could negotiate between the two sides has nothing to do with India the question is whether there's a diplomatic solution to this war and there's as I said before in no diplomatic solution so it doesn't matter whether India or any other country tries to broker a deal there's no deal to be had I think that your point that India sort of uh operates in a very unusual space is correct the Indians of course have very good relations with the United States in large part because of the China threat and at the same time the Indians have very good relations with the Russians uh and I don't think that's going to change I think from India's point of view this war has not been a disaster in certain ways the Indians have benefited I think the two winners one could argue in this war are India and China let me talk a little bit about India and China we have our own differences there was an uh there was a violent conflict that happened a couple of years ago there are still parts of that northern border which are unresolved uh how do you see this sort of playing itself out particularly in the aftermath of what we've seen in the last few days and weeks there is now a very firm Beijing Moscow axis and then you have India which so far is a neutral country but is in increasingly moving towards the U.S led sort of Alliance of countries if you will well I think that there's no question that over time the Indians will move closer to the United States simply because of the China threat the China threat's only going to grow with time and this is going to cause significant problems for the Indians not only in the Himalayas but also in the Indian Ocean uh and the Indians will be pushed closer to the United States but I don't think this is going to hinder India's relations with Russia India is in a very interesting situation uh where it can have good relations with the Russians and it won't poison uh U.S relations with India in large part because the Indians and the United States need each other to deal with China I want to talk a little bit about what your assessment is of XI jinping's recent visit uh to Moscow we saw you know the bond homie there clearly and particularly what he said as he was parting from Moscow where he said uh to Putin and I quote my friend we're seeing changes like the kind we haven't seen in a hundred years and you and I are driving those changes do you believe this war between Russia and Ukraine has accentuated these camps you have Russia and Ukraine Russia and China firmly in one Camp you have the U.S and its NATO allies in another Camp almost reminiscent of uh of what used to be the case during the Cold War yeah I think there's no question what this war has done is to drive the Chinese and the Russians closer together and it's also bogged the United States down in a war in Eastern Europe what the United States should be doing now is pivoting full force to East Asia to deal with the China threat number one and number two it should have good relations with the Russians and the United States and the Russians should if anything be Allied against the Chinese if you have three great powers in the system the United States China and Russia and the United States is one of those great powers in its most dangerous competitor is China it makes eminently good sense for the United States to be alive with Russia and not to push the Russians into the arms of the Chinese but with the American foolishly done is they've not only driven the Russians and the Chinese closer together but furthermore the Americans are now bogged down in this war so they can't pivot to Asia so I think China as I said before is a big winner as a result of the Ukraine war and the longer the war goes on from China's point of view the better it is for China do you believe that's why it's manifesting itself in the way we see what's happening between Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East we're also hearing reports about novelization of ties between Syria and the UAE and Syria and Saudi Arabia do you believe China is stepping into a void left behind by the United States as you said it's bogged down by what's happening between Russia and Ukraine perhaps even bocked down by what's happening in Taiwan that it's taking the foot of the pedal if you will in the Middle East I put it in slightly different terms I agree with the thrust of what you say but I think from an American point of view it's worse than that and that is I think that people around the world people in other countries tend to think these days that the United States is not a reliable partner it's not just that the United States is bogged down in this War uh in Ukraine it's also the fact that you have a sense that the United States doesn't know what it's doing that the United States makes a mess of everything it tries to deal with so I think countries like Saudi Arabia just don't trust the Judgment of the United States in addition to the fact that they think the United States is bogged down not only in Europe but in East Asia as well and therefore it doesn't care that much about the Middle East so you see when you look around the world that the United States is in trouble in all sorts of places did do you believe also what's happening internally in the U.S is giving sort of fodder if you will to countries like China Russia whether it's a banking crisis whether it is Donald Trump and is almost you know controversial statements almost every day that he's making we've also seen uh you know all the all the gun violence even what we saw in Nashville all of this is making countries like China and Russia uh turn around and point a finger at the U.S saying that you have no right to comment on our Affairs because looks look look at what's going on uh within the U.S I think all of what you describe contributes to the impression that many people around the world have that the United States has lost its bearings the the something is wrong in the United States uh it's not just the conduct of foreign policy it's the conduct of domestic policy and these two things go together and it seems to me that if the United States is going to deal with the China threat and continue to try to manage the world the way it has done in the past it's going to have to shift the way it's doing business both internally and externally because again there's something wrong here okay one final word and you had developed this theory of offensive realism in the context of great Powers wanting to ensure that their neighborhood is safe of any kind of external threat uh the Chinese have often cited that the reason the U.S grew almost in an unprecedented way after the second world war was because there was no power willing to challenge the U.S either on the Atlantic side or on the Pacific side so the Chinese are seeking to do the same thing in the Eastern South China seas and Russia is seeking to do the same thing in its near neighborhood but then you've faced a lot of flack for that how do you defend that theory well I think that there's no question that that's what the Chinese are doing not the Russians the Russians are not powerful enough to dominate Europe they're not even powerful enough to conquer Ukraine all of Ukraine Russia is a weak great power China is a different matter and what China is trying to do is it's trying to dominate Asia the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere and I don't blame the Chinese one bit if I was the National Security advisor in China I would be telling the Chinese leaders that what they should do is try to dominate Asia they should try to make sure that China is by far the most powerful country in Asia and that China should go to Great Lengths to push the Americans out of East Asia China should have its own Monroe Doctrine I think this makes imminently Good Sense from China's point of view from India's point of view and from America's point of view this is not good news you don't want to see you meaning India don't want to see China become a regional hegemon any more than the Americans do but again Nina has a different set of incentives all right professor John mayersheimer as always a pleasure speaking with you sir thank you very much for your time and your insights

Channel: CRUX

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Id: FIfJNK2rLlQ

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023