Summary: Prof. Mearsheimer on the origins and the history of the Ukrainian-Russian war; NATO’s expansion eastwards in 1999 (Poland, Hungary, the Czech republic) and in 2004 (Romania and the Baltic states); the push for EU membership of Ukraine; the colour revolution in Ukraine (the Orange revolution); the Bucharest summit of April 2008; war in Georgia; the Monroe doctrine; the Cuban missile crisis; Ukraine is being armed by the West; Ukraine becoming part of NATO is perceived as an existential threat by Russia; Ukraine’s economic plight; the Turks gave the Ukrainians drones; Minsk accords; deliberate provocations of Russia by the UK and the USA; Russophobia in the West.


Prof. Mearsheimer on the origins of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict (15th February 2022)


Visita, quaeso, Domine, scripta mea et omnes insidias inimici ab eis longe repelle.
Angeli tui sancti habitent in eis et me in pace atque in bona valetudine custodiant.
Domine, fac me instrumentum tuum ut ubi error est veritatem inseram.  Amen.



To go against the flow takes courage. John J. Mearsheimer, who is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has certainly proved that he is courageous enough to voice views in marked opposition to the generally accepted consensus manufactured by bribed politicians, PR firms, the media and other such ‘gate-keepers’. For example, Prof. Mearsheimer was courageous enough to draw attention to the influence a lobby from a particular country based in the Middle East (established not even 100 years ago) exerts over American foreign policy (do ctrl + f  plus the name of the country  at  https://www.mearsheimer.com/publications). So I was hoping that Prof. Mearsheimer would dare to mention one of the factors in the present conflict, which is Russia’s troubled relations with one of its religious communities, this going back to at least the tenth century (so longer than acknowledged by, say, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn). But, I presume, this would have violated Resolution 72 of the American Congress. So nothing on the obvious link Saakashvili (Georgia war) and Zelensky (Ukraine wars) [you will need to scroll down a little and look at several of the headlines] in his exposé… Even more surprising is the lack of any reference to the doctrine of Halford Mackinder : ‘the geopolitics of America has always been to divide the Eurasian peninsula, so the long-term objective is to pull the European peninsula away from the Eurasian landmass, that is to say, make a line from the Baltic Sea down to the Black Sea, stretching all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean, cut that European peninsula off from the continent of Eurasia, in a way a “divide and conquer policy” which goes back to Halford Mackinder, the father of geopolitics’, as was explained by Gearóid Ó Colmáin to Dr Mark McNaught on 13th December 2015 (31min30s into the interview), which Mr Ó Colmáin probably picked up from George Friedman, who had revealed this imperative of the Anglo-American revamped ‘Great Game’ a few months earlier. Finally, Prof. Mearsheimer was wrong about the invasion. Let us hope that he will not be wrong about the use of nuclear weapons. However, Prof. Mearsheimer is a hundred per cent correct about NATO’s and the West’s élites’ responsibility for the current mess: NATO’s continued expansion in former Soviet bloc countries, the push for EU membership for Ukraine, the recent colour revolution in Ukraine (which was orchestrated by the West) and the latter’s adding fuel on the fire through the supply of weapons to Ukraine and even instances of provocation on the part of the UK and the USA. 

Please note that there are some links to articles immediately after the transcript.


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Source: https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE

 

MY TRANSCRIPT (and my emphasis) 


Thank you very much, Tom. Uh it’s a great pleasure to be here. Uh I wish I was not here virtually but that I was physically at Cambridge. Uh I’d actually love to come to Cambridge sometime uh and talk to you and to meet people, go to lunch, go to dinner and so forth and so on. Uh I understand these virtual talks are a good second best but they are second best. Uh Tom asked me to talk for about 20 minutes on the whole subject of the Ukraine crisis uh which I of course have written about and talked about extensively since 2014. So I’m happy to do that and I’ll answer questions on Ukraine. And I’m willing to answer questions on uh almost any subject uh you folks would like to talk about. Uh let me do two things: first let me talk about the origins uh and the history of this crisis and uh then talk about why it’s on the front burner today and then let me say a few words in conclusion about where we’re headed. Uh the conventional wisdom in the West – this is certainly true in a place like Britain and the United States – is that Putin is responsible for this crisis. ‘It’s the Russians. Uh they’re good guys and bad guys. And of course, we are the good guys and the Russians are the bad guys’. This is simply wrong. Uh the United States mainly – but the United States and its allies – are responsible for this crisis, not Putin and Russia. Now why do I say that? It’s very important to understand that what the West has been trying to do since 2008 is turn Ukraine into a western bulwark on Russia’s border. And that policy had three dimensions to it. The first and most exp… most important is NATO expansion. The idea was that we were going to expand NATO eastward to include Ukraine. The second element of the strategy was EU expansion. So, in other words, it was not just NATO expansion that was going to go and include Ukraine, it was also EU expansion. And the third element of the strategy was the colour revolution – uh and in the case of Ukraine that was the Orange revolution. And the idea was to turn Ukraine into a liberal democracy like Britain, like the United States. And not only a liberal democracy but a liberal democracy that was allied with the United States. Because again, this is all part and parcel of a strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s border. Now as I said to you, the most important element of the strategy is NATO expansion – and that’s why the April 2008 Bucharest NATO summit is of immense importance. At the end of that April 2008 Bucharest summit, NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO. They said ‘This is going to happen, period’. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at that point ‘That is not going to happen’. They drew a line in the sand. As you all know, there were two big tranches of NATO expansion before that 2008 meeting: the first tranche of NATO expansion was in 1999 – that included Poland, Hungary and the Czech republic; then there was a second tranche in 2004 which included countries like Romania and the Baltic states and so forth and so on. The Russians swallowed those two NATO expansions; they intensely disliked both of them, but they swallowed them. When NATO said in 2008 that expansion would now include Georgia and Ukraine, the Russians drew a line in the sand. It’s very important to understand that: they said ‘This is not happening’. It is no accident that in August of 2008, a few months after April 2008 Bucharest summit, you had a war between Russia and Georgia – remember Georgia is the other country besides Ukraine that is going to be brought into NATO; the Russians said ‘That ain’t happening’, and you had a war in August 2008. In February, 22nd February to be exact, 22nd February 2014, the crisis broke out over Ukraine. And it was mainly precipitated by a coup in Ukraine that overthrew a pro-Russian leader and installed a pro-American leader – the United States was involved in that coup. The Russians went ballistic – this is hardly surprising – they went ballistic. And they did two things: first is they took Crimea from Ukraine. Why did they do that? You understand that there is a very important naval base called Sevastopol on Crimea. And there’s no way the Russians are going to let Sevastopol become a NATO naval base – this is not going to happen. That’s the principal reason that the Russians took Crimea. And the second thing that they did is that the Russians took advantage of a civil war that broke out in eastern Ukraine almost immediately after the 22nd February 2014 crisis. And what the Russians have done is they have fuelled that civil war, and they have made sure that their allies were mainly Russian speakers – and in many cases Russians in eastern Ukraine – are not defeated by the Ukrainian government. They in effect are wrecking Ukraine. The Russians are basically saying ‘We will wreck Ukraine before we allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO’. So the Russian response – and it is very important to understand this – in 2014, when the crisis first broke out into the open in response to what had happened in Bucharest in 2008, the Russian response was two-fold: number one they took Crimea – and you should all understand Crimea is gone; it is never going back to Ukraine – one. And number two: they have said implicitly that ‘We will destroy Ukraine, we will wreck it before we will let it become a member of NATO’. Now the question you want to ask yourself is ‘Why are the Russians doing this?’ This is Realpolitik 101. And the fact that people in the West – especially in places like Britain and the United States – don’t understand this boggles my mind, I just don’t understand it – the idea that you could take a military alliance run by the United States, the most powerful state in the world, and run it up to Russia’s borders and the Russians wouldn’t be bothered by it is simply unthinkable. We in the United States have the Monroe doctrine. The Monroe doctrine says that no distant great power is allowed to form a military alliance with a country in the western hemisphere and is certainly not allowed to move military forces into the western hemisphere. I remember the Cuban missile crisis very well. What happened there is the Soviets put nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba. The United States said ‘This is categorically unacceptable, military forces from afar are not allowed in the western hemisphere’. And we had the Cuban missile crisis. And the end result is those missiles were removed. When the Soviets were later talking about building a naval base at Cienfuegos, the United States told them in no uncertain terms ‘You are not building a naval base at Cienfuegos, just not going to happen’. The United States views the western hemisphere as its backyard and it prohibits distant great powers from coming into its backyard. Well, don’t you think the Russians are going to be deeply disturbed by the United States turning Ukraine into a bulwark right on its borders? Of course they are, and the Russians told us that immediately after the Bucharest summit: the Russians made it categorically clear, categorically clear, that Ukraine is not going to become part of NATO. But, of course, the Americans and their allies did not listen because we believe that we’re the good guys, we’re a benign hegemon here in the United States and we can do pretty much anything we want in the world. And for a while it looked like we could get away with that. As I said, the Russians accepted the first NATO expansion – the 1999 one. And they accepted the second NATO expansion. But after Bucharest, they said ‘This is not happening’. So you had this major crisis. It broke out in February 2014. Now the crisis tamped down quite a bit after 2014. But in the fall … in the fall of last year 2021, it began to ramp up. And of course early this year – and I’m talking about early 22 – it became a full-blown crisis. And the question that we want to ask ourselves is ‘What happened here?’ You know, ‘Why all of a sudden did this crisis go from the back burner to the front burner?’ And the answer is that the United States and its allies were effectively turning Ukraine into a de facto member of NATO. You’ll hear lots of rhetoric today that the Russians really had nothing to worry about because nobody is talking about making Ukraine a member of NATO today. And I think that’s true uh but if you look at what we were actually doing uh it’s a different story. First of all, going back to the Trump administration – and continuing into the Biden administration –, we are now arming Ukraine; we were not arming Ukraine during the Obama administration. In February 2014 when the crisis broke out and in the first few years after that crisis when the Obama administration was in power, we refused to arm the Ukrainians because we knew it would enrage the Russians; it would scare the Russians. You want to understand that the Russians view Ukraine becoming a part of NATO as an existential threat. That’s what’s going on here. The Russians are sending a very clear message to the West: they’re telling you ‘We take this threat seriously and we’re willing to use military force if necessary to eliminate this threat’. The Russians are not fooling around here. So what you had happening in 2021 – and of course it started before that, under the Trump administration – is we were arming the Ukrainians. And when you start talking about arming the Ukrainians, those are Ukrainian forces that can fight against Russia’s allies in eastern Ukraine. One thing that really spooked the Russians was that the Turks gave the Ukrainians drones – and drones have become a very effective weapon on the battlefield, as the Azerbaijanis proved against the Armenians last year. And the Azerbaijanis were using Turkish drones. So the Turks are giving drones. The Americans and the British are giving all sorts of other weapons to the Ukrainians. You know, of course, that we define these weapons as defensive weapons, but, of course, as sophisticated IR [international relations] theorists, you all know that there’s no such thing as a meaningful distinction between defensive weapons and offensive weapons. As we all know from the security dilemma, what looks defensive to us looks offensive to them. You give drones to the Ukrainians. Do you think the Russians are going to view those as defensive weapons? I don’t think so. You start training the Ukrainian forces the way the British and the Americans do, you don’t think the Russians are going to see that as a threat? I can guarantee you they are, right? So what’s happening here: we’re arming, we’re training the Ukrainians. And if you look at how we’re dealing with Ukraine diplomatically, we’re basically talking about Ukraine as if it were an ally or a partner – that’s the kind of rhetoric we use when we talk about Ukraine. So it looks like diplomatically and militarily the bonds between the West – especially the United States – and Ukraine are tightening. At the same time, we’re doing a number of provocative things outside of Ukraine that really bother the Russians enormously. The British foolishly run a destroyer through Russian territorial waters in the Black Sea this past summer, June 2021. The Americans take a bomber and they drive it right up against the Russian coastline in the Black Sea. This really bothers the Russians, unsurprisingly. So what you see happening here is the Russians have a very powerful sense that NATO is moving eastward, NATO is moving right up to the Russian border, mainly by turning Ukraine into a de facto member of the alliance, but also with provocative measures like this British destroyer and this American bomber. The Russians’ … Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said [it had] reached the boiling point. They had it, they had it: they’re not interested really in negotiating anymore; they’re interested in altering the status quo and the end result is you’ve had this massive military build-up, which is doing enormous damage to the Ukrainian economy, which was already a basket case before the crisis. So the Ukraine situation is getting worse and worse and the Russians have sent a very clear signal to the west that if they up the ante they – meaning the West – if the West ups the ante, the Russians will up the ante. And again Ukraine is not becoming a part of NATO. So that’s where we are today: we have this major crisis which goes back really to April 2008 – that’s … that’s the genesis, that decision to make Ukraine part of NATO. And then you had the crisis break out 22 February 2014 and, over time, it was ameliorated somewhat, pushed to the back burner, I think one could say. And then all of a sudden it broke out again. Now, is there any hope that we can settle this crisis? I’ll tell you what I think the best solution is , I think it’s an obvious solution, but I think it’s politically unacceptable at this point in time. The obvious solution is to turn Ukraine into a neutral state, more or less a buffer between Russia on one side and NATO on the other. This is effectively what you had up until February 2014. Ukraine got its independence when the Soviet Union broke apart in December 1991. And from December 1991 until, roughly, early 2014, there was no real problem with Ukraine. The United States and its allies were not fighting with the Russians over Ukraine. There was a verbal dispute going back to the April 2008 Bucharest summit, but there was no crisis because Ukraine from 1991 to 2008 – excuse me to 2013 – was – through 2013 – was effectively a neutral state, it was a buffer. It was NATO that changed the situation. You understand, we now have changed the rhetoric to make the Russians the bad guys. You hear all this talk that ‘Russia is bent on creating uh the second coming of the Soviet Union, uh Russia is bent on creating a greater Russia; alright, the Russians are the bad guys.’ this is a story that was invented after 22nd February 2014. Nobody was making this argument before 22nd February 2014. Nobody was arguing that we had to expand NATO to contain Russia before 22nd February 2012. What happened on 22nd February 2014 is this cockamamie strategy that we had invented to make Romania, uh to make Ukraine a part of NATO , blew up in our face. And when it blew up in our face because of our flawed policies, we were not going to admit that we had screwed up – no, we had to blame the Russians. So we said they were bent all along on dominating eastern Europe. Of course, you hear the same argument made today. ‘It’s the Russians who are the bad guys: Putin is really dangerous. We can’t negotiate with him this: is the equivalent of Munich’, which is another way of saying he’s the second coming of Adolf Hitler, and making a deal on Ukraine is like making the deal on Czechoslovakia in October 1938. This is all pure, unadulterated nonsense, right. Again, there was no threat from Russia between … before 22nd February 2014. Just wasn’t. We invented that story. But anyway what the ideal situation would be to create a neutral Ukraine, a Ukraine that looked a lot like the Ukraine that existed between 91 and 2014. But we can’t do that, and we can’t do that in large part because the Americans are unwilling to make any sorts of concessions on NATO expansion and, furthermore, to make neutrality work to make, to create a neutral Ukraine. Uh it’s very important that the Ukrainian government in Kiev reach some sort of modus vivendi with the Russian-speaking population in the Donbass – uh this is the famous Minsk accords, right. It’s imperative that the Kiev government implement the Minsk accords, so that the civil war – and it is effectively a civil war between the people in Donbass and the people in western Ukraine – that has to be settled before this problem can be solved. But the politics inside of Ukraine at this point in time make that impossible. And again, as I said, it’s impossible to envision President Biden at this point saying that he’s going to give up on NATO expansion. So the end result is this crisis is going to go on and on. That’s the sad truth in my humble opinion. So with that, I’ll stop talking, Tom, and turn it over to you.
[...]
55m15s-56m10s
The Russophobia in the West is – especially the United States – is just off the charts. It’s truly remarkable how much Russophobia there is in the United States – the hostility to Putin. It’s really mind-boggling. Um my good friend Steve Cohen – who’s now dead, who is a very prominent Sovietologist in his day, an expert on Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed, Steve was on the left politically – and he argued that it was much easier during the Cold War to make arguments that were sympathetic to the Soviet Union than it is to make arguments that are sympathetic to Russia in the contemporary political environment. It’s a really remarkable statement.
[…]


Addendum (mine, not Prof. Mearsheimer’s)
With respect to Prof. Mearsheimer’s claim that the West has been arming Ukraine’s army, well, here is an instance of active military involvement almost semi-official in form, it would seem. This according to an article I stumbled upon as I was trying to retrieve information on a memorial called ‘the Alley of Angels’ on a website focusing on the Russian-speaking victims of the UAF in the war-affected regions (now, republics) of Lugansk and Donetsk of Ukraine in connection with another post of mine. The article was published on 13th September 2016, not this year.
https://www.stalkerzone.org/11-canadian-mercenaries-go-home-bodybags-master-class-donbass


Articles on the same subject by John J. Mearsheimer
‘Don’t Arm Ukraine’, New York Times, 8 February 2015
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dont-Arm-Ukraine-The-New-York-Times.pdf

‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 93 No. 5 (September/October 2014), pp. 1-12
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf 

‘Getting Ukraine Wrong’, New York Times, 13 March 2014
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Getting-Ukraine-Wrong.pdf


Some public interventions of John J. Mearsheimer in relation to the same subjects
‘American Scholars Say The Real Threat To The U.S. Is Russophobia’, VICE News, HBO, 16 July 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJBQikfYyKs

 
Ctrl + f  Ukraine  at     https://www.mearsheimer.com/public-appearances



Lausanne, the above was published on the third day of the third month of the year two thousand and twenty-two.