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Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

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Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#281

Post by KptMarchewa »

mcguire wrote: post #90

I've seen a bit of twitter chatter from international relations people about this article. Most of them are fairly dismissive of Mearshiemer's position---I've seen the phrase "stuck in the 1815 world" of colonial powers used repeatedly. One substantive issue that I have seen is that he discounts nationalism; it seems like Ukrainians are rather attached to their independence. One that I haven't seen much about in the…

>seems like Ukrainians are rather attached to their independence.

It's not only independence. They want to live in county that one day might aspire to western standard of life and freedom, and not to live in county where wrong word puts you inside prison for 15 years.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#282

Post by KptMarchewa »

georgia_peach wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, taking Ukraine from Russia in this non-neutral manner Taking Ukraine from Russia? What have Russia the right to take Ukraine from (checks) Ukraine?

The same "right" the US would have had with Cuba if Khrushchev didn't remove the missiles, or the same "right" the US exercises when a small country with oil ponders denominating it in a different currency.

And US was also fucking wrong. Imperialism is evil.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#283

Post by warner_of_doom »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #267
warner_of_doom wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, unless Cuba was actually going to use those nuclear missiles and unless Turkey was actually going to use those nuclear missiles, the US and the USSR were both wrong in their actions?

Yes.

Oh, my. Please go explain that to the US public/media. They'll laugh you out of the room.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#284

Post by warner_of_doom »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #256
Grustaf wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're fighting because they are being attacked, and because Slavs are courageous and stubborn. But the West are not telling them to give up, to save civilian lives. Instead they encourage them to keep fighting, delaying the inevitable. I don't know by how many days that will prolong the war, but it's reckless.

There's nothing inevitable here. The Russian army is being show to be a joke right now. Ultimately there will have to be some sort of negotiated peace (Ukraine can't fight all the way to Moscow) but the more of the Russian Army they destroy and the longer they hold them off the better the terms they will get.

Stop buying the narrative that the media is concocting.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#285

Post by credit_guy »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #278
credit_guy wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Russia has thousands of nukes, and that's not a secret. Russia knows that nobody would dare attack them, ever. And the rest of the world knows that too. The whole thing about Russia feeling "threatened" is just total BS. Putin just knows that in this day and age you need to play the victim, and lots of people instinctively would take your side. It doesn't matter how absurd the claim is.

MAD is a defense against complete invasion, but not a defense against strangulation via power projection. Non nuclear military projection matters because not everything is a nuclear war. They are encircled by the US which has invaded and toppled more regimes than any other country in the world, and destroyed or destabilized several Russian allied countries in the last 2 decades alone. It still matters where bases are…

> strangulation via power projection.

Cool metaphor there, but exactly what do you have in mind? Let's say every single neighbor of Russia becomes a NATO member, how does that strangulation via power projection work?

Or in our concrete case, let's say Ukraine becomes a NATO member, who is going to threaten Russia, and how? Preferably in more concrete terms, rather than metaphors.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#286

Post by ilove196884 »

empressplay wrote: post #110
sharken wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting theory, but hardly comparable to what is going on in Ukraine. Canada is not compatible with Russia, so forming a military alliance is a crazy idea. Putin is the aggressor who has invaded an European country just because their actions did not suit him. There are no acceptable excuses for the invasion, it's a very dangerous game he is playing as Russia cannot live with the sanctions in the long run. At t…

It doesn't matter if it's a crazy idea or not. The US simply would not permit Canada to align with Russia and would use military force to do so, and certainly before Russia had the opportunity to station troops in Canada. Would the Americans' actions be 'wrong' from Canada's point of view? Of course. Would they be 'right' from America's point of view? Absolutely! That's the point here. Both sides are simultaneously b…

You seem to forget that the us and canada have similar ethnicity. The only difference is that the pop industry in Canada runs on a piss poor budget.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#287

Post by cottager2 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #201
credit_guy wrote: post #154

I read Mearsheimer's "Tragedy of Great Power Politics", and I think it's one of the most important books ever written. It completely changed the way I think about what's going on in the world. That being said, I think on the topic of Russia and Ukraine, Mearsheimer is not consistent with his own theory (defensive realism). I completely understand why Putin is doing what he's doing, his actions are very well explained…

The thing about this archaic, old-fashioned "power politics" is that it's self-defeating in the age of late-stage modernity. You want to talk about power? China has certainly gained plenty of real-world power since the days of Mao Zedong. Japan has power. South Korea has power. But the thing is that, invariably, they did not gain that power by playing zero-sum "power politics" games, but rather as a side-effect of br…

Most East Asian countries have a huge advantage in labor cost. If they don’t have one now, they often did in the past during the ascent. That’s basically the definition of zero-sum. Yes, worker productivity increases over time, so the size of the pie grows, but how those gains are distributed is zero-sum. It’s not clear to me that growing your power, e.g. receiving more of the pie, somehow leads to you increasing productivity more later.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#288

Post by mcguire »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #209
mcguire wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ...NATO/US troops in Ukraine... " Do you have a source for that? Don't forget, " On June 1, 1996, Ukraine became a non-nuclear nation, sending the last of the 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads it had inherited from the Soviet Union to Russia for dismantling. Ukraine had committed to this by signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in January 1994. " That was certainly a stupid idea.

It's a little more complicated than that. Ukraine did not have the ability to use any of those nuclear weapons because they never had the launch codes. They were basically stationed in Ukraine but were still under Moscow's control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permissive_Action_Link A rough analogy would be this, if the United States broke apart South Dakota would have hundreds of nuclear warheads but the South Dako…

In 25 years? Ukraine is a country with a population of 44,000,000 not that much smaller than the UK or France; South Dakota has a population of 900,000.

Would Russia have recovered them if Ukraine did not want to relinquish them? Maybe, but in the 1990s they were in very bad shape, and before 2004 (and between 2010 and 2014) Ukraine was under a pro-Russian government.

The point here is that, at this point, if any country is under the illusion that it does not need nuclear weapons to maintain its independent existence, they probably deserve to be absorbed by their neighbors.

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#289

Post by mcguire »

dragonwriter wrote: post #173
mcguire wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" ...NATO/US troops in Ukraine... " Do you have a source for that? Don't forget, " On June 1, 1996, Ukraine became a non-nuclear nation, sending the last of the 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads it had inherited from the Soviet Union to Russia for dismantling. Ukraine had committed to this by signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in January 1994. " That was certainly a stupid idea.

> Do you have a source for that? US and other Western troops (not NATO per se , though I think all were NATO members) were openly present in Ukraine training the Ukraine military up until shortly before the recent Russian escalation of their long-running invasion of Ukraine (they were pulled out to avoid getting caught up in direct combat with Russia in the event of an invasion.) EDIT: if you need a source, here's an…

Thank you!

Re: Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

#290

Post by ilove196884 »

331c8c71 wrote: post #127
Comevius wrote: post #104

Mearsheimer thinks that the United States would have benefited from allying themselves with Russia and the post-Soviet states (under Russian influence) against China. I think that it's still Russia's fault for using a stick and not having a carrot. The United States, China, the European Union or even Saudi Arabia are influential because of their economy, and not because of their military or democracy.

> I think that it's still Russia's fault for using a stick and not having a carrot. I agree. But saudi gets away with ironing Yemen just because it's an US ally not because it's influential by itself

Yes they are influential. Even leaving aside torture the Saudi people have higher standards of living than Yemen.
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