International Relations scholar and offensive realist John Mearsheimer has blamed the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for the current crisis in Ukraine. Mearsheimer, who has been critical of US foreign policy since the Cold War, said in an interview with The New Yorker that NATO’s eastward expansion and its establishment of “close ties” with Ukraine have increased the chances of war between the US and Russia.
He said that the roots of the current crisis has its origins in 2008, when NATO agreed to admit Georgia and Ukraine. “The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand,” Mearsheimer notes. During the same year, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Mearsheimer also notes that the European Union’s (EU) efforts to integrate Ukraine into its fold have unsettled Russia, which views the prospect of a “pro-American liberal democracy” at its doorstep as a grave security threat. According to him, the three core concerns of Russia are: EU expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
Keeping this in mind, Mearsheimer posits that Ukraine joining the EU, NATO, and becoming a democracy would be seen by Moscow as “categorically unacceptable.” A better way of approaching this situation, he says, is if Ukraine just became a democracy and had friendly ties with the US, rather than joining the EU and NATO. Ukraine “could probably get away with that,” Mearsheimer argues.
When asked about whether telling Ukrainians not to join the EU and NATO when they clearly want to is a form of imperialism, Mearsheimer said that rather than imperialism, it is “great power politics.”
John Mearsheimer in 2015:pic.twitter.com/J1IxwvYLDg
— Bradley Devlin (@bradleydevlin) February 26, 2022
“When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate,” he emphasised. Regarding Ukraine, Russia has taken a leaf out of the US playbook, Mearsheimer said, referring to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which that the US will not tolerate a distant power bringing military forces into the region.
Mearsheimer notes that rather than focusing on terms like imperialism, it is important to look at the underlying reality—all great powers try to undermine policies they deem as a threat, regardless of whether those policies are democratic or not. He notes that the US “overthrew democratically elected leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War” because it was unhappy with their policies. “This is the way great powers behave,” he asserted.
Arguing that the world does not work entirely on moral terms, Mearsheimer said that US efforts to liberalise and democratise countries since it achieved unipolarity following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 have been “disastrous.” “We [US] went around the world trying to create liberal democracies. Our main focus, of course, was in the greater Middle East, and you know how well that worked out. Not very well.”
Taking this into consideration, Mearsheimer argues that the US and NATO are responsible for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “My argument is that the West, especially the United States, is principally responsible for this disaster,” he said.
Regarding the current crisis in Ukraine, Mearsheimer opines rather than trying to re-create the Soviet Union, which he says is an argument invented by the West to justify Moscow’s actions, President Vladimir Putin is trying to reduce the West’s sphere of influence. He also notes that arguments that Putin will turn to the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—next are false. “There are people who believe that when he is finished conquering Ukraine, he will turn to the Baltic states. He’s not going to turn to the Baltic states.”
Mearsheimer makes two arguments as to why Russia will not invade the Baltic states. Firstly, he says that they are part of NATO and, according to Article 5 of NATO’s convention, the alliance will respond to an attack on any member. Secondly, he notes that Putin is simply not interested in conquering the Baltic states and that there is no evidence to show that he plans on doing so.
He argues that rather than focusing on Europe, the US should shift its focus to China, which is set to emerge as Washington’s main foe. “We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to create friendly relations with the Russians.”
In a scenario where China is challenging the US global order, Mearsheimer notes that the US should focus on bringing Russia closer to its orbit. “Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.”