“I’ve been attacked… not with facts and logic, but personally”: John Mearsheimer on the War in Ukraine

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Professor John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and one of the most well-known international relations scholars today. In the first part of this series, editors Jason Chau and Andrew Wang asked Professor Mearsheimer about the future of the US-China Rivalry. In this second part, we turn to the West’s relationship with Russia, and scrutinise some of Prof Mearsheimer’s claims about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Let’s move towards the other major adversary of the West today. You’ve received a lot of criticism over your argument that the West’s expansionary and exclusionary approach towards Russia was largely responsible for the invasion of Ukraine. Given this argument, what is Putin’s endgame in Ukraine? Is he aiming to conquer enough territory in Ukraine for leverage, or is he still determined to cripple or replace the government in Kyiv to form a barrier against the West?

I believe Putin was not interested in conquering all of Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia. At this point in time, he is committed to making sure that Russia gains control of all the territory in the four oblasts that Russia has annexed. Furthermore, I believe Putin is committed to making sure that Ukraine is either a truly neutral state with no military ties to the West, or a dysfunctional rump state that is effectively useless to the West.

The Russians are clearly out to wreck Ukraine as a functioning society, and one has to ask whether or not the Russians will do enough damage to Ukraine such that the Ukrainians and their allies say ‘enough is enough’ and try to work out a deal with Putin. I don’t see that result in the foreseeable future, and it’s for that reason that I don’t see this war ending anytime soon.

And do you think it is less likely for Ukraine to be admitted into NATO now, after nine months of fighting?

I think that Ukraine was well on its way to being a NATO member when the war broke out on February 24th this year. I think that is the principal – though not the only – reason why the war occurred. The Russians were deeply concerned that Ukraine had reached the point where it was a de facto member of NATO, and the Russians wanted to put an end to that. Since the war has started, NATO and Ukraine have moved closer together, but how this plays itself out over time remains to be seen. It’s not clear that this tight bond between NATO and Ukraine can be maintained over the long term. On the other hand, while it may be the case that the bond is maintained, and the Russian invasion just motivates the West to move to formally bring Ukraine into NATO, I think this is unlikely. More and more people are coming to realise that putting Ukraine in NATO means that this conflict will never go away. If you want it to go away, the best way to do that is to figure out some mechanism for turning Ukraine into a neutral state, but that is not easy to do. 

Do you still think that the US and the West are principally responsible for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the backlash you’ve received for your argument?

My point of view is that the facts support my argument. As I often say, there is no evidence that Putin was determined to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into the greater Russia. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he was interested in conquering any other country as well, so the idea that Putin is imperialist is simply wrong. What the facts show is that Putin and his lieutenants were motivated mainly by the fact that the West was deeply committed to making Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders. The Russians made it abundantly clear that this was an existential threat and they were not going to let it happen. And that is the principal cause of the conflict.

Most Americans want to believe that the United States is a noble country, and that almost everything we do in international politics is for the good of the international community. So when a war breaks out over Ukraine, we are almost axiomatically going to move to the argument that the Russians are responsible: they’re the bad guys, and we’re the good guys. My point is that if you look at the facts of this conflict, it becomes apparent that it’s not the Russians who were the principal drivers behind this conflict. This is not to deny for one second that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, and this is not to deny that he is responsible for the conduct of the war. But when we are asking for the deep causes [that] explain this war, my answer is the West’s policy of bringing Ukraine into NATO and the EU and fostering a colour revolution in Ukraine and turning it into a pro-West liberal democracy. This was completely unacceptable for Russia. And that Americans don’t understand this is mind-boggling, because we have the Monroe doctrine, which says that we don’t want a great power in our hemisphere. 

What Putin is saying is that they don’t want a great power, in this case the United States and its allies, coming into their neighbourhood, on their border. It is no different from the Monroe doctrine. As I like to say, in fifteen years, if China were to put their forces in Toronto and Mexico city, and China was to form a military alliance with Canada and Mexico, the Americans would go ballistic, as happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This basic logic that informs the Monroe doctrine, one of the central tenets of American foreign policy, is no different from how the Russians think about Ukraine.

Do you feel that your ideas were mischaracterized? 

People in the West, almost down to every single individual, do not believe in [the actual causes of the war], because that [indicates] we in the West are responsible for this war. So they have invented this argument that Putin was this imperialist bent on recreating the former Russia or Soviet Union. And there’s no evidence to support that, so how do you deal with someone like me? You smear me.

As my mother taught me when I was a little boy, if you can’t beat them with facts and logic, you get down in the gutter, and this is by and large what’s happened to me. I’ve been attacked time and time again, not with facts and logic, but personally.

Do you disagree with this idea, then, that the US is this city on a hill, a beacon of democracy?

The United States is a liberal democracy, and I believe that’s a wonderful thing. I am deeply thankful that I was born in a liberal democracy, and I hope the US remains a vibrant liberal democracy forever. What I don’t like is the idea that the US should go around the rest of the world trying to turn other countries into liberal democracies, sometimes at the end of a rifle barrel. I believe in national self-determination. If other countries don’t want to be liberal democracies, that’s their business. And I don’t believe the United States should interfere in foreign politics to try to change their political systems. 

I believe we should be a shining beacon on a hill so others can look at us and, if they want, emulate us. That’s as far as I’m willing to go. Most of the American foreign policy establishment look at this matter very differently. They believe that if every other country looks like the US, it would be a very peaceful and prosperous world – we are the good guys, and if the whole planet is filled with countries like us, there will be nothing but good guys. I don’t think that’s true. I think, rather, you end up in endless wars that don’t produce liberal democracy in the end.

It’s interesting that this opposition to American interventionism is shared by both those on the progressive left and the far right.  

This is what Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were both saying in 2016. In fact, Barack Obama was also talking about reducing America’s military endeavours around the world in 2008. They were both talking about pulling back this ambitious foreign policy of liberal hegemony which focused on social engineering. Both of them got elected, and both had great difficulty countering the foreign policy establishment’s penchant for social engineering.

So do you think the consensus in Washington is still on building this liberal hegemony through foreign interventions?

Not at all, precisely because of the rise of Russia and the rise of China. My argument is that you can only seriously pursue liberal hegemony in a unipolar world. In effect, great power politics was taken off the table in the unipolar moment, but now the United States is competing with Russia and China. When great power politics is back on the table, you’re not free to pursue liberal hegemony.

Do you think another power, such as India or the EU, might join the arena of great power politics?

The EU is not a country, and there’s no chance that it’s going to turn into the United States of Europe. It’s not going to morph into a great power. India certainly has a large enough population to become an especially powerful state in the system, but its ability to generate wealth is limited.