Any chance you could post the entire article as a PDF? Or is that couple of paragraphs the sum total? Buggered if I'm going to have their cookies following me around.
They almost had me convinced during the Cold War that the reason they hated Russia was Communism. Clearly it something deeper, or more superficial, like money and power and using fear to distract people from their real interest in peace. 1984. Endless enemies.
Establishment media just can't swallow the idea that Putin is a dictator intent on conquering the world. They are in love with this idea in the same way they are in love with the idea of Trump as a racist fascist destroyer of worlds. It's my opinion that the key connection is their focus on a single individual. Mearsheimer sees countries as entities in their own right, governed by the logic of nationhood, etc., but such abstractions are not psychologically palatable to most people, for whom the succor of HATING So-and-so is much more gratifying. Hence, it's Putin wants this, Putin wants that, Putin must be punished, let's go see Putin hung in the town square, etc.
Waddaya mean when you write, "Establishment media just can't swallow the idea that Putin is a dictator intent on conquering the world." That's exactly what the MSM has been telling us since 2014. Nothing personal, Michael, but you make no sense.
This is spot on and why I want to mildly criticise JM for yielding to the MSMs framing of the discussion vs pointing out as he has elsewhere that it’s not in Russias interest to hold vast swathes of hostile Ukranian territory.
Agreed. He could have adopted a somewhat more assertive frame, e.g., "Anyone who thinks Putin wanted to swallow the porkupine of Western Ukraine is delusional," and pushed back on this interviewer's attack a bit harder. But maybe the way he sees it is that he doesn't get the opportunity to put his voice into the liberal media very often, and won't be invited back unless he plays nice and sticks to the legalistic, high logic mode of, "such comments do not constitute proof of intent X."
Behind a paywall. Chotiner is a tough interviewer but he gives the game away in the first paragraphs with his ‘full-scale invasion’ talking point (90,000 troops out of an army of 1.5 million and good faith withdrawal in March 2022 upon tentative agreement on Istanbul Communique? No shock n awe in Kiev and other major cities in the west, etc. or attempt to take out Ukraine leadership when compared to US occupation of Iraq is full-scale? Really?) And the guilt-by-association with the boogeyman Orban. Still, I’d like to read this. Can you pdf?
Quite surprising - or maybe not - that Chotiner did not mention the violence against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine for years before the Russian Federation went in, the Minsk agreements of 2014-2015, the US-supported coup, Victoria Nuland discussing who Ukraine's leader should be, and the more recent actions by Zelensky's government against Russian language, literature, culture, and the Russian Orthodox Church. One might wish Professor Mearsheimer had turned the interview table and asked him.
Isaac Chortiner is apparently one of those immature hunters for cheap "gotchas" and combines this with the hairsplitting that usually goes along with this. It was a heavy dark cloud above this essentially cheerless interview.
For one, I don't think that potential Nato membership for Ukraine was still on for a number of reasons- and that it was not the real reason for war. Secondly, Ukraine had been cheaply armed up and built up to numeric strength. In the two years before the war there were a number of maneuvers with Nato member participation on Ukrainian soil and in the Black Sea for the sake of training Nato standards and interoperability. All in the time whilst Kiev ignored Minsk!
By 2021 Russia decided to seek negotiation with the USA about security issues in Europe. The US flatly denied. Biden posed with sentences such as "when I looked Putin in the eye, I saw the eyes of a murderer", thus officially rejecting diplomacy as a means of interaction with Russia.
Then we reach the finale: Ukraine doubled the number of troops beleaguering Donbass and substantially increased the rate with which it fired at Donbass. Here are figures from the Daily Reports of the OSCE:
Feb 15: 153 ceasefire violations, 76 explosions
Feb 16: 509 ceasefire violations, 316 explosions
Feb 17: 870 ceasefire violations, 654 explosions
Feb 18: 1,566 ceasefire violations, 1,413 explosions
Feb 19-20: 3,231 ceasefire violations, 2,026 explosions
Feb 21: 1,927 ceasefire violations, 1,481 explosions
Feb 21: Russia recognizes independence of Donetsk and Luhansk
Feb 22: 1,710 ceasefire violations, 1,420 explosions
Feb 24: Russia launches ‘Special Military Operation’
Simultaneously Biden heated up the rhetoric and announced that Russia would attack on the 20th of February.
Russia intervened with under 200,000 troops against numerically overall superior Ukrainian troops, something one would not do if one had been hellbent for a decade or two two to haul Ukraine back into the Soviet Reich. This sufficed nevertheless to get negotiations going where Ukraine essentially agreed to finally implement Minsk. No territorial gains here for Russia.
And there is another major argument, helpful against those, who all the time utter something with Munich 1938 and appeasement: Germany had a most substantial arms build up in the years before and a military budget rising commensurate with that. Russia did not have any noticeable movements in its military spending in the years leading to 2022.
We may conclude, that the war was provoked by the US, of which Ukraine essentially was a puppet. The goals have been expressed, such as triggering whatsoever crises and possibly even an uprising in Russia.
Chotiner is such a snotty, hostile, disrespectful SOB (not to mention a warmongering jerk). He should be hosswhipped! I'm amazed at how Dr. M can put up with interviewers of his ilk - like those couple of unctuous and obsequious Englishmen, both named Freddy.
I allow I may be a bear of small brain. Bear with me 🙂 I have been following Dr. M’s interviews for over a year now, and concur with his thoughts, but there is something that nags at me. It is this: I understand the Monroe Doctrine thinking and the direct threat of the doubling of NATO countries encroaching on Russian boundaries, especially with an addition of Ukraine to NATO. This is a powerful argument, given that the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact, expecting NATO would do same. Rather, NATO more than doubled since 1992 - and continues today. It seems to be that existential threat Putin fears.
But, given modern warfare and the deadly ability of long and medium-range missiles, does it really matter if enemy countries border each other? As well, there is the use of drone warfare. And missiles from ships - the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. Couldn’t this mean that there is an existential threat from every European NATO country? I am hoping war strategists can speak to this. I
"I did an interview with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker on 7 March 2025 about the war in Ukraine. It was my third interview with him on that conflict."
Have his views changed over the course of the three interviews? Have Mearsheimer's?
If not, then what is the purpose? To influence the views of the folks that read/subscribe to The New Yorker? Hardly. To engage in some kind of "pas de deux" to send a message - subtle or not so subtle - to different factions of US elites? Perhaps. // In any event, it was pretty boring and neither said, nor revealed, anything new. // Tant pis d'abord!
Theoretically Chotiner is a journalist so his personal views shouldn’t matter at all. It is of interest to ask if JMs views have changed as facts on the ground change and new evidence comes to light.
Chotiner's nasty attitude was the same in the previous two interviews. He's a dick, no doubt about that, but Dr. M gets very little coverage in the MSM so I guess he feels this sort of hostile interview is better than nothing.
Russian here. John looks like a smart person overall but makes terrible misjudgments sometimes.. Putin's obsession with Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. He is completely fine with Finland or Sweden being in NATO, which by the way is far bigger threat to both capitals. But just as 90% of Russians, mentally he still lives in a post-1945 world where Russia (USSR) called the shots anywhere between Adriatic and the Pacific, and nothing between Berlin and Smolensk is "a real country" to them. Ukraine joining NATO threatened one thing only: his capacity to turn it into a vassal state, in the same way Belarus is now. That was his game plan all along, ever since 2014, and nothing has changed much. If Yanukovich would have suppressed Maidan, maybe Crimea would still be Ukraine and Okean Elzy would perform on Slaviansky bazaar and Zelensky would have a Friday night comedy show on Perviy kanal. Ukraine society (or, far right Nazis, as some would say) decided otherwise. And Putin took it personally. There will be no peace while he is alive. After that... It remains to be seen.
The location of Ukraine is more critical to Russia than the borders in the far north. One can infiltrate better and has good roads to Moscow and other centres. Also, Ukraine can have 800k soldiers under arms, Finland (or Lithuania, etc.) can not. If they build up to that size you know that bell has tolled.
I am full aware that no one in Finland or Sweden would ever contemplate attacking Russia, but neither were anyone in Ukraine until 2022. If you were like Putin and only treated neighbor nations as American puppets than clearly Finland and Sweden are way bigger threats; unlike Ukraine before 2014 they actually had quite functional military, they are far stronger economically, and strategically located far better to strike Russia where it hurts: on the Baltic and in St Petersburg. Not sure what else evidence could have been provided here. Ukraine could be perceived as a threat only in order to create a pretext for invasion, which was forgotten in two weeks, so absurd was this claim even to most zealous warmongers.
Oscar's right, Marinho. If we'd been able to get Ukraine into NATO, we would have stationed large contingents of our army, navy and air force there (along its 1200 mile border with Russia) and that would have given us much more leverage when we threatened the Russians with a military attack - which we would have done. Why? Because our game (the ultimate goal of our foreign policy) is Global Domination (the Russians refer to it as Global Military Domination) which would have inevitably led to threats, from us, to attack with the implication being that resistance is hopeless. Nukes to the west, south and north (submarines). Just a few minutes from blast-off to touchdown in Russia. I'd be very surprised if we don't have nukes in Romania and Poland (and maybe even the Baltics, although that might be too risky/stupid even for us).
I stopped subscribing to the New Yorker several years before because of ‘journalism’ that often seemed to veer into story-telling.
Any chance you could post the entire article as a PDF? Or is that couple of paragraphs the sum total? Buggered if I'm going to have their cookies following me around.
https://archive.ph/TpyJy
I suppose, also your browser has something like a "private mode"? Otherwise I suggest you check with Google on how to get one of those.
They almost had me convinced during the Cold War that the reason they hated Russia was Communism. Clearly it something deeper, or more superficial, like money and power and using fear to distract people from their real interest in peace. 1984. Endless enemies.
Establishment media just can't swallow the idea that Putin is a dictator intent on conquering the world. They are in love with this idea in the same way they are in love with the idea of Trump as a racist fascist destroyer of worlds. It's my opinion that the key connection is their focus on a single individual. Mearsheimer sees countries as entities in their own right, governed by the logic of nationhood, etc., but such abstractions are not psychologically palatable to most people, for whom the succor of HATING So-and-so is much more gratifying. Hence, it's Putin wants this, Putin wants that, Putin must be punished, let's go see Putin hung in the town square, etc.
Waddaya mean when you write, "Establishment media just can't swallow the idea that Putin is a dictator intent on conquering the world." That's exactly what the MSM has been telling us since 2014. Nothing personal, Michael, but you make no sense.
This is spot on and why I want to mildly criticise JM for yielding to the MSMs framing of the discussion vs pointing out as he has elsewhere that it’s not in Russias interest to hold vast swathes of hostile Ukranian territory.
Agreed. He could have adopted a somewhat more assertive frame, e.g., "Anyone who thinks Putin wanted to swallow the porkupine of Western Ukraine is delusional," and pushed back on this interviewer's attack a bit harder. But maybe the way he sees it is that he doesn't get the opportunity to put his voice into the liberal media very often, and won't be invited back unless he plays nice and sticks to the legalistic, high logic mode of, "such comments do not constitute proof of intent X."
an approach which did not go down well with Chotiner
Behind a paywall. Chotiner is a tough interviewer but he gives the game away in the first paragraphs with his ‘full-scale invasion’ talking point (90,000 troops out of an army of 1.5 million and good faith withdrawal in March 2022 upon tentative agreement on Istanbul Communique? No shock n awe in Kiev and other major cities in the west, etc. or attempt to take out Ukraine leadership when compared to US occupation of Iraq is full-scale? Really?) And the guilt-by-association with the boogeyman Orban. Still, I’d like to read this. Can you pdf?
For my friends: https://archive.md/PTlm5
Quite surprising - or maybe not - that Chotiner did not mention the violence against ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine for years before the Russian Federation went in, the Minsk agreements of 2014-2015, the US-supported coup, Victoria Nuland discussing who Ukraine's leader should be, and the more recent actions by Zelensky's government against Russian language, literature, culture, and the Russian Orthodox Church. One might wish Professor Mearsheimer had turned the interview table and asked him.
Isaac Chortiner is apparently one of those immature hunters for cheap "gotchas" and combines this with the hairsplitting that usually goes along with this. It was a heavy dark cloud above this essentially cheerless interview.
For one, I don't think that potential Nato membership for Ukraine was still on for a number of reasons- and that it was not the real reason for war. Secondly, Ukraine had been cheaply armed up and built up to numeric strength. In the two years before the war there were a number of maneuvers with Nato member participation on Ukrainian soil and in the Black Sea for the sake of training Nato standards and interoperability. All in the time whilst Kiev ignored Minsk!
By 2021 Russia decided to seek negotiation with the USA about security issues in Europe. The US flatly denied. Biden posed with sentences such as "when I looked Putin in the eye, I saw the eyes of a murderer", thus officially rejecting diplomacy as a means of interaction with Russia.
Then we reach the finale: Ukraine doubled the number of troops beleaguering Donbass and substantially increased the rate with which it fired at Donbass. Here are figures from the Daily Reports of the OSCE:
Feb 15: 153 ceasefire violations, 76 explosions
Feb 16: 509 ceasefire violations, 316 explosions
Feb 17: 870 ceasefire violations, 654 explosions
Feb 18: 1,566 ceasefire violations, 1,413 explosions
Feb 19-20: 3,231 ceasefire violations, 2,026 explosions
Feb 21: 1,927 ceasefire violations, 1,481 explosions
Feb 21: Russia recognizes independence of Donetsk and Luhansk
Feb 22: 1,710 ceasefire violations, 1,420 explosions
Feb 24: Russia launches ‘Special Military Operation’
Simultaneously Biden heated up the rhetoric and announced that Russia would attack on the 20th of February.
Russia intervened with under 200,000 troops against numerically overall superior Ukrainian troops, something one would not do if one had been hellbent for a decade or two two to haul Ukraine back into the Soviet Reich. This sufficed nevertheless to get negotiations going where Ukraine essentially agreed to finally implement Minsk. No territorial gains here for Russia.
And there is another major argument, helpful against those, who all the time utter something with Munich 1938 and appeasement: Germany had a most substantial arms build up in the years before and a military budget rising commensurate with that. Russia did not have any noticeable movements in its military spending in the years leading to 2022.
We may conclude, that the war was provoked by the US, of which Ukraine essentially was a puppet. The goals have been expressed, such as triggering whatsoever crises and possibly even an uprising in Russia.
Chotiner is such a snotty, hostile, disrespectful SOB (not to mention a warmongering jerk). He should be hosswhipped! I'm amazed at how Dr. M can put up with interviewers of his ilk - like those couple of unctuous and obsequious Englishmen, both named Freddy.
I could not get past the "full scale invasion" nonsense.
Sorry.
Ah the New Yorker. I bet their subscribers loved this.
I'm a subscriber and I'm on record as saying that Chotiner should be hoss-whipped
Dang this was a bad tempered interview. Its also full of typos, so much for the New Yorkers transcription skills.
Please don’t send links to paywalled material
I allow I may be a bear of small brain. Bear with me 🙂 I have been following Dr. M’s interviews for over a year now, and concur with his thoughts, but there is something that nags at me. It is this: I understand the Monroe Doctrine thinking and the direct threat of the doubling of NATO countries encroaching on Russian boundaries, especially with an addition of Ukraine to NATO. This is a powerful argument, given that the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact, expecting NATO would do same. Rather, NATO more than doubled since 1992 - and continues today. It seems to be that existential threat Putin fears.
But, given modern warfare and the deadly ability of long and medium-range missiles, does it really matter if enemy countries border each other? As well, there is the use of drone warfare. And missiles from ships - the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. Couldn’t this mean that there is an existential threat from every European NATO country? I am hoping war strategists can speak to this. I
"I did an interview with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker on 7 March 2025 about the war in Ukraine. It was my third interview with him on that conflict."
Have his views changed over the course of the three interviews? Have Mearsheimer's?
If not, then what is the purpose? To influence the views of the folks that read/subscribe to The New Yorker? Hardly. To engage in some kind of "pas de deux" to send a message - subtle or not so subtle - to different factions of US elites? Perhaps. // In any event, it was pretty boring and neither said, nor revealed, anything new. // Tant pis d'abord!
Theoretically Chotiner is a journalist so his personal views shouldn’t matter at all. It is of interest to ask if JMs views have changed as facts on the ground change and new evidence comes to light.
Chotiner's nasty attitude was the same in the previous two interviews. He's a dick, no doubt about that, but Dr. M gets very little coverage in the MSM so I guess he feels this sort of hostile interview is better than nothing.
Russian here. John looks like a smart person overall but makes terrible misjudgments sometimes.. Putin's obsession with Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. He is completely fine with Finland or Sweden being in NATO, which by the way is far bigger threat to both capitals. But just as 90% of Russians, mentally he still lives in a post-1945 world where Russia (USSR) called the shots anywhere between Adriatic and the Pacific, and nothing between Berlin and Smolensk is "a real country" to them. Ukraine joining NATO threatened one thing only: his capacity to turn it into a vassal state, in the same way Belarus is now. That was his game plan all along, ever since 2014, and nothing has changed much. If Yanukovich would have suppressed Maidan, maybe Crimea would still be Ukraine and Okean Elzy would perform on Slaviansky bazaar and Zelensky would have a Friday night comedy show on Perviy kanal. Ukraine society (or, far right Nazis, as some would say) decided otherwise. And Putin took it personally. There will be no peace while he is alive. After that... It remains to be seen.
The location of Ukraine is more critical to Russia than the borders in the far north. One can infiltrate better and has good roads to Moscow and other centres. Also, Ukraine can have 800k soldiers under arms, Finland (or Lithuania, etc.) can not. If they build up to that size you know that bell has tolled.
Any evidence that Sweden and Finland are greater threats to Russia than Ukraine?
I am full aware that no one in Finland or Sweden would ever contemplate attacking Russia, but neither were anyone in Ukraine until 2022. If you were like Putin and only treated neighbor nations as American puppets than clearly Finland and Sweden are way bigger threats; unlike Ukraine before 2014 they actually had quite functional military, they are far stronger economically, and strategically located far better to strike Russia where it hurts: on the Baltic and in St Petersburg. Not sure what else evidence could have been provided here. Ukraine could be perceived as a threat only in order to create a pretext for invasion, which was forgotten in two weeks, so absurd was this claim even to most zealous warmongers.
Oscar's right, Marinho. If we'd been able to get Ukraine into NATO, we would have stationed large contingents of our army, navy and air force there (along its 1200 mile border with Russia) and that would have given us much more leverage when we threatened the Russians with a military attack - which we would have done. Why? Because our game (the ultimate goal of our foreign policy) is Global Domination (the Russians refer to it as Global Military Domination) which would have inevitably led to threats, from us, to attack with the implication being that resistance is hopeless. Nukes to the west, south and north (submarines). Just a few minutes from blast-off to touchdown in Russia. I'd be very surprised if we don't have nukes in Romania and Poland (and maybe even the Baltics, although that might be too risky/stupid even for us).
Great interview.
Dugin isn't Putin.
Alexander Dugin actually reminds me of Eduard Limonov. I put them in similar boats.
Dugin lost his daughter because of this insanity. I feel for the man. The Biden-Blinken Proxy War in Ukraine must be shutdown ASAP.