If you have such a different perspective on this issue, and are at odds with Mearsheimer, why are you here? Are you here to spew insults with those that disagree, and if so why don't you do a magic act and disappear.
not everybody here follows the party line. and the party line is very ugly regarding ukraine and as i pointed out very inconsistent when compared to israel. because the israel genocide came along and meeershimer doesn't like it one has to ask why is that. why can't netanyahu commit the same horrors that are acceptable for putin? seems fishy. pointing this out is spewing insults.?
I think you put the onus on Russia because you don't get the whole picture and that picture will tell you that the US is simply using Ukrainian lives to bring Putin down and undermine Russia's influence in the world. Why all our Middle Eastern wars? Why Iraq? Biden certainly pushed that one down the throats of his colleagues using his position as chair of the foreign relations comm. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction he said, and people like Judith Miller who worked for the NY Times published the same lies knowing her source had a stake in wanting Saddam gone. We lied our way through all our Middle Eastern wars, destroying countries, leaving rubble in the wake of those wars as we destroyed the lives of their people, many of whom died, or were displaced. Read about them from someone who will provide you with an honest perspective and you'll come to understand what we want in Ukraine and realize the lives of others matter little to us, since our politicians are there mostly to serve themselves. We are supplying weapons to assist Israel in implementing a genocide, killing mostly children, innocents, and there are those who will say that's okay. Did you see our representatives applaud Netanyahu's every word, a man who belongs in jail, and would be if he were no implementing this genocide. They are applauding a genocide, the death of women, children, men, the young and the old. Their living space, an outdoor concentration camp true, but home nonetheless and now it is in rubble. Where do they go if they should survive? Please remember we are supplying the bombs that are killing them, and Israel demands it. The world is sick.
If the Americans think they can bring Putin down they are even more stupid than they look. American Presidents can only dream of the sort of support Putin has from the public.
I would say also this. His popular support in Russia largely flows from the fact that he took the Russian bear on his back and carried it away from the absolute depths of economic, medical, military, and cultural destruction and degradation left in the aftermath of the utter collapse of that Nation and society. To be sure he was of necessity an authoritarian. I don’t think Western citizens can fathom the depths of human destruction and despair Russia found itself after approximately 80 years of communist degradation. He is not universally popular. But most of that nation recognizes the path forward he forged for his people. I don’t admire him but I do recognize his surprising achievements.
Well, they did once, in Afghanistan using the Mujahideen, that bogged Russia down for years and years. Mission accomplished, but this time our antics won't work and I'm glad of it.
exactly, that's why it is so ridiculous when dissidents that are "rescued" from putin seem so silly when they say that they want to bring democracy to russia even if it costs them their freedom. the russians as you clearly see love their zar putin. they love it that he wants to expand their empire to include ukrainians. the ukraianians don't love it but the russians and the meershimer enthusiasts love putin's empire builiding
Yep, we decide he didn't win because we backed the opposition who would benefit us if in office, so lets show our opposition since we are the policemen of the world and because we care about people so much we'll impose sanctions, even though we'll make the people's lives miserable. We're willing to do that because we love democracy that much, and really care. Chavez too, and I cried when he died of cancer.
Asserting that there is or has been a genocide in Gaza is false. Even if one accepts at face value the number of civilian deaths, it’s not a genocide. And no one can in good conscience accept Hamas’ numbers as honest. Even the UN admitted that.
Second, the IDF does not target Palestinian civilians, unlike Hamas indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers.
Third, Hamas’ terrorist strategy is to keep and use military assets in heavily populated areas. Hamas leaders desire large numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties. They have admitted this. The recently deceased Haniyah explicitly said so.
Fourth, the IDFs military operations seek to minimize civilian casualties and have and have done so far better than any military anywhere at any time.
Fifth, the Nazi Holocaust murdered 60% of European Jews. So have some perspective when you speak of a genocide in Gaza.
You can't except that a people that were subject to a genocide in the 1940's under Hitler is implementing one of their own, well, sorry but that is what Israel is doing. You provide information so distorted in order to reassure yourself. The total death toll has not been determined since many of the dead lie under the rubble, and no doubt most are children, and women. Hospitals usually determine the overall death toll, but Israel destroyed those. However tens of thousands of deaths have been accounted for and mostly women and children, babies, sad. "Second, the IDF does not target Palestinian civilians, unlike Hamas indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers." Have you seen the rubble Gaza has become? Have you not heard of the thousands killed in hospitals Israel has bombed? You are totally divorced from reality. If there is anyone who needs perspective, and granted more difficult for you, but it is you. Sorry but I can't help you avoid the reality of what Israel is doing and in so doing will pay a heavy price on many levels.
but i totally agree that the US is wrong, very wrong, immoral really to help netanyahu commit genocide. i am just saying meershimer lost the right to complain about netanyahu if he says putin is fine.
Some more "immorality" from the past. I put that in quotes because it's an incredible understatement. It is not meant to negate your feelings about Ukraine and the horror that is going on there, but to broaden your perspective on the US role in generating the massacre in Ukraine. That is, be aware of our past and what we are capable of doing, and maybe it will broaden your perspective of what the US is capable of implementing.
fran, you can't imagine that ukraine wants its sovereignty regardless of what the US wants, or has done. putin thinks ukraine should be his colony and ukraine wants its sovereignty. what is so hard to understand here? it's the most normal thing in the world to want sovereignty. i want it for myself, you i am guessing want it on a personal level for yourself. turning ukraine into a pawn or puppet of the US is very ugly really, but meershimer has made people lose that natural ability to see ugliness when they see it. realpolitik uber alles
Putin has clearly stated for more than a decade, and still, he has no problem with Ukraine as an independent State, but it cannot be a part of Nato. Nothing unreasonable about that.
Ukraine is a pawn of the US and has been for more than a decade. That is fact.
What do you mean they want their sovereignty? Who is they? Ukraine has been fighting a civil war since 2014 due to a US backed color revolution. Things happen because of history, like dude try to use your brain like a tiny bit harder please I'm begging you
i think he is so used to seeing the faults of the US (granted very many to see) that he sees none or none of consequence in putin. putin can colonize ukraine, or continue to keep ukraine in colony status following centuries of russian history. this could be just silly, but for ukraine it has horrible consequences when meershimer types come along and say let's not help ukraine because ukraine is weaker and bec the US has many sins in its history. totall;y ignoring tht the person they are justifying is a war criminal many times over.
If the Russians had wanted to take Ukraine they would have done what the Americans did in Iraq, within days, take out all utilities, water, power, rail, the lot. They did not do that and only began to attack such things when the idiot Ukrainians, no doubt on orders from US/Nato minders started doing it.
No one is saying Putin has no flaws, but if one looks objectively starting in 2014, and one is familiar with our neocon polices I'm not looking kindly at the US, and by that I don't mean it's people. Read about how we used the Mujahideen to bring down Russia in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Yeah another cold war struggle with Russia and we made it slide from it's perch with a lot of death and real consequences for us, like 9/11. Always consequences. I seem great similarities between the two in regard to our paying others to bring down Russia.
Far less civilians have died in UKR in 2.5 years of war than in 10 months in Gaza and West Bank.
Also, Putin, for saving children got an arrest warant from ICC, while Bibi, for killing over 20,000 children and women is applauded 58 times by the joint US Congress.
If you do not know enough to differentiate then there is probably little to be said, but here goes.
The situation between Ukraine and Russia has nothing in common with that between Israel and Palestine.
Ukraine is an independent country with a large population of ethnic Russians who were being attacked by the Government and the Russians sought to protect them. Ukraine entered into a military alliance with the US/Nato who have clearly stated their plan to break up Russia, i.e. destroy it. Ukraine had great power behind it and was a clear and present danger to the Russians.
The Russians have sought to avoid civilian casualties and made many efforts to firstly not begin the war and then to end it.
The Russians do not seek to exterminate the Ukrainians, they just seek to defend and protect their borders by ensuring Ukraine remains neutral. That is not unreasonable.
Palestine is a country crushed under colonial rule and occupation which ranks as one of the most sadistic, savage and bestial in modern history. Israel has total power over the Palestinians, occupies all of their country, continues to dispossess them, has a stated goal to exterminate or expel them and is committing genocide against the native people of the land it has stolen.
The Palestinians are powerless beyond their limited ability to fight their evil oppressors and to continue their resistance. Israel is massively armed and backed by the US and other Western nations and is the one responsible for all violence.
There would be no Hamas, no Palestinian Resistance, no October 7 if Israel had not been founded in genocidal ethnic cleansing, rape, theft and murder in 1947/48 and had then spent nearly 80 years subjecting the Palestinians to a level of sadistic cruelty which makes even the Nazis look benign.
So, in Ukraine we have a State which has formed a military alliance with others who wish to destroy Russia. Imagine how the Americans would act if Mexico or Canada entered into a military alliance with China? The Russians want a neutral Ukraine and do not want to annexe Ukraine.
And in Palestine, we have an occupying State, Israel with clearly articulated goals of extermination or expulsion of the native people and eradication of their country, their nationhood, culture, history and existence.
We have also seen Israel actively target civilians, nearly half of them children, resort to rape of men, women and children, torture, abuse and continued dispossession throughout all of Occupied Palestine not just Gaza.
The war in Ukraine is unfortunate and caused by Ukrainian, American and Nato stupidity and arrogance.
The war Israel wages against Palestine is nearly a century old and is a crime of enormous proportions, caused by arrogance, bigotry and Israeli, Zionist, American stupidity.
They have stupidity and arrogance in common but nothing else.
Your history attaches much more autonomy to Ukraine that it hasn’t had since 2014. Victoria Nuland and John McCain were on hand for the crime, and Nuland actually told the neo-Nazis who their next leader would be.
I was doing a comparison with Palestine against Israel. Yes, I agree with you that Ukraine is a US puppet being used to attempt to destroy Russia.
As Israel is a US puppet being used to attempt to destroy Iran and Taiwan is on the path to being used in the same way to destroy China.
Only a fool keeps doing the same things and expecting a different result. The Americans have been doing the same things and failing in bloody misery (for others mainly) for decades. When do they learn?
Palestine is a country crushed under colonial rule.....lIsrael occupies all of their country.....has a stated goal to exterminate or expel them and is committing genocide against the native people of the land it has stolen.”
Wrong on all counts. What you call Palestine is not a “country”, never has been or considered historically, culturally or politically. To say that Israel “occupies” it in any sense is nonsense. Even in Gaza. Israel completely left Gaza in 2005 after a brief period of military occupation and administration because of the ‘Palestinians’ then recent terroristic provocations in prior years. You have no proof for the statement that has a “stated goal” to “exterminate” them, though there are clear statements from Hamas’ ‘government’ (it’s in its own political charter) to exterminate both the nation of Israel and Jews in general. None of ‘its’ land is “stolen”. The Jews were present there before the Philistines (from which the word Palestinian derives) moved in. There were very few ‘native’ Palestinians in the lead up to 1947-48 events, as the folks who call themselves Palestinians now, were then, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and near surround itinerant Arabs. And you should ask yourself why so many of those itinerant Arabs in 1948 welcomed in the Arab armies to the newly minted nation of Israel to destroy it; and then consider why any of those Arabs should be ceded back any of that ancestral land. Many of the British nationals who welcomed King George’s military occupation of the colonies in colonial America lost “property” in the wake of the revolutionary war. We don’t now call them “dispossessed “, do we? Neither are those Arabs who welcomed in the Arab armies in 1948 before their defeat by the nascent Israel armed forces. Starting wars have serious consequences for the people who start them and catastrophic consequences for those who start and LOSE them. Much less 4-6 of them depending on how one accounts for them as “wars.” Mearsheimer is excellent on the history of NATO and Ukraine. His footing in the ME and Israel is far less sure.
I would love someone like you to explain to me how a military colonial ruler can subject the native people of the land it has taken by force, to a sadistic, savage and bestial rule for nearly 80 years and be surprised when they resist.
Yes, sure, I know Israelis think Palestinians are subhuman, some sort of weird cockroach animal, but that is deranged. The Palestinians are human beings who have suffered the longest holocaust in modern history and one of the most murderous and cruel military colonial occupations in all of history. They have no rights, no vote, no hope so why would they not fight the Israelis to the death, theirs or their oppressors?
Any understanding of history and human nature makes it clear that unless Israel exterminated 16 million Palestinians on planet earth, the resistance will never end, it will just become more determined, more violent, until Palestine and its people are free.
I mean, think about it, the French and Polish Resistance did that despite German atrocities in reprisal so why would not the Palestinians?
Israel DID NOT leave Gaza in 2005. It removed illegal Jewish settlers and planted them still illegally in other parts of Occupied Palestine. It removed illegal military bases and then surrounded Gaza with warships on the sea side and an electric fence on the land side and proceeded to shoot any man, woman, child, dog which came near the fence. IT IS A PRISON.
And as Amira Hass, Haaretz corrected the same lies from israelis recently, ISRAEL DID NOT LEAVE GAZA. It is the Israeli colonial rulers who issue ID cards to every single Palestinian including those in Gaza. They are handed to the stooge PA to distribute but every single Palestinian is recorded and ID's by their military colonial rulers, ISRAEL.
And if Israel did not control Gaza how could it, as it stated and did, cut off all power, water, food, medicine, internet, phones etc., in the Gaza concentration camp? I await your explanation with keen interst.
Israel was, is and always will be an illegal colonial enterprise in Palestine,.
More than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, Saturday morning, after Israeli occupation forces bombed the “Al-Tabi’een” school, which houses displaced people in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood east of Gaza City.Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes bombed the school while Palestinians were performing the dawn prayer, and they were specifically targeted after the Takbeer of the dawn prayer. Eyewitness reports say limbs – arms, hands, feet and heads of those performing prayers were scattered around the school’s prayer hall in what is described as one of the worst massacres committed by the Israeli army yet.
For your education. Amira Hass, Haaretz, correcting Israelis repeating the same disinformation you have done.
Feb 12, 2024 5:37 pm IST
S., who lives in a Gaza border community, asked me several questions that I've heard from others, too. With his knowledge, I'm publishing an initial reply here to his letter. He wrote:
"I'm a regular reader of Haaretz and of your articles. As a resident of a Gaza border community, I'm trying to understand your take on what has happened in the Gaza Strip since the disengagement. Why, in your opinion, did the strongest resistance emerge from the place where Israel canceled the occupation?
PLEASE NOTE. The Israeli occupation was not canceled. Israel continued its highhanded control of the lives of the Gaza Strip's residents and Gaza's development options.
"For years, people have been shouting that all the major problems stem from the occupation. And here a small experiment to cancel the occupation was conducted. The Palestinians could have built themselves a model mini-state there. Instead, they preferred to invest the money in a war against Israel. Do you have an explanation for that?"
Shalom Reader S.,
PLEASE NOTE. First of all, the Israeli occupation was not canceled. Israel continued its highhanded control of the lives of the Gaza Strip's residents and Gaza's development options, well after Israel dismantled the settlements and army bases located there. Second, as per the Oslo Accords, to which Israel is a signatory, the Gaza Strip is not a separate entity but an integral part of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967.
According to the Palestinians, and according to international opinion, this territory was supposed to become the Palestinian state. The facts that Israel severed the Gazan population from the West Bank's and that Israelis have continued to treat an isolated Gaza, which is 365 square kilometers in size and lacks resources, as a separate entity, are in themselves evidence of Israeli control over it – and of Israeli chutzpah to boot.
I can't quote what I've written in hundreds and perhaps thousands of articles. So I'll be brief: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon neither consulted with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority about the disengagement, nor did he coordinate its implementation with that limited self-rule government, which in 2005 was not split yet between Fatah and Hamas. Sharon followed a gradual track that Israel outlined from the early 1990s, while doing a good job of concealing its severity and significance during the Oslo process: creating a regime of prohibitions and restrictions on the Palestinians' freedom of movement, while creating Palestinian enclaves. On January 15, 1991 Israel began this comprehensive policy, and its immediate result, which worsened over the years, was cutting off the population of Gaza from the West Bank and from the world.
Sharon continued his predecessors' work. The draconian siege imposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Gaza in 2007 was a quantitative change, but not a change in essence. This consistent policy indicates the forethought behind the action: not an experiment to cancel the occupation, but one of the ways to prevent the establishment of the Palestinian state based on the plan that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the international community saw before their eyes.
PLEASE NOTE. The continued Israeli domination over the Gaza Strip, up until October 7, was manifested in several ways.
The first is its total control of the Palestinian population registry, which includes Gaza's residents. It is Israel that decides who is permitted to carry the ID card of a resident of Gaza or the West Bank. Every detail – including place of residence – registered in the ID card, which the PA technically issues, requires Israeli approval. Even natives of Gaza, whose residency status Israel revoked before 1994, cannot renew it without Israel's approval.
The severance from the West Bank (and from Israel) critically damaged the capabilities for economic development in the Gaza Strip. In any case, Gaza has been in a state of economic deterioration or stagnation since 1967 due to deliberate steps that Israel adopted. Israel controls not only the border crossings but also Gaza's aerial and maritime space, which means it doesn't permit Gazans to exercise their right to freedom of movement via the sea and air.
Israel also uses this control to restrict the Palestinian fishing industry, prevent Palestinians from using the gas reserves discovered in Gazan waters and control the wireless frequencies necessary for technological development. By controlling imports and exports, it restricts the ability and feasibility of domestic production. Israel continues to control income from customs payments. Egypt – whether for fear that the Gazans will settle there, political opposition to severing Gaza from the West Bank or obedience to Israeli dictates – hasn't opened the Rafah border to free movement of Palestinians and foreigners.
Whether deliberately or inadvertently, Sharon's unilateral move weakened the PA, which adhered to the negotiations route. Thus, he awarded a prize to the Hamas movement, which claimed that only the "armed struggle" that it practiced during the Second Intifada, while improving its military capabilities – could force the Israeli army to withdraw, not negotiations and a signed agreement.
That's what many Palestinians thought and still think. It's no wonder that several months after the disengagement, in January 2006, Hamas won a majority of the seats in the election for the Palestinian parliament (but not a majority of the votes of the electorate).
First we have to answer the question as to why Israel did everything possible to thwart the establishment of the small Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Then we can move on to trying to explain why the residents of the besieged and cut-off "mini-state" that it shaped in Gaza felt like lifetime prisoners, at a time when their brothers in the West Bank live under the violent rule of the expanding settlement enterprise. And afterwards, at the first opportunity, we'll talk about the illusion or about the delusion or about the armed struggle project.
The first mention we have of the country of Palestine and the people who were Palestinians comes from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs more than 5000 years old. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented.
We then have thousands of years of records, reports, drawings, paintings, then photos of Palestine, the country and its people.
This deranged claim Palestine never existed is so childish it can only be ignored.
Name of the country which exported Jaffa oranges to the world in the 19th century. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Zionists and Jews invaded in 1947 in a genocidal slaughter. PALESTINE.
Name of the country the UN recommended with no legal validity, be partitioned in 1947. PALESTINE.
Name of the country where major battles were fought in WWI and WWII. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Zionists were advertising for Jewish colonists in 1890's. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Jews were planning to set up a colony in 1830. PALESTINE.
Name of the 6 million native people crushed under Israeli military colonial rule and denied all human and civil rights. PALESTINIANS.
says who? i am sure netanyahu didn't criticize putin's invasion because he knew he was doing the same thing to the palestinians, constantly stealing their land, slowly but surely. putin did it very quickly and suddenly and now netanyahu is also doing it at a much quicker pace. but of course you can just claim there is no equivalence. the meershimers here are quite primed to agree with you
not clear that his question is addressed to me. but if it is, yes putin and netanyahu are equivalent in their death dealing. they want the land of the other people. and they don't care how they get it.
Team Biden's blend of unwarranted aggression in Ukraine, and undue deference in Palestine, are united by thousands of preventable casualties. In both instances the policies were at best delusional, if not patently dishonest, and cruel. That is the objectively real and moral consistency driving Prof. M's critiques of US policy in both instances.
Mearsheimer is wrong on so-called Israeli genocide, but correct on the causes and reactions of Russia in Ukraine and the West’s (NATO’s) role in fomenting Russia’s reaction to its effort to bring Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine is quite different from some of the Baltic states coming into NATO. Different strategically, politically, culturally and economically. Ukraine is Russia’s Cuba. It’s that simple.
I used to think Prof Mearsheimer unimpeachable. Unfortunately, his assessment of the China question, which is likely the most consequential issue in my lifetime, is anything but. But please judge for yourself:
Yeah I believe he’s wrong he’s China. From a realist perspective, I don’t believe China poses a long term threat to America given that Chinas population will drop to 800 million by 2100 - many of whom being old. Furthermore , china is geographically soo far from America soo will have no desire to fight america in the western hemisphere.
Mearsheimer is an Offensive Realist, opposed to a Defense Realist
In general, to my knowledge, the Realist paradigm has the axioma that the other can never be trusted. I think that we should work around that, as we have done with weapons treaties and their mutual checks; growing mutual confidence and trust can be done.
Sure, that might explain Mearsheimer's stance. But both schools have their points, e.g. treaties can be worthless (to wit Minsk I/II).
What I don't understand, given JM is wise, is why seek confrontation when winning is practically impossible? IMHO key determinants are resolve (e.g. vs Vietnam to Afghanistan etc.), industrial strength (e.g. vs Russia in Ukraine, Allies vs Axis in WW2) and spiritual vitality (Kennan vs USSR). China overwhelms US in all 3 re Taiwan. Sun Tzu wisely wrote, the victorious seek to win before fighting (and the epitome is not to win every battle, but to win without fighting), meanwhile those destined for defeat fight to seek victory.
I agree with your reasoning and the citations of wisdom. Win-win is definitely better than zero sum. Fighting Russia and China is pointless indeed, we can only loose. Those governing us appear to be pathetic.
It is not a popular thing to say, but it seems one person one vote is destined to deliver pathetic leaders - leaders chosen based on their talent to be popular, rather than talent (AND proven track record) to deliver "for the people".
Deep down, he still thinks that the US should be the strongest out there. Even if that requires unfair competition.
He still thinks US is liberal and democratic and that if other party would have greater power as the US, would abuse the US the way US abuses everyone else...
I have tried my very best to stand in JM's shoes, and use his extraordinarily valuable teachings to try to understand where his stance on China, which I fundamentally disagree, comes from:
1) As he has often said, in an anarchic arena, the only way to be safe is to be a (regional) hegemon, so, presumably, being the global hegemon is even better.
2) While JM might be the best realist alive, we have got to remember he is also human, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume he is also a patriot first, scholar second. If that is true, we can ask ourselves what would he do / say?
3) China is the only peer competitor on any horizon, Russia is a distant 3rd, so clearly Ukraine and Gaza are deeply unhelpful to the US for retaining its position - hence JM's well-known stance on both.
4) He has clearly stated, like most, and understandably, that time is on China's side.
5) If all the above are true, then the only thing a real committed patriot could do, is to do everything in his power to slow / kneecap China's growth, just to give US better chance and more options to persevere. How? Bringing traditional allies on board by any means necessary, arming Taiwan / Japan / Philippines / etc, and of course as JD Vance / Bridge Colby have loudly opined, abandoning Europe and Middle East and everywhere else, so as to laser focus on "containing" (but to be really honest, destroying) China.
6) Personally, I think such a strategy is about 10 years too late (and it is also immoral but that is largely irrelevant in IR). I also disagree with it because I believe the Middle Kingdom was never, is not, and will not be at all interested in harming the US (except in so far as getting them off China's back like now). It is simply not in China's DNA to be a crusader / conqueror. Consequently, such a Tonya Harding strategy is not only unnecessary, it is also highly unlikely to succeed, and given the subpar quality leaders a liberal democratic system is destined to produce, it might just cause WW3.
I welcome any and all reasoned critique of my opinion above.
Fully agree. But as I said, it is not only about kneecaping China, but by beeing evidently more powerful (never the case), also making China (Russia, etc.) do USs bidding.
As for instance what Russia did during Yieltsin's time... Abject oligarchic expolitation via a submissive comprador elites (economic & politic).
Think the fundamental reason, is we in the West are so heavily sold by us being virtuous while others (Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Cuba, N Korea, Vietnam etc. etc,) are evil, that most now firmly believe geopolitics is good vs evil in us vs them.
Meanwhile of course as JM has pointed out in his geopolitics 101, that one of the 5 basic assumptions/facts is that geopolitics is anarchic - there is no higher authority above states that carries a big stick. Consequently, it is the law of the jungle, and the reality is that might is right. Every single of the numerous wars US waged abroad in the last few decades are proof of this, so are the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinian women and children.
nooch, surely you jest, we aren’t a democracy, we aren’t a republic. We are a banana republic. We won’t be able to vote our way out of the hell that’s coming our way. 20 million invaders coming to a bankrupt country. When their EBT cards quit working the country burns. “Convert to our way of thinking” lol.lol.lol
They call it antisemitism, and apparently some believe it to be a capitol crime with zionism, Everything which makes sense is now considered antisemitic, everything which doesn’t is not, so basically according to the technocrats, we should abandon logic, accept Genocide as a practice of self defense, shut up, take the jab and stop thinking with our own brain.
The entire system is built on this “science”, for instance to run for president in the land of the free and home of the brave, you must consider criminals all of those which are against Genocide, and give standing ovation to Genocidaires.
I guess you could call it the law of the inverted logic.
It seams complicated but actually it is not.
Here some simple examples on how this works.
You like to send aid to a starved population, then you must send more bombs and weapons to those starving them.
You like to murder someone by drone, you call it self defense.
What else, ho yes, war is peace, suffering is to make you strong, everybody should take experimental injections, force them on their own children and don’t even try to complain for dying or getting sick from it.
Cows farthing causes global warming, and eating bugs saves the planet.
Conspirators sitting in high positions, are to receive diplomatic immunity, and protesters and whistleblowers are to be considered criminals and enemy of the state, while fake stories from mainstream media, accepted as the ultimate truth.
Ho and if you wake up and see a mushroom cloud on the sky, don’t worry, the present will be be saved in the bunker you payed for and life will go on even if yours will not.
Jeffrey Sachs, Chas Freeman, Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, John Mearsheimer and a host of others have exposed the facts on the U.S.-led Western allies provocation of the war.
Our Western World’s MSM has done all it can to keep the facts suppressed.
In questioning why these facts are not part of the MSM, one has to simply keep Winston Churchill’s comments in mind: « During times of war, the truth is so fragile, it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. »
Thank you Professor Mearsheimer for this excellent article. It is a summary of indisputable facts which underscores the fact that the West provoked this war in a frenzy of madness that Joe Biden and NATO could do it better than Napoleon or Hitler. That said, the war has revealed an extraordinary image of a rapacious, greedy West, binging on government debt, and using the old financial system to bully the world into submission ignoring that it no longer had the industrial base to confront Russia who became the "Arsenal of autocracy." The West's lack of proper intelligence about Putin's Russia was of historic proportions. They destroyed what was left of Nixon and Kissinger's diplomatic scheme to separate China from Russia. In all the Biden administration was criminally negligent and plotting warcrimes (remember the Gas pipeline - an act of war against an ally) when possible. But for their machinations they chose the most corrupt country in Europe, that they labeled a "democracy" Well if that is a democracy, I would take autocracy anytime.
Excellent restatement of the fundamental causes of this tragic conflict. This essay will certainly serve as a resource in the near future when the butchers bill for NATO's criminal war provocations becomes clearer and their efforts to deflect the blame become more hysterical.
However, at this stage, I'm not sure this was US Imperialism simply overplaying it's hand again and underestimating Russia. At this stage, it seems they want another European war, just like they want the elimination of the Palestinian people in Israel. The ruling class of the west has gone blind to the limits of reality. It is almost totally irrational at this point and it seems only a punch in the face might awaken it. Let's hope their failure in Ukraine will at least serve as a wake up call.
Failures in Ukraine, Lybia, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela mean nothing to the U.S. Uniparty. They judge success by the wealth brought in thru their war industry. That it increases the country’s debt means nothing. As long as the profits of war are privatized in the hands of the ruling class, the debt will, as usual, be left to the public to pay.
Haha, you fail to understand that !debt is profit! Just not for you. For those who get the interest payments ;)) it's called service fee. Keep serving your debts enslaved Americans. Bankers love it that way.
If they are guided at this point simply by "hate" then they are indeed totally irrational and capable of driving humanity directly into nuclear WW3.
China, a rational nation, would be catastrophically weakened if Russia were to fall. It cannot and will not allow that to happen. So we aren't talking about Russia anymore, it's China/Russia from now on.
It’s interesting. As sure as I am about everything you’ve weighed in on as being exactly spot on is as sure as I am about what I’ve come up with regard to the big picture.
Yes, the Russians and Serbs have ties that go way back. In Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, there's a section devoted to Russia's sending of troops to help the Serbs fight the Turks. The events had the whole nation mobilized.
The U.S. decided Ukraine’s fate. Ukrainians , pre-2014 U.S.-orchestrated coup, clearly wished to be militarily « neutral » state. Do a little research on Victoria Neuland and in her role in the U.S.’s plans to see Ukraine in the hands of a pro-NATO government.
The people of Ukraine didn’t have any a more a say in it than Americans have a say in U.S. military backing of Israel’s Palestinian genocide.
because meersheimer and co. say so. they want to keep the old world going as is. in this world russia gets to have an empire of the size it wants, including ukraine as its colony. why not? but strangely they do not want israel to grab palestine. (which i do not want either). but it does reek a bit of something for meersheimer and co. why can't israel have a greater israel if russia can have its empire?
i was just putting words to what you were calling giving a migraine by its very existence. so this migraine causing entity is still not throwing ciritics out of windows, i guess throwing people out of windows and shutting up in prisons doesn't give you migraines. congratulations on your strength
Also, not sure that Putin is actually as demented as the Jewish leaders. They actually pretend that God wants them to pull babies out of incubators. I don't think Putin's calculations are based in Bronze Age Jewish rules of War. The level of delusional thinking in Israel is far, far greater. We all know full well that the Jewish God is pure bullshit fiction.
Well you claim that Israel is exactly like Putin. I am just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of that claim.
If Putin is evil because he kills children, then Israel is more evil. And the U.S is funding Israel, providing it military support, selling weapons to it, and providing diplomatic cover. So the U.S is therefore more evil than Putin.
If the U.S is more evil than Putin, as measured by the amount of innocent children murdered directly or indirectly by its policies, than reducing Putin to a caricature of an evil villain is a bit simplistic.
By the way - I think the common denominator in these conflicts is U.S meddling and insistence of full-spectrum domination.
Anyway - you can tell yourself whatever you want about who is good and evil. I am curious about how you square away the cognitive dissonance.
Because Israel is only a regional hegemon and not a great world power. Great world powers influence and to some extant control it’s scope of action. Does that help?
Because Ukraine exists on the doorstep of Russia, a great world power, the same way Mexico and Canada exist on the doorstep of a great world power, the USA. Geography and circumstance can and usually do dictate geopolitical possibilities and necessities. Only a child thinks it can do anything it wants anywhere it wants….until that first smack of discipline wakes the child to the world’s reality. Great powers matter to understanding. Now do you understand? Basically, I’m saying, as an adult, you should grow up.
Russia is no longer a great world power and unfortunately that is a fact that Russians have a hard time accepting. Not that it would justify invading Ukraine. Monroe Doctrine is a relic that gets thrown around sometimes but it means next to nothing.
Russia remains a great power. Not as great as us or China but a great power nonetheless. Its geographic position in Eastern Europe and the Asian Pacific and incredible natural resources make it so. As does its historic culture. You should give it its due regard.
Yeah, they were down and out in 1991, but they've clawed themselves back to a great power status, much to the everlasting agony of the U.S. elites, who are forever stuck in the '90s when Gorby and Yeltsin did everything the U.S. told them to do because they were too weak to say no.
Mearsheimer says Russia, China and the U.S. are the world's three great powers of the moment. Some wags say Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country, but one could also say the U.S. is an open-bar-with-crappy-food-and-porn-flicks masquerading as a country.
I agree it is as great as France only it still has its empire. The sooner they give up on believing they have a special place in the world, the better as it might allow them to reform and become great again although I think it is largely over for them. Obviously, they believe otherwise and I'm o.k. with that.
I don't think the US is all that special either. It is with its allies that US becomes great. Finally, this is a bulletin board and not a written paper; I can be as wild and free with my opinions as I like.
Did you mention it was a “relic” to Fidel C in Cuba in 1962? It’s alive and well today and will remain so for as long as the USA remains a superpower, though some denizens in Cambridge, Mass., Berkeley, Ca. and Madison, Wis. might not think so. Wrongly.
Do YOU have the right to join any organization you want? For example—If you are under the age of 50, can you join the AARP? My point is that organizations have the right and the responsibility to be selective about who joins them, and NATO was careless in that regard.
And also because it would take less than ten minutes for a missile fired from Kiev to reach Moscow, eliminating any chance to stop retaliation and Armaggedon
So I read it again and I still feel the assumption is that Putin has a right to dictate what Ukraine does. I understand he doesn’t like it…. Views it as a threat.
How does he feel about the Scandinavian states that have joined NATO…… will he invade them next?
We *know* how Americans felt when the USSR out missiles in Cuba.
Folks the world is spherical. Get your hands on a globe and turn it so that Ukraine is at the centre
of the world and not your country.
Now if you were a nuclear Superpower (Russia) with a slim access to a warm water port and you had a “say” in whether opposing nuclear missiles were parked next door. You might choose to speak up. Much as I’m not a fan of Putin (or Trump or Harris), give Putin credit. He spoke up. And several times before launching his “special operation”. Here Americans and Ukrainians (and NATO sabre rattlers) look like idiots because the outcome was obvious from the start.
Oh the Chinese! Oh the Chinese! Donald Obama is not just incapable of grasping analogies, he also is. Racist towards Chinese people. Donald does Asian bashing because he's a xenophobic loser.
Just another example of the US illegally controlling populations. Same goose/gander question as the one about Mexico. Point is that the US is a shitty empire that is on the verge of collapse. NATO made Ukraine what it is today.
I don't think he will invade them. However, if things descend into nuclear war they will be direct targets. On the other hand, at that point everyone is screwed.
Main problem for those countries is now they will face pressure from NATO and their own military industrial complexes to spend more on their military, thus diverting resources from more socially beneficially initiatives.
Plus as they further militarize, Russia will respond in kind, and a tinderbox will form. War will become steadily more likely and more devastating when it does happen.
Thank you, Dr. Mearsheimer, for another excellent analysis backed by strong evidence. Other than a shared belief they all know what Putin thinks, its detractors can offer nothing to refute it. The goal to “destabilize” and “weaken Russia” was articulated by the Western leaders who provoked this war. They were clearly warned Ukraine’s planned accession to NATO was perceived by Russia as an existential threat.
The US, of course. It's always the US with its insane demagoguery. Always trying to appease what appears to be half its population's lust for warmongering. Ex-military should not be allowed to run for office. You have enough problems with all the lawyers.
It went back way further than that. US never recognized the annexation of Baltic states and certainly GHWB worked for and Yeltsin acquiesed too. Letting the people of Eastern Europe decide if they want to be part of Russian empire was and still is a worthy objective. The question that should be asked is was it worth the cost and on that count, I do not know, but I do know that Russia faced no external threats from NATO. The threats are all internal.
Missiles a stones throw from Moscow? No external threat? Don’t be stupid.
The U.S. lust for hegemony is a constant external threat for Russia, especially since ‘45. The capitalist class, whether in the U.S., Britain, or Germany, cannot abide any threat to its ability to control the world economy.
Those dang capitalists. Germany could not have done more to support Russia than they did. Russia blew that relationship, but hopefully, for Russia's sake it will come back someday but even that will not be enough to solve internal problems in Russia.
Ridiculous. They spent millions building it. It would have meant billions to their economy. But they blew it up. Why? Because that's what some Americans say?
Our so-called leaders seem to be cheerleaders for any potential polemics. especially when oil or other resources are at stake. Venezuela, anyone? I cannot imagine the burden of being a realist in this current clown show, but you have beautifully documented a synopsis of contemporary history in Ukraine that boggles politician's plans. Of course, rational people agree with you, John, but that seems to be a diminishing minority! Thank you, as always.
Getting a notification from John Mearsheimer makes me really happy
you and putin
Go back to watching CNN if facts make you so uncomfortable.
If you have such a different perspective on this issue, and are at odds with Mearsheimer, why are you here? Are you here to spew insults with those that disagree, and if so why don't you do a magic act and disappear.
not everybody here follows the party line. and the party line is very ugly regarding ukraine and as i pointed out very inconsistent when compared to israel. because the israel genocide came along and meeershimer doesn't like it one has to ask why is that. why can't netanyahu commit the same horrors that are acceptable for putin? seems fishy. pointing this out is spewing insults.?
I think you put the onus on Russia because you don't get the whole picture and that picture will tell you that the US is simply using Ukrainian lives to bring Putin down and undermine Russia's influence in the world. Why all our Middle Eastern wars? Why Iraq? Biden certainly pushed that one down the throats of his colleagues using his position as chair of the foreign relations comm. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction he said, and people like Judith Miller who worked for the NY Times published the same lies knowing her source had a stake in wanting Saddam gone. We lied our way through all our Middle Eastern wars, destroying countries, leaving rubble in the wake of those wars as we destroyed the lives of their people, many of whom died, or were displaced. Read about them from someone who will provide you with an honest perspective and you'll come to understand what we want in Ukraine and realize the lives of others matter little to us, since our politicians are there mostly to serve themselves. We are supplying weapons to assist Israel in implementing a genocide, killing mostly children, innocents, and there are those who will say that's okay. Did you see our representatives applaud Netanyahu's every word, a man who belongs in jail, and would be if he were no implementing this genocide. They are applauding a genocide, the death of women, children, men, the young and the old. Their living space, an outdoor concentration camp true, but home nonetheless and now it is in rubble. Where do they go if they should survive? Please remember we are supplying the bombs that are killing them, and Israel demands it. The world is sick.
If the Americans think they can bring Putin down they are even more stupid than they look. American Presidents can only dream of the sort of support Putin has from the public.
I would say also this. His popular support in Russia largely flows from the fact that he took the Russian bear on his back and carried it away from the absolute depths of economic, medical, military, and cultural destruction and degradation left in the aftermath of the utter collapse of that Nation and society. To be sure he was of necessity an authoritarian. I don’t think Western citizens can fathom the depths of human destruction and despair Russia found itself after approximately 80 years of communist degradation. He is not universally popular. But most of that nation recognizes the path forward he forged for his people. I don’t admire him but I do recognize his surprising achievements.
Well, they did once, in Afghanistan using the Mujahideen, that bogged Russia down for years and years. Mission accomplished, but this time our antics won't work and I'm glad of it.
exactly, that's why it is so ridiculous when dissidents that are "rescued" from putin seem so silly when they say that they want to bring democracy to russia even if it costs them their freedom. the russians as you clearly see love their zar putin. they love it that he wants to expand their empire to include ukrainians. the ukraianians don't love it but the russians and the meershimer enthusiasts love putin's empire builiding
Well said and meanwhile in Venezuela the US decides Maduro didn't win although their were many foreign 'watchdogs' during the election.
OIL
Yep, we decide he didn't win because we backed the opposition who would benefit us if in office, so lets show our opposition since we are the policemen of the world and because we care about people so much we'll impose sanctions, even though we'll make the people's lives miserable. We're willing to do that because we love democracy that much, and really care. Chavez too, and I cried when he died of cancer.
Asserting that there is or has been a genocide in Gaza is false. Even if one accepts at face value the number of civilian deaths, it’s not a genocide. And no one can in good conscience accept Hamas’ numbers as honest. Even the UN admitted that.
Second, the IDF does not target Palestinian civilians, unlike Hamas indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers.
Third, Hamas’ terrorist strategy is to keep and use military assets in heavily populated areas. Hamas leaders desire large numbers of Palestinian civilian casualties. They have admitted this. The recently deceased Haniyah explicitly said so.
Fourth, the IDFs military operations seek to minimize civilian casualties and have and have done so far better than any military anywhere at any time.
Fifth, the Nazi Holocaust murdered 60% of European Jews. So have some perspective when you speak of a genocide in Gaza.
You can't except that a people that were subject to a genocide in the 1940's under Hitler is implementing one of their own, well, sorry but that is what Israel is doing. You provide information so distorted in order to reassure yourself. The total death toll has not been determined since many of the dead lie under the rubble, and no doubt most are children, and women. Hospitals usually determine the overall death toll, but Israel destroyed those. However tens of thousands of deaths have been accounted for and mostly women and children, babies, sad. "Second, the IDF does not target Palestinian civilians, unlike Hamas indiscriminately firing thousands of rockets at Israeli population centers." Have you seen the rubble Gaza has become? Have you not heard of the thousands killed in hospitals Israel has bombed? You are totally divorced from reality. If there is anyone who needs perspective, and granted more difficult for you, but it is you. Sorry but I can't help you avoid the reality of what Israel is doing and in so doing will pay a heavy price on many levels.
IF this is NOT Genocide....what the hell is.?
Imagine a country coming into the USA and taking all the white Evangelicals out!
It is a genocide.....sorry to burst your uninformed bubble.
but i totally agree that the US is wrong, very wrong, immoral really to help netanyahu commit genocide. i am just saying meershimer lost the right to complain about netanyahu if he says putin is fine.
READ, read and read. Putin does NOT want Ukraine. He is a smart man and even the Europeans don't want it. Just Blackrock and other chemical companies.
Some more "immorality" from the past. I put that in quotes because it's an incredible understatement. It is not meant to negate your feelings about Ukraine and the horror that is going on there, but to broaden your perspective on the US role in generating the massacre in Ukraine. That is, be aware of our past and what we are capable of doing, and maybe it will broaden your perspective of what the US is capable of implementing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/the-indonesia-documents-and-the-us-agenda/543534/
To compare the two you don't understand either one.
fran, you can't imagine that ukraine wants its sovereignty regardless of what the US wants, or has done. putin thinks ukraine should be his colony and ukraine wants its sovereignty. what is so hard to understand here? it's the most normal thing in the world to want sovereignty. i want it for myself, you i am guessing want it on a personal level for yourself. turning ukraine into a pawn or puppet of the US is very ugly really, but meershimer has made people lose that natural ability to see ugliness when they see it. realpolitik uber alles
I want my sovereignty, too. I am ashamed to be an American. Can I just opt out? Like, call myself a country? Bonnieland?
Putin has clearly stated for more than a decade, and still, he has no problem with Ukraine as an independent State, but it cannot be a part of Nato. Nothing unreasonable about that.
Ukraine is a pawn of the US and has been for more than a decade. That is fact.
What do you mean they want their sovereignty? Who is they? Ukraine has been fighting a civil war since 2014 due to a US backed color revolution. Things happen because of history, like dude try to use your brain like a tiny bit harder please I'm begging you
nsakun. I don't think Ukraine KNOWS what it wants frankly. Have you actually looked and read about the corruption and Nazi's in Ukraine?
can you provide a counter to Mearsheimers points here?
do you really think he is a Putin shill or are you just trolling? anything valid to contribute?
i think he is so used to seeing the faults of the US (granted very many to see) that he sees none or none of consequence in putin. putin can colonize ukraine, or continue to keep ukraine in colony status following centuries of russian history. this could be just silly, but for ukraine it has horrible consequences when meershimer types come along and say let's not help ukraine because ukraine is weaker and bec the US has many sins in its history. totall;y ignoring tht the person they are justifying is a war criminal many times over.
If the Russians had wanted to take Ukraine they would have done what the Americans did in Iraq, within days, take out all utilities, water, power, rail, the lot. They did not do that and only began to attack such things when the idiot Ukrainians, no doubt on orders from US/Nato minders started doing it.
is he saying we shouldn’t help? I would imagine the best way to help Ukraine would be to negotiate a fair peace if they have no chance of victory.
No one is saying Putin has no flaws, but if one looks objectively starting in 2014, and one is familiar with our neocon polices I'm not looking kindly at the US, and by that I don't mean it's people. Read about how we used the Mujahideen to bring down Russia in the 1980s in Afghanistan. Yeah another cold war struggle with Russia and we made it slide from it's perch with a lot of death and real consequences for us, like 9/11. Always consequences. I seem great similarities between the two in regard to our paying others to bring down Russia.
https://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/10/ghost_wars_how_reagan_armed_the
nsakun. Excuse me BUT who are the war criminals here? It certainly isn't Russia.
Russia could have decimated Ukraine but it hasn't.
Try looking at the Donbas region and tell me they don't want to be part of Russia.
Putin a war criminal?
Look at your bloody history!
Far less civilians have died in UKR in 2.5 years of war than in 10 months in Gaza and West Bank.
Also, Putin, for saving children got an arrest warant from ICC, while Bibi, for killing over 20,000 children and women is applauded 58 times by the joint US Congress.
If you do not know enough to differentiate then there is probably little to be said, but here goes.
The situation between Ukraine and Russia has nothing in common with that between Israel and Palestine.
Ukraine is an independent country with a large population of ethnic Russians who were being attacked by the Government and the Russians sought to protect them. Ukraine entered into a military alliance with the US/Nato who have clearly stated their plan to break up Russia, i.e. destroy it. Ukraine had great power behind it and was a clear and present danger to the Russians.
The Russians have sought to avoid civilian casualties and made many efforts to firstly not begin the war and then to end it.
The Russians do not seek to exterminate the Ukrainians, they just seek to defend and protect their borders by ensuring Ukraine remains neutral. That is not unreasonable.
Palestine is a country crushed under colonial rule and occupation which ranks as one of the most sadistic, savage and bestial in modern history. Israel has total power over the Palestinians, occupies all of their country, continues to dispossess them, has a stated goal to exterminate or expel them and is committing genocide against the native people of the land it has stolen.
The Palestinians are powerless beyond their limited ability to fight their evil oppressors and to continue their resistance. Israel is massively armed and backed by the US and other Western nations and is the one responsible for all violence.
There would be no Hamas, no Palestinian Resistance, no October 7 if Israel had not been founded in genocidal ethnic cleansing, rape, theft and murder in 1947/48 and had then spent nearly 80 years subjecting the Palestinians to a level of sadistic cruelty which makes even the Nazis look benign.
So, in Ukraine we have a State which has formed a military alliance with others who wish to destroy Russia. Imagine how the Americans would act if Mexico or Canada entered into a military alliance with China? The Russians want a neutral Ukraine and do not want to annexe Ukraine.
And in Palestine, we have an occupying State, Israel with clearly articulated goals of extermination or expulsion of the native people and eradication of their country, their nationhood, culture, history and existence.
We have also seen Israel actively target civilians, nearly half of them children, resort to rape of men, women and children, torture, abuse and continued dispossession throughout all of Occupied Palestine not just Gaza.
The war in Ukraine is unfortunate and caused by Ukrainian, American and Nato stupidity and arrogance.
The war Israel wages against Palestine is nearly a century old and is a crime of enormous proportions, caused by arrogance, bigotry and Israeli, Zionist, American stupidity.
They have stupidity and arrogance in common but nothing else.
Your history attaches much more autonomy to Ukraine that it hasn’t had since 2014. Victoria Nuland and John McCain were on hand for the crime, and Nuland actually told the neo-Nazis who their next leader would be.
I was doing a comparison with Palestine against Israel. Yes, I agree with you that Ukraine is a US puppet being used to attempt to destroy Russia.
As Israel is a US puppet being used to attempt to destroy Iran and Taiwan is on the path to being used in the same way to destroy China.
Only a fool keeps doing the same things and expecting a different result. The Americans have been doing the same things and failing in bloody misery (for others mainly) for decades. When do they learn?
Palestine is a country crushed under colonial rule.....lIsrael occupies all of their country.....has a stated goal to exterminate or expel them and is committing genocide against the native people of the land it has stolen.”
Wrong on all counts. What you call Palestine is not a “country”, never has been or considered historically, culturally or politically. To say that Israel “occupies” it in any sense is nonsense. Even in Gaza. Israel completely left Gaza in 2005 after a brief period of military occupation and administration because of the ‘Palestinians’ then recent terroristic provocations in prior years. You have no proof for the statement that has a “stated goal” to “exterminate” them, though there are clear statements from Hamas’ ‘government’ (it’s in its own political charter) to exterminate both the nation of Israel and Jews in general. None of ‘its’ land is “stolen”. The Jews were present there before the Philistines (from which the word Palestinian derives) moved in. There were very few ‘native’ Palestinians in the lead up to 1947-48 events, as the folks who call themselves Palestinians now, were then, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, and near surround itinerant Arabs. And you should ask yourself why so many of those itinerant Arabs in 1948 welcomed in the Arab armies to the newly minted nation of Israel to destroy it; and then consider why any of those Arabs should be ceded back any of that ancestral land. Many of the British nationals who welcomed King George’s military occupation of the colonies in colonial America lost “property” in the wake of the revolutionary war. We don’t now call them “dispossessed “, do we? Neither are those Arabs who welcomed in the Arab armies in 1948 before their defeat by the nascent Israel armed forces. Starting wars have serious consequences for the people who start them and catastrophic consequences for those who start and LOSE them. Much less 4-6 of them depending on how one accounts for them as “wars.” Mearsheimer is excellent on the history of NATO and Ukraine. His footing in the ME and Israel is far less sure.
I would love someone like you to explain to me how a military colonial ruler can subject the native people of the land it has taken by force, to a sadistic, savage and bestial rule for nearly 80 years and be surprised when they resist.
Yes, sure, I know Israelis think Palestinians are subhuman, some sort of weird cockroach animal, but that is deranged. The Palestinians are human beings who have suffered the longest holocaust in modern history and one of the most murderous and cruel military colonial occupations in all of history. They have no rights, no vote, no hope so why would they not fight the Israelis to the death, theirs or their oppressors?
Any understanding of history and human nature makes it clear that unless Israel exterminated 16 million Palestinians on planet earth, the resistance will never end, it will just become more determined, more violent, until Palestine and its people are free.
I mean, think about it, the French and Polish Resistance did that despite German atrocities in reprisal so why would not the Palestinians?
To correct more lies.
Israel DID NOT leave Gaza in 2005. It removed illegal Jewish settlers and planted them still illegally in other parts of Occupied Palestine. It removed illegal military bases and then surrounded Gaza with warships on the sea side and an electric fence on the land side and proceeded to shoot any man, woman, child, dog which came near the fence. IT IS A PRISON.
And as Amira Hass, Haaretz corrected the same lies from israelis recently, ISRAEL DID NOT LEAVE GAZA. It is the Israeli colonial rulers who issue ID cards to every single Palestinian including those in Gaza. They are handed to the stooge PA to distribute but every single Palestinian is recorded and ID's by their military colonial rulers, ISRAEL.
And if Israel did not control Gaza how could it, as it stated and did, cut off all power, water, food, medicine, internet, phones etc., in the Gaza concentration camp? I await your explanation with keen interst.
Israel was, is and always will be an illegal colonial enterprise in Palestine,.
https://countercurrents.org/2024/08/israel-kills-100-people-performing-the-dawn-prayers/
More than 100 Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, Saturday morning, after Israeli occupation forces bombed the “Al-Tabi’een” school, which houses displaced people in the Al-Daraj neighbourhood east of Gaza City.Local sources reported that the occupation warplanes bombed the school while Palestinians were performing the dawn prayer, and they were specifically targeted after the Takbeer of the dawn prayer. Eyewitness reports say limbs – arms, hands, feet and heads of those performing prayers were scattered around the school’s prayer hall in what is described as one of the worst massacres committed by the Israeli army yet.
For your education. Amira Hass, Haaretz, correcting Israelis repeating the same disinformation you have done.
Feb 12, 2024 5:37 pm IST
S., who lives in a Gaza border community, asked me several questions that I've heard from others, too. With his knowledge, I'm publishing an initial reply here to his letter. He wrote:
"I'm a regular reader of Haaretz and of your articles. As a resident of a Gaza border community, I'm trying to understand your take on what has happened in the Gaza Strip since the disengagement. Why, in your opinion, did the strongest resistance emerge from the place where Israel canceled the occupation?
PLEASE NOTE. The Israeli occupation was not canceled. Israel continued its highhanded control of the lives of the Gaza Strip's residents and Gaza's development options.
"For years, people have been shouting that all the major problems stem from the occupation. And here a small experiment to cancel the occupation was conducted. The Palestinians could have built themselves a model mini-state there. Instead, they preferred to invest the money in a war against Israel. Do you have an explanation for that?"
Shalom Reader S.,
PLEASE NOTE. First of all, the Israeli occupation was not canceled. Israel continued its highhanded control of the lives of the Gaza Strip's residents and Gaza's development options, well after Israel dismantled the settlements and army bases located there. Second, as per the Oslo Accords, to which Israel is a signatory, the Gaza Strip is not a separate entity but an integral part of the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967.
According to the Palestinians, and according to international opinion, this territory was supposed to become the Palestinian state. The facts that Israel severed the Gazan population from the West Bank's and that Israelis have continued to treat an isolated Gaza, which is 365 square kilometers in size and lacks resources, as a separate entity, are in themselves evidence of Israeli control over it – and of Israeli chutzpah to boot.
I can't quote what I've written in hundreds and perhaps thousands of articles. So I'll be brief: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon neither consulted with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority about the disengagement, nor did he coordinate its implementation with that limited self-rule government, which in 2005 was not split yet between Fatah and Hamas. Sharon followed a gradual track that Israel outlined from the early 1990s, while doing a good job of concealing its severity and significance during the Oslo process: creating a regime of prohibitions and restrictions on the Palestinians' freedom of movement, while creating Palestinian enclaves. On January 15, 1991 Israel began this comprehensive policy, and its immediate result, which worsened over the years, was cutting off the population of Gaza from the West Bank and from the world.
Sharon continued his predecessors' work. The draconian siege imposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Gaza in 2007 was a quantitative change, but not a change in essence. This consistent policy indicates the forethought behind the action: not an experiment to cancel the occupation, but one of the ways to prevent the establishment of the Palestinian state based on the plan that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the international community saw before their eyes.
PLEASE NOTE. The continued Israeli domination over the Gaza Strip, up until October 7, was manifested in several ways.
The first is its total control of the Palestinian population registry, which includes Gaza's residents. It is Israel that decides who is permitted to carry the ID card of a resident of Gaza or the West Bank. Every detail – including place of residence – registered in the ID card, which the PA technically issues, requires Israeli approval. Even natives of Gaza, whose residency status Israel revoked before 1994, cannot renew it without Israel's approval.
The severance from the West Bank (and from Israel) critically damaged the capabilities for economic development in the Gaza Strip. In any case, Gaza has been in a state of economic deterioration or stagnation since 1967 due to deliberate steps that Israel adopted. Israel controls not only the border crossings but also Gaza's aerial and maritime space, which means it doesn't permit Gazans to exercise their right to freedom of movement via the sea and air.
Israel also uses this control to restrict the Palestinian fishing industry, prevent Palestinians from using the gas reserves discovered in Gazan waters and control the wireless frequencies necessary for technological development. By controlling imports and exports, it restricts the ability and feasibility of domestic production. Israel continues to control income from customs payments. Egypt – whether for fear that the Gazans will settle there, political opposition to severing Gaza from the West Bank or obedience to Israeli dictates – hasn't opened the Rafah border to free movement of Palestinians and foreigners.
Whether deliberately or inadvertently, Sharon's unilateral move weakened the PA, which adhered to the negotiations route. Thus, he awarded a prize to the Hamas movement, which claimed that only the "armed struggle" that it practiced during the Second Intifada, while improving its military capabilities – could force the Israeli army to withdraw, not negotiations and a signed agreement.
That's what many Palestinians thought and still think. It's no wonder that several months after the disengagement, in January 2006, Hamas won a majority of the seats in the election for the Palestinian parliament (but not a majority of the votes of the electorate).
First we have to answer the question as to why Israel did everything possible to thwart the establishment of the small Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Then we can move on to trying to explain why the residents of the besieged and cut-off "mini-state" that it shaped in Gaza felt like lifetime prisoners, at a time when their brothers in the West Bank live under the violent rule of the expanding settlement enterprise. And afterwards, at the first opportunity, we'll talk about the illusion or about the delusion or about the armed struggle project.
God the ignorance and lies are so depressing.
The first mention we have of the country of Palestine and the people who were Palestinians comes from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs more than 5000 years old. Palestine was ancient when Judaism was invented.
We then have thousands of years of records, reports, drawings, paintings, then photos of Palestine, the country and its people.
This deranged claim Palestine never existed is so childish it can only be ignored.
Name of the country which exported Jaffa oranges to the world in the 19th century. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Zionists and Jews invaded in 1947 in a genocidal slaughter. PALESTINE.
Name of the country the UN recommended with no legal validity, be partitioned in 1947. PALESTINE.
Name of the country where major battles were fought in WWI and WWII. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Zionists were advertising for Jewish colonists in 1890's. PALESTINE.
Name of the country Jews were planning to set up a colony in 1830. PALESTINE.
Name of the 6 million native people crushed under Israeli military colonial rule and denied all human and civil rights. PALESTINIANS.
I could you on but it is just too idiotic.
Equating Vladimir Putin with Benyamin Netanyahu is evidence that you are either a troll or profoundly void of information.
there is no equivalence between russia's actions in ukraine and israel's actions in gaza.
says who? i am sure netanyahu didn't criticize putin's invasion because he knew he was doing the same thing to the palestinians, constantly stealing their land, slowly but surely. putin did it very quickly and suddenly and now netanyahu is also doing it at a much quicker pace. but of course you can just claim there is no equivalence. the meershimers here are quite primed to agree with you
Those two conflicts are equivalent in death dealing? Is that your point as your expressed narrative is not clear to me.
not clear that his question is addressed to me. but if it is, yes putin and netanyahu are equivalent in their death dealing. they want the land of the other people. and they don't care how they get it.
Team Biden's blend of unwarranted aggression in Ukraine, and undue deference in Palestine, are united by thousands of preventable casualties. In both instances the policies were at best delusional, if not patently dishonest, and cruel. That is the objectively real and moral consistency driving Prof. M's critiques of US policy in both instances.
Mearsheimer is wrong on so-called Israeli genocide, but correct on the causes and reactions of Russia in Ukraine and the West’s (NATO’s) role in fomenting Russia’s reaction to its effort to bring Ukraine into NATO. Ukraine is quite different from some of the Baltic states coming into NATO. Different strategically, politically, culturally and economically. Ukraine is Russia’s Cuba. It’s that simple.
Mearsheimer and any sane human is right in saying Israel is committing colonial genocide, one of the most foul and barbaric in history.
Why should people resign themselves to echo chambers?
I enjoy disagreement.
Anyone who deals in facts so on that count you are correct because Putin deals in facts and so does Mearsheimer.
I used to think Prof Mearsheimer unimpeachable. Unfortunately, his assessment of the China question, which is likely the most consequential issue in my lifetime, is anything but. But please judge for yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc9hKg7bqBY
Yeah I believe he’s wrong he’s China. From a realist perspective, I don’t believe China poses a long term threat to America given that Chinas population will drop to 800 million by 2100 - many of whom being old. Furthermore , china is geographically soo far from America soo will have no desire to fight america in the western hemisphere.
Thanks for your comment. My response to your comment is the same as that to Kouros below.
You have a typo in your first sentence.
Sadly this app doesn’t allow you to edit comments for some reason
Yes, it does-- click on those three dots underneath your comment, to the right. An option to edit will be shown. Indispensable!
I edit mine all the time.
Mearsheimer is an Offensive Realist, opposed to a Defense Realist
In general, to my knowledge, the Realist paradigm has the axioma that the other can never be trusted. I think that we should work around that, as we have done with weapons treaties and their mutual checks; growing mutual confidence and trust can be done.
Sure, that might explain Mearsheimer's stance. But both schools have their points, e.g. treaties can be worthless (to wit Minsk I/II).
What I don't understand, given JM is wise, is why seek confrontation when winning is practically impossible? IMHO key determinants are resolve (e.g. vs Vietnam to Afghanistan etc.), industrial strength (e.g. vs Russia in Ukraine, Allies vs Axis in WW2) and spiritual vitality (Kennan vs USSR). China overwhelms US in all 3 re Taiwan. Sun Tzu wisely wrote, the victorious seek to win before fighting (and the epitome is not to win every battle, but to win without fighting), meanwhile those destined for defeat fight to seek victory.
I agree with your reasoning and the citations of wisdom. Win-win is definitely better than zero sum. Fighting Russia and China is pointless indeed, we can only loose. Those governing us appear to be pathetic.
It is not a popular thing to say, but it seems one person one vote is destined to deliver pathetic leaders - leaders chosen based on their talent to be popular, rather than talent (AND proven track record) to deliver "for the people".
yes, better to have self-appointed leaders like in russia. absolutely the much better system. thank you for making your opinion on this so explicit
It appears that in some countries 'leader' is a title and ruling is by Deep State.
It seems to me that it doesn't matter much which system there is, it is a fight for power position with massive opinion manipulation of the masses.
Deep down, he still thinks that the US should be the strongest out there. Even if that requires unfair competition.
He still thinks US is liberal and democratic and that if other party would have greater power as the US, would abuse the US the way US abuses everyone else...
I have tried my very best to stand in JM's shoes, and use his extraordinarily valuable teachings to try to understand where his stance on China, which I fundamentally disagree, comes from:
1) As he has often said, in an anarchic arena, the only way to be safe is to be a (regional) hegemon, so, presumably, being the global hegemon is even better.
2) While JM might be the best realist alive, we have got to remember he is also human, so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume he is also a patriot first, scholar second. If that is true, we can ask ourselves what would he do / say?
3) China is the only peer competitor on any horizon, Russia is a distant 3rd, so clearly Ukraine and Gaza are deeply unhelpful to the US for retaining its position - hence JM's well-known stance on both.
4) He has clearly stated, like most, and understandably, that time is on China's side.
5) If all the above are true, then the only thing a real committed patriot could do, is to do everything in his power to slow / kneecap China's growth, just to give US better chance and more options to persevere. How? Bringing traditional allies on board by any means necessary, arming Taiwan / Japan / Philippines / etc, and of course as JD Vance / Bridge Colby have loudly opined, abandoning Europe and Middle East and everywhere else, so as to laser focus on "containing" (but to be really honest, destroying) China.
6) Personally, I think such a strategy is about 10 years too late (and it is also immoral but that is largely irrelevant in IR). I also disagree with it because I believe the Middle Kingdom was never, is not, and will not be at all interested in harming the US (except in so far as getting them off China's back like now). It is simply not in China's DNA to be a crusader / conqueror. Consequently, such a Tonya Harding strategy is not only unnecessary, it is also highly unlikely to succeed, and given the subpar quality leaders a liberal democratic system is destined to produce, it might just cause WW3.
I welcome any and all reasoned critique of my opinion above.
Fully agree. But as I said, it is not only about kneecaping China, but by beeing evidently more powerful (never the case), also making China (Russia, etc.) do USs bidding.
As for instance what Russia did during Yieltsin's time... Abject oligarchic expolitation via a submissive comprador elites (economic & politic).
Yes! Why is this common sense so disparaged?
Good question, that deserves an answer.
Think the fundamental reason, is we in the West are so heavily sold by us being virtuous while others (Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Cuba, N Korea, Vietnam etc. etc,) are evil, that most now firmly believe geopolitics is good vs evil in us vs them.
Meanwhile of course as JM has pointed out in his geopolitics 101, that one of the 5 basic assumptions/facts is that geopolitics is anarchic - there is no higher authority above states that carries a big stick. Consequently, it is the law of the jungle, and the reality is that might is right. Every single of the numerous wars US waged abroad in the last few decades are proof of this, so are the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinian women and children.
Yes, they are not democracies like us, therefore they must be converted to our way of thinking or destroyed.
Point me to just 1 democracy that is not corrupted.
nooch, surely you jest, we aren’t a democracy, we aren’t a republic. We are a banana republic. We won’t be able to vote our way out of the hell that’s coming our way. 20 million invaders coming to a bankrupt country. When their EBT cards quit working the country burns. “Convert to our way of thinking” lol.lol.lol
They call it antisemitism, and apparently some believe it to be a capitol crime with zionism, Everything which makes sense is now considered antisemitic, everything which doesn’t is not, so basically according to the technocrats, we should abandon logic, accept Genocide as a practice of self defense, shut up, take the jab and stop thinking with our own brain.
The entire system is built on this “science”, for instance to run for president in the land of the free and home of the brave, you must consider criminals all of those which are against Genocide, and give standing ovation to Genocidaires.
I guess you could call it the law of the inverted logic.
It seams complicated but actually it is not.
Here some simple examples on how this works.
You like to send aid to a starved population, then you must send more bombs and weapons to those starving them.
You like to murder someone by drone, you call it self defense.
What else, ho yes, war is peace, suffering is to make you strong, everybody should take experimental injections, force them on their own children and don’t even try to complain for dying or getting sick from it.
Cows farthing causes global warming, and eating bugs saves the planet.
Conspirators sitting in high positions, are to receive diplomatic immunity, and protesters and whistleblowers are to be considered criminals and enemy of the state, while fake stories from mainstream media, accepted as the ultimate truth.
Ho and if you wake up and see a mushroom cloud on the sky, don’t worry, the present will be be saved in the bunker you payed for and life will go on even if yours will not.
Simple
The jews are not interested in common sense, but revenge, after Putin kicked them out after Yeltsin's capitulation to them.
Exactly the same response from them after Hitler did the same.
Really, the parallels between Hitler's actions, and Putin's, are astonishing if you consider them briefly.
Hitler too invaded a foreign state that was massacring his people.
Both made endless overtures for peace, and were treated with total contempt by the jews.
Because it makes sense.... Can't have reality getting in the way of the carefully crafted BS.
My first thought is that O'Jays song that begins, "Money, money, money, money--- money...."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxW789jHXII
Jeffrey Sachs, Chas Freeman, Ray McGovern, Chris Hedges, John Mearsheimer and a host of others have exposed the facts on the U.S.-led Western allies provocation of the war.
Our Western World’s MSM has done all it can to keep the facts suppressed.
In questioning why these facts are not part of the MSM, one has to simply keep Winston Churchill’s comments in mind: « During times of war, the truth is so fragile, it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies. »
Thank you Professor Mearsheimer for this excellent article. It is a summary of indisputable facts which underscores the fact that the West provoked this war in a frenzy of madness that Joe Biden and NATO could do it better than Napoleon or Hitler. That said, the war has revealed an extraordinary image of a rapacious, greedy West, binging on government debt, and using the old financial system to bully the world into submission ignoring that it no longer had the industrial base to confront Russia who became the "Arsenal of autocracy." The West's lack of proper intelligence about Putin's Russia was of historic proportions. They destroyed what was left of Nixon and Kissinger's diplomatic scheme to separate China from Russia. In all the Biden administration was criminally negligent and plotting warcrimes (remember the Gas pipeline - an act of war against an ally) when possible. But for their machinations they chose the most corrupt country in Europe, that they labeled a "democracy" Well if that is a democracy, I would take autocracy anytime.
Well your wish has come true. The U.S. is an autocracy.
John Mearsheimer is not only a national treasurer he is a national necessity.
Russian appeaser..
Nonsense. He correctly pointed out the cracks in the foundation of the neocon house.
Excellent overview
Excellent restatement of the fundamental causes of this tragic conflict. This essay will certainly serve as a resource in the near future when the butchers bill for NATO's criminal war provocations becomes clearer and their efforts to deflect the blame become more hysterical.
However, at this stage, I'm not sure this was US Imperialism simply overplaying it's hand again and underestimating Russia. At this stage, it seems they want another European war, just like they want the elimination of the Palestinian people in Israel. The ruling class of the west has gone blind to the limits of reality. It is almost totally irrational at this point and it seems only a punch in the face might awaken it. Let's hope their failure in Ukraine will at least serve as a wake up call.
Keep up the good work, John.
Failures in Ukraine, Lybia, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela mean nothing to the U.S. Uniparty. They judge success by the wealth brought in thru their war industry. That it increases the country’s debt means nothing. As long as the profits of war are privatized in the hands of the ruling class, the debt will, as usual, be left to the public to pay.
Haha, you fail to understand that !debt is profit! Just not for you. For those who get the interest payments ;)) it's called service fee. Keep serving your debts enslaved Americans. Bankers love it that way.
Or, Is tying up Russia Ukraine part of the Neo-Cons plan, as they hate Russia on it's own, and Russia supported Syria from being over run by ISIS?
If they are guided at this point simply by "hate" then they are indeed totally irrational and capable of driving humanity directly into nuclear WW3.
China, a rational nation, would be catastrophically weakened if Russia were to fall. It cannot and will not allow that to happen. So we aren't talking about Russia anymore, it's China/Russia from now on.
It’s more a matter of world being split into two camps; the one is socialism, the other is barbarism
John Mearsheimer has been exactly correct about everything he’s weighed in on and he’s exactly correct about what he’s had to say in this article.
It’s interesting. As sure as I am about everything you’ve weighed in on as being exactly spot on is as sure as I am about what I’ve come up with regard to the big picture.
“…NATO a defensive alliance.”
It looked downright offensive in Yugoslavia in 1999. Maybe Putin didn’t forget about that the way everyone else seems to have.
Good to get an essay, professor, thank you.
Albanian's in Serbia have a different view than you.
So do Serbs in Kosovo
Yes, the Russians and Serbs have ties that go way back. In Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, there's a section devoted to Russia's sending of troops to help the Serbs fight the Turks. The events had the whole nation mobilized.
Please explain why Ukraine doesn’t have the right to join whatever organization they want.
Why does Putin get to decide the Ukrainians fate for them.
I don’t understand.
No, you don't. NAT0 is the American Empire's Foreign Legion. Members are required to buy and install advanced weapon systems aimed at Russia
Live in eastern europe and say that..
Ukraine is not wanted in NATO or Europe it is a corrupt country.
John Derbyshire has called Ukraine and Russia the two most corrupt white nations on earth.
What about the US
The U.S. decided Ukraine’s fate. Ukrainians , pre-2014 U.S.-orchestrated coup, clearly wished to be militarily « neutral » state. Do a little research on Victoria Neuland and in her role in the U.S.’s plans to see Ukraine in the hands of a pro-NATO government.
The people of Ukraine didn’t have any a more a say in it than Americans have a say in U.S. military backing of Israel’s Palestinian genocide.
because meersheimer and co. say so. they want to keep the old world going as is. in this world russia gets to have an empire of the size it wants, including ukraine as its colony. why not? but strangely they do not want israel to grab palestine. (which i do not want either). but it does reek a bit of something for meersheimer and co. why can't israel have a greater israel if russia can have its empire?
Russia does not want Ukraine ....the political system there is enough to give anyone migraine.
exxactly, the system in ukraine still has a lot of semblance to a democracy. too much for putin to handle. cannot throw everybody out of a window.
Oh dear...........semblance to democracy like the USA? Hmmmm
i was just putting words to what you were calling giving a migraine by its very existence. so this migraine causing entity is still not throwing ciritics out of windows, i guess throwing people out of windows and shutting up in prisons doesn't give you migraines. congratulations on your strength
nsakun.
I really think it's time for you to 'grow up' and learn about Ukraine.
Greater Israel is a demented baby slaughterer.
Also, not sure that Putin is actually as demented as the Jewish leaders. They actually pretend that God wants them to pull babies out of incubators. I don't think Putin's calculations are based in Bronze Age Jewish rules of War. The level of delusional thinking in Israel is far, far greater. We all know full well that the Jewish God is pure bullshit fiction.
just like putin, exactly like putin
Not aware of Russian forces pulling premature babies out of incubators. So, not exactly alike, huh?
You really have bought the Mainstream Media Pill.
Israel has killed more children in 10 months (and this stat is after 6 months) than 5 years of world conflict combined.
yes, of course that justifies putin's criminal war of aggression. now i understand
Well you claim that Israel is exactly like Putin. I am just pointing out the factual inaccuracy of that claim.
If Putin is evil because he kills children, then Israel is more evil. And the U.S is funding Israel, providing it military support, selling weapons to it, and providing diplomatic cover. So the U.S is therefore more evil than Putin.
If the U.S is more evil than Putin, as measured by the amount of innocent children murdered directly or indirectly by its policies, than reducing Putin to a caricature of an evil villain is a bit simplistic.
By the way - I think the common denominator in these conflicts is U.S meddling and insistence of full-spectrum domination.
Anyway - you can tell yourself whatever you want about who is good and evil. I am curious about how you square away the cognitive dissonance.
Because Israel is only a regional hegemon and not a great world power. Great world powers influence and to some extant control it’s scope of action. Does that help?
What empire? It gave that up decades ago.
Because Ukraine exists on the doorstep of Russia, a great world power, the same way Mexico and Canada exist on the doorstep of a great world power, the USA. Geography and circumstance can and usually do dictate geopolitical possibilities and necessities. Only a child thinks it can do anything it wants anywhere it wants….until that first smack of discipline wakes the child to the world’s reality. Great powers matter to understanding. Now do you understand? Basically, I’m saying, as an adult, you should grow up.
Russia is no longer a great world power and unfortunately that is a fact that Russians have a hard time accepting. Not that it would justify invading Ukraine. Monroe Doctrine is a relic that gets thrown around sometimes but it means next to nothing.
Russia remains a great power. Not as great as us or China but a great power nonetheless. Its geographic position in Eastern Europe and the Asian Pacific and incredible natural resources make it so. As does its historic culture. You should give it its due regard.
Yeah, they were down and out in 1991, but they've clawed themselves back to a great power status, much to the everlasting agony of the U.S. elites, who are forever stuck in the '90s when Gorby and Yeltsin did everything the U.S. told them to do because they were too weak to say no.
Mearsheimer says Russia, China and the U.S. are the world's three great powers of the moment. Some wags say Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country, but one could also say the U.S. is an open-bar-with-crappy-food-and-porn-flicks masquerading as a country.
I agree it is as great as France only it still has its empire. The sooner they give up on believing they have a special place in the world, the better as it might allow them to reform and become great again although I think it is largely over for them. Obviously, they believe otherwise and I'm o.k. with that.
I don't think the US is all that special either. It is with its allies that US becomes great. Finally, this is a bulletin board and not a written paper; I can be as wild and free with my opinions as I like.
Did you mention it was a “relic” to Fidel C in Cuba in 1962? It’s alive and well today and will remain so for as long as the USA remains a superpower, though some denizens in Cambridge, Mass., Berkeley, Ca. and Madison, Wis. might not think so. Wrongly.
Yes, it's hardly a relic--- let Mexico join BRICS and we'll see clearly how little of a relic it is.
It was just an excuse to do what they wanted to do. The reasons for Monroe doctrine have long seince passed.
Just imagine Mexico decides to install Russian nuclear missiles in Northern Mexico. Do you think the US would allow it, even if Mexico so desired?
Do YOU have the right to join any organization you want? For example—If you are under the age of 50, can you join the AARP? My point is that organizations have the right and the responsibility to be selective about who joins them, and NATO was careless in that regard.
Big countries get to tell small countries what to do.
And also because it would take less than ten minutes for a missile fired from Kiev to reach Moscow, eliminating any chance to stop retaliation and Armaggedon
Does this policy also apply to Cuba?
It's Russia's version of the Monroe Doctrine.
Pat I suggest you read this again?
So I read it again and I still feel the assumption is that Putin has a right to dictate what Ukraine does. I understand he doesn’t like it…. Views it as a threat.
How does he feel about the Scandinavian states that have joined NATO…… will he invade them next?
Excuse me BUT: If another country put Nukes and heavy weapons on the Mexican border......how would YOU feel?
We *know* how Americans felt when the USSR out missiles in Cuba.
Folks the world is spherical. Get your hands on a globe and turn it so that Ukraine is at the centre
of the world and not your country.
Now if you were a nuclear Superpower (Russia) with a slim access to a warm water port and you had a “say” in whether opposing nuclear missiles were parked next door. You might choose to speak up. Much as I’m not a fan of Putin (or Trump or Harris), give Putin credit. He spoke up. And several times before launching his “special operation”. Here Americans and Ukrainians (and NATO sabre rattlers) look like idiots because the outcome was obvious from the start.
If you are a weapons contractor,
Sorry I got cut off.
Weapons contractors are happy. The rest pay with blood and money and the planet suffers.
That’s absurd, based of the histories of Scandinavian states and of Ukraine.
Do we have a right to dictate what Mexico does? Goose/Gander.
Do we have a right to dictate what the Lakota and Diné do?
I don't get the analogy - did the Lakota and Dine gets years of weapons and military training from China? Did they get secret Chinese spy bases?
Fucking xenophobic bigotry from Donald, here. Seems too familiar.
Stop being anti-Asian . You're a foul hater.
Donald is scared of Asians.
Donald is a bigot when it comes to Asians.
Please stop bashing Asians you Stoopid Racist bigot.
Oh the Chinese! Oh the Chinese! Donald Obama is not just incapable of grasping analogies, he also is. Racist towards Chinese people. Donald does Asian bashing because he's a xenophobic loser.
China? Are you a Trumpito Asian bashing shit head or whut?
Just another example of the US illegally controlling populations. Same goose/gander question as the one about Mexico. Point is that the US is a shitty empire that is on the verge of collapse. NATO made Ukraine what it is today.
NO.
I don't think he will invade them. However, if things descend into nuclear war they will be direct targets. On the other hand, at that point everyone is screwed.
Main problem for those countries is now they will face pressure from NATO and their own military industrial complexes to spend more on their military, thus diverting resources from more socially beneficially initiatives.
Plus as they further militarize, Russia will respond in kind, and a tinderbox will form. War will become steadily more likely and more devastating when it does happen.
Thanks to Joe Biden, the war mongering genocidal ass-wipe.
Read his article …
NATO is an illegal organization. A military alliance that exists outside of the UN can only be a force of tension and instability.
If you'd actually read JM's detailed article, you wouldn't have asked this question.
Thank you, Dr. Mearsheimer, for another excellent analysis backed by strong evidence. Other than a shared belief they all know what Putin thinks, its detractors can offer nothing to refute it. The goal to “destabilize” and “weaken Russia” was articulated by the Western leaders who provoked this war. They were clearly warned Ukraine’s planned accession to NATO was perceived by Russia as an existential threat.
The US, of course. It's always the US with its insane demagoguery. Always trying to appease what appears to be half its population's lust for warmongering. Ex-military should not be allowed to run for office. You have enough problems with all the lawyers.
US in Ukraine, Georgia and so forth are a milestone in Clinton-Talbot, Nuland-Kagan grand plan.
It went back way further than that. US never recognized the annexation of Baltic states and certainly GHWB worked for and Yeltsin acquiesed too. Letting the people of Eastern Europe decide if they want to be part of Russian empire was and still is a worthy objective. The question that should be asked is was it worth the cost and on that count, I do not know, but I do know that Russia faced no external threats from NATO. The threats are all internal.
Missiles a stones throw from Moscow? No external threat? Don’t be stupid.
The U.S. lust for hegemony is a constant external threat for Russia, especially since ‘45. The capitalist class, whether in the U.S., Britain, or Germany, cannot abide any threat to its ability to control the world economy.
lol ok
Those dang capitalists. Germany could not have done more to support Russia than they did. Russia blew that relationship, but hopefully, for Russia's sake it will come back someday but even that will not be enough to solve internal problems in Russia.
Nordstream. Yeah, that was some support for Russia right there.
It was; Russia blew it.
U.S. blew up Nordstream. And as for Russia’s internal problems, …they pale in comparison you.S.’s internal problems.
Ridiculous. They spent millions building it. It would have meant billions to their economy. But they blew it up. Why? Because that's what some Americans say?
Really. Link please.
Gold, Jeffrey! Gold!
Thank you, prof. Mearsheimer!
yes so much more democracy in russia.
too bad for you that russia cannot even simulate democracy for eager supporters like you. and so many of your kind, don't worry you are not alone
Thank you Professor!
Our so-called leaders seem to be cheerleaders for any potential polemics. especially when oil or other resources are at stake. Venezuela, anyone? I cannot imagine the burden of being a realist in this current clown show, but you have beautifully documented a synopsis of contemporary history in Ukraine that boggles politician's plans. Of course, rational people agree with you, John, but that seems to be a diminishing minority! Thank you, as always.