Professor John Mearsheimer on Why the West is principally Responsible for the Ukraine Crisis By Charles Taylor (Florida)
The Professor John Mearsheimer take on why the West is responsible for the Ukraine crisis has been around, but at last I have found a version not protected by a paywall, but now have. The problem has all begun by the Ukraine wanting to be a part of NATO. Putin sees that as an existential threat, since nothing prevents nuclear missiles being lined right up to the Russian border. It is simply repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since
the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is
essential if we are to prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to
find a way to bring it to a close.
There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is
responsible for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another
matter. The mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational,
out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of
the former Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for
the Ukraine crisis.
But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is
principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It
has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine,
but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia
and NATO.
The trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO's Bucharest summit in
April 2008, when George W. Bush's administration pushed the alliance to
announce that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members". Russian leaders
responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an
existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a
respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin "flew into a rage" and warned
that "if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the
eastern regions. It will simply fall apart." America ignored Moscow's
red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark
on Russia's border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing
Ukraine closer to the eu and making it a pro-American democracy.
These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an
uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine's pro-Russian
president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia
took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in
the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to
the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto
member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump
administration decided to sell Kyiv "defensive weapons". What counts as
"defensive" is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly
looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other
NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training
its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval
exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval
exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries.
Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval
destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its
territorial waters.
The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden
administration. This commitment is reflected throughout an important
document—the "us-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership"—that was
signed in November by Antony Blinken, America's secretary of state, and
Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart. The aim was to "underscore … a
commitment to Ukraine's implementation of the deep and comprehensive
reforms necessary for full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic
institutions." The document explicitly builds on "the commitments made
to strengthen the Ukraine-u.s. strategic partnership by Presidents
Zelensky and Biden," and also emphasises that the two countries will be
guided by the "2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration."
Unsurprisingly, Moscow found this evolving situation intolerable and
began mobilising its army on Ukraine's border last spring to signal its
resolve to Washington. But it had no effect, as the Biden administration
continued to move closer to Ukraine. This led Russia to precipitate a
full-blown diplomatic stand-off in December. As Sergey Lavrov, Russia's
foreign minister, put it: "We reached our boiling point." Russia
demanded a written guarantee that Ukraine would never become a part of
NATO and that the alliance remove the military assets it had deployed in
eastern Europe since 1997. The subsequent negotiations failed, as Mr
Blinken made clear: "There is no change. There will be no change." A
month later Mr Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine to eliminate the
threat he saw from NATO.
This interpretation of events is at odds with the prevailing mantra in
the West, which portrays NATO expansion as irrelevant to the Ukraine
crisis, blaming instead Mr Putin's expansionist goals. According to a
recent NATO document sent to Russian leaders, "NATO is a defensive
Alliance and poses no threat to Russia." The available evidence
contradicts these claims. For starters, the issue at hand is not what
Western leaders say NATO's purpose or intentions are; it is how Moscow
sees NATO's actions.
Mr Putin surely knows that the costs of conquering and occupying large
amounts of territory in eastern Europe would be prohibitive for Russia.
As he once put it, "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart.
Whoever wants it back has no brain." His beliefs about the tight bonds
between Russia and Ukraine notwithstanding, trying to take back all of
Ukraine would be like trying to swallow a porcupine. Furthermore,
Russian policymakers—including Mr Putin—have said hardly anything about
conquering new territory to recreate the Soviet Union or build a greater
Russia. Rather, since the 2008 Bucharest summit Russian leaders have
repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining NATO as an existential
threat that must be prevented. As Mr Lavrov noted in January, "the key
to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward."
Tellingly, Western leaders rarely described Russia as a military threat
to Europe before 2014. As America's former ambassador to Moscow Michael
McFaul notes, Mr Putin's seizure of Crimea was not planned for long; it
was an impulsive move in response to the coup that overthrew Ukraine's
pro-Russian leader. In fact, until then, NATO expansion was aimed at
turning all of Europe into a giant zone of peace, not containing a
dangerous Russia. Once the crisis started, however, American and
European policymakers could not admit they had provoked it by trying to
integrate Ukraine into the West. They declared the real source of the
problem was Russia's revanchism and its desire to dominate if not
conquer Ukraine.
My story about the conflict's causes should not be controversial, given
that many prominent American foreign-policy experts have warned against
NATO expansion since the late 1990s. America's secretary of defence at
the time of the Bucharest summit, Robert Gates, recognised that "trying
to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching". Indeed,
at that summit, both the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, were opposed to moving forward on
NATO membership for Ukraine because they feared it would infuriate Russia.
The upshot of my interpretation is that we are in an extremely dangerous
situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks. For Russia's
leaders, what happens in Ukraine has little to do with their imperial
ambitions being thwarted; it is about dealing with what they regard as a
direct threat to Russia's future. Mr Putin may have misjudged Russia's
military capabilities, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance and
the scope and speed of the Western response, but one should never
underestimate how ruthless great powers can be when they believe they
are in dire straits. America and its allies, however, are doubling down,
hoping to inflict a humiliating defeat on Mr Putin and to maybe even
trigger his removal. They are increasing aid to Ukraine while using
economic sanctions to inflict massive punishment on Russia, a step that
Putin now sees as "akin to a declaration of war".
America and its allies may be able to prevent a Russian victory in
Ukraine, but the country will be gravely damaged, if not dismembered.
Moreover, there is a serious threat of escalation beyond Ukraine, not to
mention the danger of nuclear war. If the West not only thwarts Moscow
on Ukraine's battlefields, but also does serious, lasting damage to
Russia's economy, it is in effect pushing a great power to the brink. Mr
Putin might then turn to nuclear weapons.
At this point it is impossible to know the terms on which this conflict
will be settled. But, if we do not understand its deep cause, we will be
unable to end it before Ukraine is wrecked and NATO ends up in a war
with Russia.”
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