Foreign Policy expert John Mearsheimer on the current state of the Ukraine-Russian War.
Follow John Mearsheimer on his YouTube Channel.
32 thoughts on “John Mearsheimer: I Think the Russians Now Have the Upper Hand”
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Foreign Policy expert John Mearsheimer on the current state of the Ukraine-Russian War.
Follow John Mearsheimer on his YouTube Channel.
Comments are closed.
That’s terrible: It’ll become dysfunctional with no peace, just a cease fire.
So many dead. And the Ukrainians tried to vote neutrality. Putin wanted neutrality.
It’s horrible. And now they hate one another.
I wish Ukraine could retain sea access. I guess it was fated.
Ukraine needs a leader that will align the country with Russia since the US won’t accept neutrality.
They needn’t “align,” really. They just need to not pose a threat.
If Mongolia were to threaten China, it’d get invaded.
I’m not saying Russia necessarily needed to invade. But Ukraine lost enormously. They have a nice state there. Now, there’s depleted uranium, lost territory, and a permanent enemy that will keep them weak and corrupt. It’s dreadful.
Ukraine is one of those areas that’s unlikely to ever know extended peace due to its location, and while any given “alignment” may speed up or slow down the timeline for its next experience as a battlefield, that experience is always coming.
If they close their society, that needn’t happen. If they keep out Russians and Americans, they could know peace.
They just need to make clear that they’re no threat. Surely that’s possible.
No, it is not possible at all now.
Ukraine is an entirely subservient client state of The United States of Hell now and in NO position to EVER liberate itself from it. Period.
Syria manages. It appears to be dealing drugs to survive, but it’s keeping on… Little water. Little food. Sanctioned to heck. And it continues on.
Syria was saved by Russia, if you remember.
No such luck for Ukraine.
Not yet, anyway.
One need not be a “threat” to attract the attention of covetous empires. And that’s even more true now than it was back when geography imposed significant time limits.
They had regime change in Kiev because they leaned to Russia. The neocons did not like that at all, they jumped in bed with the neo-Nazis. They want confrontation with Russia and control of Russian minerals and universal US hegemon power.
Well, the Banderistas chose wrong. Some of them have surely realized by now that without children, there is no Ukraine.
They probably took the Covid vaccine too. They just have no elite to protect them I guess. They’re just regular people without a head, without an elite to think for them.
Ukraine is “one of those areas unlikely to ever know extended peace” due to the mind-blowingly idiotic position of ABSOLUTE moral, political and intellectual superiority most beautifully demonstrated by Rt. Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind in his “U.S.A & Global Leadership Debate” at the Oxford Union about a year ago. (You can find the video on YouTube). Strictly speaking, ALL and without exception, of MR’s MOST SPECTACULARLY entertaining assertions are nothing more than shabbily constructed fakes in the face of all facts available to date. But that doesn’t concern his audience one single bit. It is his entertainment skills, enhanced by the most advanced form of projective chicanery there is these days, that counts for the audience. The bottom line for Malcolm and likeminded political entertainers is – why bother even to notice the sorry state of The GREATEST of the Great British economy (most recently highlighted by Ken Clark in a Daily Telegraph article by Amy Gibbons) if there is Russia to point the finger at, poke fun and lecture all of us about??
Back to you, Thomas.
The US is certainly part of that mix, but it’s also a new similar addition to that mix. Poland and Ukraine have been stomping grounds for more powerful/aggressive empires for centuries.
Poland played a key role in initiating the conflict.
Ukraine had the same options as Austria, it worked great and would have for Ukraine, like Finland, and Sweden, and Switzerland. You have to try it first. The USA does not support a neutral Ukraine. But what business is it of the USA, thousands of miles away on another continent?
Russia never threatened the USA. Why does Biden and his sh*thead neocons want a regime change in Moscow and a broken RF?
Does he even have a coherent foreign policy, maybe even before the beginning of his dementia?
“But what business is it of the USA, thousands of miles away on another continent?”
It’s none of the USA’s business, and Ukraine would likely have been better off remaining a Russian imperial satrapy (fake “neutrality”) than becoming a US imperial satrapy.
Yes. As I understand it, the name “Ukraine” means “borderland”. Suggesting that it lies in or between the borders of other countries. Which implies that its own area fluctuates with changes in where those borders are defined. In other words, it’s unstable.
Ukraine could’ve easily survived and prospered as a federal state.
But there were other options for both the eu and the us.
Hence we are where we are today.
Yea, or just broken up a bit with Ukraine keeping west of the Dnieper and also keeping Odessa. If Russia had that nice river as a border…
But a federated solution wasn’t necessary. They just needed to not spook Russia.
A real nationalist would have acted differently. Ukraine’s leaders, some, wanted war, wanted a cut.
But the Ukrainian nation has lost. So, as a nation, it chose incorrectly. The real nationalists were likely executed.
It’s not even Ukrainian leaders who wanted the war. The idea was planted in their heads by the usual suspect who had to find a way of weakening Russia one way or another to survive and sustain a continuous flow of blood into its system, without which it would’ve died a long time ago. Further introduction to the subject is available from John Perkins in “The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and William Blum in “America’s Deadliest Export”. There are many more.
Russia was no threat to Ukraine, Poland is, the USA opposed neutrality, USA/NATO needed a proxy to fight Russia. This is a war between USA and Russia. Ukraine and people are only cannonfodder, the cheapest money can buy, according to Sen. Graham and Romney and others.
The quote above. My response: “Duh! Ya think?” This is why I don’t pay that much attention to Mearsheimer. Like a lot of these “realist foreign policy” guys, they tend to say what is already obvious to anyone who was paying attention for the last ten to twenty years. “Israel influenced the US to go to war in Iraq” – oh, gee, I would never have guessed. He’s also next to clueless about military capability and strategy so ignore him on that subject.
Its quite obvious he lacks the insight into the depth of the geopolitical storm active currently. He has western media agency and connections but also needs to pay the bills, so he sort plays a role of an alt-media peruser and summariser for MSM platforms. He, however doesn’t have the tools for critical analysis of his findings from alt media so he comes off as a paradox.
He’s very skilled in his delivery. A person could easily listen to him for the full 4 hrs he desires.
Yes there are some pastors or guru that can preach so effectively that you just want to bask in their word. We all need a reassuring word in troubled times. We will take it from anywhere. I myself am just wary of some people. Because of their influence peddling sometimes they do contribute to misleading people whether they are aware of it or not simply by their choice of position. A good case study us Scott Ritter. There has been an attempt at self reflection and growth on his behalf from the beginning of the war and now. He bothered to do something to get a better understanding of how he can better play a part. He didn’t rest on his laurels and use just his past experiences to inform us on the geopolitical currents, he updated his knowledge then integrated it with his experience and figured it out. Some people don’t go through such changes, they stick to whatever beliefs or perspectives they had from before and use this as a base.
It’s good for my sanity to have someone speak a bit of truth.
Yes …. yes they do.
The Mearsheimer video is good but predates the Ukraine counteroffensive, so it is a little out of date. But that does not change the analysis: Russia has a huge military advantage over Ukraine, now and into the future.
What I find worrying in Mearsheimer’s analysis is his conclusion that the war is now an existential matter for the countries in NATO, because they depend on NATO for security and will feel quite unprotected if Russia decisively wins the Ukraine conflict. For the US the outcome is not an existential threat, but for Europe it could be so. And what matters is how the European countries perceive it, not how the US perceives it.
That is worrisome because the conflict becomes an existential matter for both Russia and Europe, both of which have nuclear weapons. I am increasingly concerned that the US and Europe are sleepwalking into WWIII.
Heaven help us all!
The chances of Russia “decisively winning” the conflict are infinitesimal. Which is why some of the European states are already backing off their earlier plans to massively boost military spending. They now know the only Russian military threat to them is nuclear.
OK, thanks. Now I can relax.