Before I explain why the International Relations scholar John Mearsheimer was right about Ukraine, a practical note is in order. I decided to change the format of this newsletter a bit. Up until now, I have only posted long-read articles on my Substack after they were published elsewhere first. I now realize, however, that long-read pieces don’t really fit in this publishing format. Besides, I found myself unable to produce such articles on a regular basis. And finally, I’ve often been told that I should learn to get my point across faster. People don’t have much time, after all. All of this to justify the new format: short contrarian takes on politics, economics, and history – posted weekly on Wednesdays. I will still write longer articles from time to time, but they will only be published elsewhere. I will, however, link to them in these weekly newsletters.
With that out of the way, let’s turn to the matter at hand.
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have spilled the beans on NATO rejecting Ukraine as a future member state. “I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” the transcript of the interview read. Then, Zelensky dropped the bombshell: “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors remain open.” This was not just a slip of the tongue, since the president of Ukraine made similar remarks a couple of days earlier.
This short statement confirms what astute observers already knew to be the case before the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine. In essence, Zelensky here said that 1) NATO will keep up appearances of Ukraine becoming a member but 2) in truth, that is not going to happen. The first segment was codified back in 2008, when the final communiqué of a NATO summit in the old Warsaw Pact city of Bucharest appeared to leave no doubt that Ukraine “will become a NATO member.” The bitter truth, however, was signaled to Ukraine in December 2021, when, according to the Associated Press, “senior State Department officials have told Ukraine that NATO membership is unlikely to be approved in the next decade.”
This brings us to John Mearsheimer, an International Relations professor at the University of Chicago and one of the most renowned exponents of the so-called Realist school. This school of thought operates from the premise that power, not ideological principles, dictates geopolitics. People like Mearsheimer argue, for instance, that small countries bordering powerful nations have no choice but to appease them. If other big powers make these small countries believe that they got their back, however, they might feel confident to stand up to the dictates of their menacing neighbor, which, in turn, might then resort to arms.
This was the basic reasoning behind Mearsheimer’s 2014 article in Foreign Affairs (and now famous lecture) titled “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin.” By pushing NATO and EU membership as well as pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine to promote democracy, the West poked the Russian bear, Mearsheimer maintained. When that democracy promotion culminated in a US-backed coup that brought a fiercely anti-Russian regime into power in Kiev in 2014, Russia reacted by seizing Crimea and sending special forces into the self-proclaimed pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas. A protracted war there has been going on there ever since.
At the time, Putin nonetheless exercised some restraint to not antagonize the West too much. For instance, he declined requests from the Donbas republics to be incorporated into Russia. In February of this year, however, Putin changed his mind as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As Mearsheimer as recently pointed out, what forced Putin’s hand was the fact that Ukraine was becoming a “de facto member of NATO.” Indeed, in the last few years, the United States and its European allies have poured weapons into Ukraine, trained its armed forces and conducted joint naval exercises in the Black Sea region. In November 2021, a month before telling the Ukrainians that they could forget real NATO membership in the near future, the Biden administration moreover signed a “US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership” which reaffirmed the “2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration.” Russia then flexed its muscles by amassing troops on the border and demanded a number of security guarantees from the United States, most important of which was a commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO. When the Russian bear was rebuffed, it invaded.
What the West should have done instead over the past fifteen years, or at least should do now, according to Mearsheimer and other military specialists and senior statesmen, is foster diplomacy aimed at turning Ukraine into a neutral state. This may not be what many Ukrainians want, especially in the west of the country, but it offers a chance at peace which would satisfy Russia’s strategic concerns.
For now, however, the West has mostly followed through on its policy of acting tough but doing very little beyond sending weapons to Ukraine and slapping sanctions on Russia. On Monday, for instance, a State Department spokesperson doubled down on the Biden administration’s Wilsonian rhetoric, claiming that the war was bigger than Russia and Ukraine because “universal principles” were at stake.
The essence of the West’s hypocrisy can be summed up by recent revelations showing that the United States has deployed secret CIA paramilitaries in Eastern Ukraine since 2014 but, tellingly, pulled them out as soon as things heated up in February. We are ready to fight until the last Ukrainian, but no Western politician is prepared to let European or American troops fight and die to save Kiev.
Dr. John M. quoted here, along with something of how we got here and where we are going . . .
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-war
Very good summary of the situation.
I think the diplomatic solution, in the wake of the 2014 coup and the 2022 Russian invasion, is the following (not necessarily in this order):
1. Zelensky regime keeps Western Ukraine (everything West of Donbas) and signs a pact with Russia that it will be a neutral state, meaning no NATO membership and no NATO military installations. But they must pay war reparations to Donbas.
2. Donbas gets independence from Ukraine, and forms its own sovereign state.
3. US removes all sanctions on Russia and Russian people.
4. Russia removes all troops and equipment from Ukraine and Donbas and they should pay war reparations to Ukraine.
5. Economic relations are to be fostered (via leadership and encouragement, not government programs) between these nations as soon as possible.