This kind of analysis ignores what Ukraine and Ukrainians actually want. Western Ukraine, at the very least, is extremely nationalist and anti-Russian. Do they not have the right of self-determination as a sovereign country?
A response by other IR theorists: <a href="https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Moscows-Choice.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Mosco...</a><p>HN really don’t like IR and geopolitics. Almost all the other IR centric views on other threads have been downvoted or flagged.
I found his lecture quite interesting as well on YouTube. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4</a>
The US, etc could have banned Ukraine from NATO forever and it wouldn't have mattered at all. Putin's speech rarely mentioned NATO as his deciding factor. He said doesn't believe Ukraine should exist independently of Russia.
I think the author is mostly correct, however has one big blind spot.<p>US policy towards Ukraine is not incorrect, it’s working as designed from the start. They knew how Russia would react, they were just willing to throw them under the bus so they can force Russia’s hand.
It may be the case that "The West" could have done things to prevent this invasion, but the choice to start blowing up children and families was Putin's. It is his fault.
The crux of the argument is since the West is expanding NATO then it's the West's fault. Excuse me - what does national sovereignty mean? If the Ukraine desires to join NATO and NATO desires to have the Ukraine join then that's the Ukraine's prerogative as a sovereign nation. It's also Russia's prerogative to invade a sovereign nation, but they should fully expect to pay a price for that - up to and including all-out war. This isn't difficult. Both sides are calculating the costs and how much they're willing to pay.
Shockingly prescient and a well-done analysis in general, but I still don’t buy the “Putin had no other choice” argument.<p>It boils down to the equivalent of the “It wasn’t my fault that I raped the woman, she wore a short skirt!” bullshit argument.<p>I understand the “this is how realpolitik works” line of thought, I really do. But it doesn’t change who’s at fault here.
Sounds like a useful idiot to me.<p>Russia has been dislocating extremely threatening weaponry right on NATO doorstep and treating it as its holy right, for a long time. The Kaliningrad region is Europe’s most militarised area, with SAM and tactical ballistic weaponry extending over most of Poland and the Baltic’s, quite possibly most of Europe in fact. Russian nuke-capable bombers graze NATO airspaces on an almost daily rate.<p>But Ukraine <i>thinks</i> about joining NATO and Russia has <i>no choice</i> but carve out some of its territory? And it’s the <i>west’s</i> fault?<p>In a 19th century Polish book (very racist by modern standards) by Nobel prize winning author Sienkiewicz, “In the desert and in the jungle”, an indigenous man Kali is being “enlightened” about Christianity. When asked to provide an example of a bad deed, he says “when someone take cow from Kali”. Asked for a good deed, he volunteers: “when Kali take cow”.<p>Basically, you don’t need to understand more about morality to understand Putin’s idea of statehood and leadership.
Imagine how different the world would be if the west allowed Putin to join NATO like he wanted...<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...</a>
Um, no. It is the democratization, that ticks Russia off. Regardless of EU and US involvement, Russian leadership cannot tolerate a culturally similar country doing better. This would provoke so many questions: how come they get to change their leadership frequently and, apparently, this does not end in disaster? How come their oligarchy does not run rampant? Also, since this is a repeated pattern from Hungary and Czechoslovakia (county makes decisions Moscow does not like, Moscow sends tanks), who provoked them then? By the logic of the author, every move of every country defending themselves or making any decision against the interests of Moscow can be seen as provocation and thus condemned. That’s not realpolitik, that’s just plain old propaganda of the world order, where one or maybe two superpowers have a say and everyone else stays put. That world is gone.
From the opening paragraph this is extremely dated.<p>Recently, in so many words, Putin himself said he wanted the rebuilding of the old Soviet empire. This might have seemed like a plausible explanation during Crimea. But this is all garbage when hearing straight from Putin a couple of days ago.