Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

This is the critical, falsifiable prediction, to my mind:<p>Putin &quot;understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union. He can’t do that. What he’s doing in Ukraine is fundamentally different. He is obviously lopping off some territory. He’s going to take some territory away from Ukraine, in addition to what happened with Crimea, in 2014. Furthermore, he is definitely interested in regime change. Beyond that, it’s hard to say exactly what this will all lead to, except for the fact that he is not going to conquer all of Ukraine. It would be a blunder of colossal proportions to try to do that.<p>&quot;Q: I assume that you think if he were to try to do that, that would change your analysis of what we’ve witnessed.<p>&quot;Absolutely. My argument is that he’s not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine.&quot;

If the current situation in Ukraine is non-aggressive, I guess the aggressive stuff will glow in the dark or have dead flies laying on dead bodies?

<i>So we invented this story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the Soviet Union.</i><p>There&#x27;s no need to &quot;invent&quot; what Putin has very clearly told us in his public speeches. Recreating &quot;historical Russia in the form of the Soviet Union&quot; is the stated goal of what Mearsheimer apparently considers to be Putin&#x27;s bold act of non-aggression this past week.<p>What a mindfuck. Only an intellectual can come up with argumentation like this.