Mearsheimer should be ashamed of himself

I cannot believe the Economist published this. It is just playing to the Putin narrative.

The Economist @TheEconomist

“We are in an extremely dangerous situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks,” warns the political scientist in a guest essay for The Economist

econ.stJohn Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisisThe political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia

The origins of the current conflict are not Feb 2014 and Mearsheimer just plain wrong argument that this was about NATO enlargement.

Ukraine 101 - NATO really did not figure in the Euromaydan as back then the vast majority of Ukrainians did not want it. Back then opinion polls showed single digit support for NATO membership as most Ukrainians knew it would piss Russia off. Two thirds were against. And back then Ukraine had non aligned status, had next to no real military capability and it’s military doctrine was still Soviet - the Ukrainian military planned for any attack to come from the West, not from Russia! They were zero threat to Moscow and yet Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas.

Euromaydan was not even about EU membership as a) the EU never gave Ukraine any real membership perspective, only a glorified trade deal, the AA/DCFTA; and b) the Ukrainians were not that stupid as to think they would. 

Euromaydan, as with the Orange Revolution a decade before, was more about Ukrainians’ desire not to live in a autocracy/kleptocracy. And remember here Russia offered a competing vision of Ukrainian membership in its Eurasian Union. Ukrainians saw this as a choice between European values and Russian style kleptocracy. It was not a choice between two security blocks. Security status was not on the agenda at that point.

Sure subsequently Ukrainians shifted - they realised that non aligned status, and de facto demilitarised status, got them nowhere but invasion and annexation by Russia. And Russian aggression pushed more Ukrainians to favour NATO membership - two third now. They now want security guarantees which come with NATO membership and an ability to defend themselves - and the only reason that Russian tanks are not already in Kyiv is because Ukraine has gained a defensive military capability. 

Note the word “defensive” military capability here. Ukraine has the ability to launch missile or artillery strikes into Russia but has held back thus far. So even when faced with a Russian invasion they are still not attacking Russia - so where is this security threat to Russia that Putin keeps going on about?

Just to underline this is not about NATO membership for Ukraine, or the fact Russia feels some kind of military threat from NATO enlargement or even Ukrainian re-armament. Plain and simple it is about Putin’s own great power/colonial ambitions plus I sense his fear of his own people - that they might actually aspire to the same European values that Ukrainians have revolted twice to advance and are now laying down their lives in the thousands to defend.

And maybe Mearsheimer should read Putin’s own essay which he distributed to every member of the Russian armed forces over the summer. It spelled out what he wanted them to fight for - for the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, he even dissed the very right of Ukraine to exist. In fact this has all the makings of 1930s style fascism which Meiershmeier fails to even comprehend.

Let’s face it, NATO represents a zero military threat to Russia and Moscow with its huge military intelligence machine knows that. Does Meiershmeier really think that NATO has the conventional military might to invade Russia? May I remind him that the US removed all its troops and tanks from Europe by 2013 - and yet Russia still invaded Donbas and annexed Crimea. The German army is next to non existent - from 2000 MTBs in 1991 to 200 now. The U.K. army has shrunk to 78k, the lowest number since before WW2. Perhaps Meiershmeier could explain how NATO will invade Russia when it would barely be able to defend its own borders - can NATO really defend the Baltic states with less than 1,000 NATO troops deployed in each from other member states. Seriously where is the threat?

Sure he will no doubt site Bosnia and Kosovo. But in both these cases NATO acted very late, too late in my mind. And it was to stop genocide. And it pulled out in both cases allowing elections and democratic governments to assume control. Iraq - not a NATO operation. NATO might have been minded to intervene in the recent crisis in Belarus to prevent blatant and extreme human rights abuses, and airline terrorism, and even in Ukraine. But in both cases it has declined direct intervention - not even willing to enforce a no fly zone in Ukraine despite massive civilian casualties at the hands of indiscriminate Russian bombing.

But people like Mearsheimer just play to the Kremlin’s narrative - it was all the West’s fault. So how about the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars in development aid which went into Russia after 1991? Billions of dollars in the EU TACIS programme. We opened up our markets - allowed Russia to raise more than $2 trillion via our capital markets to let them modernise their industry. We allowed our managers, accountancy first, banks, law firms to bring Russia inc up to modern standards. We gave Russia a window and market to the world via WTO membership. We allowed it’s elites to enrich themselves and fill state coffers. We actually funded Putin’s rebuild of the Russian military.

And what did we get from all this? Animosity, jealousy, and now war. We gave Russia an open hand and got slapped in the face. Worse for Ukrainians now who are being murdered because they aspire to live by our values and not Putin’s.

Let’s not try and find scapegoats at home but realise that all this is because of one plain evil man - Putin - which we have enabled for too long and failed to realise the true nature of the threat.