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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

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?

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The author doesn't care what Ukrainians want, and neither does Russia or the United States for that matter. He's a political realist. I think the author would say that you have the right to self-determination if you actually possess the political capital to have the right to begin with. It is obvious that the Ukrainians do not (whereas the Poles, French, Germans, etc. do).

People are very much missing this point; there is no value judgement here over what "should" be happening.

There has always been clear red line; if NATO is attacked, we're starting WWIII. If a non-NATO friendly country is attacked, we'll complain loudly and declare sanctions.

Ukraine is not in NATO and we should've behaved accordingly (i.e, not sponsor a coup)

"We" (whoever that is) did not "sponsor a coup". Stop spreading misinformation. What happened was that the Ukrainian people were sick of Russian puppet and kicked him out - at great cost, he murdered a lot of them.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a coup. Don’t forget Biden and his sons “business” there. It’s at the very least a valid theory.

What a monstrous attitude.

Luckily it is, essentialy, the basis of customary international law, otherwise the entire world would disintegrate in to ethnic violence until we ended up with perfectly aligned ethno-states rather than the borders we have now, the majority of which are in place as the relics of failed empires.

There is a reason Mearsheimer is part of an IR school of thought called "Realists." This analysis doesn't focus much on self-determinism or international law because it assumes that these concepts don't have much influence. I also think that it's regrettable, but people making foreign policy calls should be aware of this line of thinking.

For what it's worth, what Mearsheimer is saying here about NATO expansion being destabilizing is pretty much exactly what Putin is saying in his various speeches.

> it assumes that these concepts don't have much influence.

But international law has a lot of influence. As a set of shared norms, it's something that most competently-run countries and polities explicitly foster in order to achieve some sort of long-term stability and predictability that ultimately benefits them all. A "realist" analysis that simply ignores these dynamics and pretends they do not exist is not very realistic after all.

On the other hand, international law only influences where the geopolitical setting allows it to. When it comes to the question of life and death for a superpower, international law no longer needs to mean anything.

I can observe an analogy of this for an individual person in a situation that he feels is life-threatening: criminal law or civil law are not the first things that come to mind but survival is. Only the one who first survives has a chance to return to law when things are settled back enough.

Only when backed by force. There is no higher power in the playground of states. Ultimately countries by themselves are not necessarily rational actors. Smaller states join larger power blocs (either coerced or voluntarily, essentially they are trading off sovereignty for protection) and their own individual freedom to act gets subsumed. When it comes to dealing with Great Powers, realism is about as good as we can get, it is also predictably one of the oldest schools of thought in political science. The LIO theory is great in the decade post Cold War, but the world is multipolar now.

To my understanding it doesn’t ignore international law so much as singlemindedly focus on the forces and interests that “truly” drive it and are inherent to nature, ie global anarchy navigated by power/security concerns.

“Anarchy is what states make of it” is a great search phrase to pull on this thread with to say the least.

No, not if it significantly affects others, as it would in this case, by risking a nuclear war.

Should countries be able to get nuclear weapons just because they want them?

Russia is the one threatening nuclear war here.

That’s on Russia, no one else.

It's on everyone who can take actions to prevent it.

Yes except your comment seemingly leaves out any responsibility on Russia’s part.

The only way Ukrainian sovereignty leads to nuclear war is if the Russians are making it so.

I do not know why you are downvoted and flagged. You are perfectly correct, the point of non-proliferation policy is exactly to prevent more states from acquiring such weapons. The agency and rights of non-nuclear owning nations have no bearing here.

His whole first chapter is about that, is it not?

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