Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis | Hacker News Reader

Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis

economist.com

13 pointscf141q532511 comments

Without commenting on the situation or the topic, it's strange how close-minded and terrified of different opinions or ideas people are to this topic. There's a rabid, hateful, jingoistic "you're either with us or you're a traitor" fervor. It's amazing how strongly people are influenced by the popular narrative, the media, politicians. I seem to remember it was like this in the lead up to the last Iraq war too. Freedom fries, and USA chants, and denunciation of traitors everywhere.

Funny thing is a lot of the current hate I see coming from people who would ordinarily be the first in line to blame the west for any and all suffering, conflict, wars, and injustice around the world. Digging as far back to the crusades and the Roman Empire if necessary.

Yet I've never seen alternate views like this highly upvoted or discussed rationally on sites like this or reddit, despite swaths of newly minted Russia/Ukraine experts who one would have thought would be thirsty for new reading and debate on the subject.

> Yet I've never seen alternate views like this highly upvoted or discussed rationally on sites like this or reddit

Two reasons why this won't get upvoted that have nothing to do with what you said:

1. Article is behind a paywall 2. It's a shallow and uninteresting take

I've never seen any slightly contrary opinion upvoted at all, so any depth would be better than none. But "Putin = Hitler" is the shallowest and most boring take there is, and those are upvoted ad nauseam by the intelligentsia. So depth certainly does not correlate with popularity.

Paywalls maybe. I've seen lots of paywalled articles on the front page too though so I'm also skeptical about that explaining it.

> The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia

Scott Alexander has a response to this that puts it very succinctly. The expansion of NATO is responsible for Russian aggression in the same way that a woman wearing revealing clothes is responsible for sexual assault. There may be a causal link but the blame lies firmly with the aggressor in both cases.

While it is true that the Russians are most at fault morally, acknowledging that does nothing to stop them now of to stop things like this from happening again in the future. If we actually want to make things better, we need to think about what we could have done/could be doing differently.

It's a slippery slope if you start thinking in this way. It starts out saying "well, just dress a little less provocatively" or "don't talk about expanding Nato", but you'll end up realizing that was always just an excuse and the assaults will happen regardless, just with different excuses given. Then you'd have people saying you need to make another "small" concession, and so on.

As to what the west could actually have done, it's things like "not elect Trump" or "not do Brexit" or "not have growing right wing movement in Hungary and nearby countries". The general fragmentation and disunity in Western culture over the last couple of decades is what allowed Putin to think he could get away with this. The Nato stuff is mostly just another false flag/excuse, or, at best, it's just one tiny part of the cause.

> As to what the west could actually have done, it's things like "not elect Trump" or "not do Brexit" or "not have growing right wing movement in Hungary and nearby countries".

What does that have to do with anything? If anything Trump wanted to stop Nord Stream 2 and wanted Germany to arm itself, and the Hungarians have a deep-seated grudge against Russian imperialism. But none of that mattered in the end because none of it changed the fundamental calculus of "Russia has nukes, and they care more about Ukraine than the West does." We should have been honest about that, and allowed the Ukrainians to seek an arrangement with the Russians as best they could, in a way that doesn't end with civilians getting shelled. Instead, we gave them false hope with our tough-sounding rhetoric, which made a deal politically impossible for Ukranian leaders—and now people are dying because of our lies.

> The expansion of NATO is responsible for Russian aggression in the same way that a woman wearing revealing clothes is responsible for sexual assault.

This comparison isn't valid. In that case, according to Mearsheimer, expansion of NATO to Ukraine is perceived as an existential threat to Russia.

nato is an aggressive, offensive military alliance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

Nato is a serious threat to Russia -- a threat the US would never tolerate on its own borders, it goes without saying (Cuban Missile Crisis).

i don't suspect Mearsheimer means that Joe Biden personally held onto Putin's face and moved his jaw and lips while lip-syncing to give the order to invade -- i suspect he just means the obvious - the US pushed Nato membership on Ukraine, knowing it/we/US would win with either outcome -- as long as it didn't escalate to nuclear war -- which it still might.

the possible outcomes were: 1) ukrainian nato membership, or 2) russian invasion of ukraine with all the pluses that brought for the US

once you realize the US played a central role in creating the conditions to start this war, you realize that they/the US/we have a central role to play in stopping this war.

there is no US anti-war movement anymore -- so Ukraine is getting smashed.

maybe the rest of the world is next.

Paywalled, anyone have an archive link?

A March 11th 2022 John Mearsheimer account on the Russian war in Ukraine sounds extremely interesting.

https://archive.ph/WFzxA

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