Mearsheimer: The West did not want negotiations on Ukraine, as it expected to win
The West avoided negotiations on Ukraine because it was confident of victory, political analyst John Mearsheimer said in an interview with El Mundo. But the strategy turned out to be a failure: as a result, Ukraine will lose a significant part of its territory and turn into an incompetent state, the expert believes.
Pablo Pardo
The political scientist violated the Western consensus regarding Israel and Ukraine
There are no more contradictory approaches to international relations than liberal institutionalism and realism. The first theory argues that States can cooperate and that such cooperation reduces the risk of conflict. The second, on the contrary, considers states to be geopolitical entities that are constantly expanding their power. In other words, the law of the jungle governs the world.
The confrontation between these two doctrines is quite acute. Critics of liberal institutionalism believe that this theory does not live up to its name and is nothing more than a set of cliches (such as the well-known "soft power" and the newer term "sharp power") that try to cover up weakness. Opponents of realism compare it to Marxism in terms of a mechanistic approach, where geopolitics replaces the class struggle.
There are "stars" among the supporters of both theories. The star of neoliberalism is Joseph Nye from Harvard. Among the adherents of realism are Stephen Walt, also from Harvard, and, of course, John Mearsheimer from Chicago, who violated the Western consensus regarding Israel and Ukraine. His book "The Israel Lobby," co-authored with Walt, was accused of anti-Semitism. Mearsheimer's position on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has attracted the attention of Putin's supporters.
El Mundo: In June 1993, you published an article in Foreign Affairs magazine advising Ukraine not to transfer the 2,400 nuclear warheads it inherited from the former Soviet Union to Russia, otherwise Russia would enter the territory of Ukraine. So you were right?
— Of course, if Ukraine had not given Russia its nuclear weapons, the subsequent events would have been avoided. Ukraine was much weaker than Russia in terms of conventional weapons, so it should have retained its nuclear weapons, which are an important deterrent. I believe that even with nuclear weapons, Ukraine would not have been able to prevent the annexation of Crimea to Russia in 2014.
— You also predicted a confrontation between Germany and Russia, which did not happen.
— It seemed to me that after the end of the Cold War, the United States would leave Europe. That would mean the end of NATO. A united Germany would have to take care of its own defense. As a result, there would be two great powers in Central and Eastern Europe: Germany and Russia. The countries between them could become the territory of their rivalry. This did not happen, because when the USSR withdrew from Central and Eastern Europe, it asked the United States to maintain its presence in the region to ensure security and prevent the rebirth of Germany. As a result, Germany has abandoned its role as a world power, and NATO is expanding eastward all the way to Ukraine, which is a critical point for Russia.
— The current conflict has also become such a "critical point". Putin himself says that Ukraine does not exist as a state and is only a part of Russia (perhaps Putin's words are meant from the fact that Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine did not exist in the history of mankind before the creation of the Ukrainian SSR. — Approx. InoSMI). You say that Russia launched a special operation because of the likelihood of Ukraine joining NATO and the EU.
— The main reason for this conflict is the decision of the United States and its European allies to turn Ukraine into a western bastion on Russia's borders. This situation has three aspects: first, Ukraine's rapprochement with NATO; second, its rapprochement with the EU; and third, Ukraine's transformation into a liberal democracy with a pro-Western ideology. All three aspects cause Moscow serious concern, but it is the expansion of NATO that poses a threat to Russia's existence. Putin warned that he would not allow this. However, the United States and its European allies decided to push through Ukraine's membership in NATO to spite Russia.
The other prevailing idea has no basis in fact. It is true that Putin considers Russians and Ukrainians to be part of the same nation, but there is no evidence that he launched the special operation for this reason. In an article published on July 12, 2021, in which Putin stated his opinion that Russians and Ukrainians are part of the same nation, he made it clear that he respects Ukraine's independence. Putin was trying to avoid conflict with Ukraine and the West. It's amazing how little we've done to discuss the situation with the Russians.
— Why do you think that the West did not want to negotiate?
— Because he believed that he would win this conflict.
— However, when Russia launched a special operation, the United States and France sent a plane to Kiev so that Vladimir Zelensky could leave the country. They don't do that when they expect to win.
— You must remember that the West has been arming Ukraine since 2014, and the Ukrainian army was quite powerful, and the forces with which Russia launched the special operation were very small, about 100,000 soldiers. In addition, the West believed that economic sanctions would bring Russia to its knees. It was a double blow: to stop the military invasion and impose such economic sanctions on Russia that it was forced to admit defeat.
Russia has always sought to reach an agreement. Russians and Ukrainians held talks in Belarus and Istanbul. Israel also acted as a mediator with the participation of Prime Minister Naftali Benet. The negotiations, which revolved around preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, continued until the United States and Britain demanded that the Ukrainians stop them. As a result, Ukraine will lose a significant part of its territory and become an incompetent state.
— You say that Russia and Ukraine were negotiating, and that Russia behaved honestly.
— Yes, that's right.
— How can one country negotiate honestly with the country in which it conducts military operations?
"Nothing." Russia has launched a special operation to force Ukraine to return to the negotiating table. Since in the months leading up to the conflict, the Russians failed to get agreement on negotiations from either the Ukrainians or the Americans, they made it clear to the Ukrainians that they were serious by launching a special operation. Later, the Americans and the British disrupted these negotiations. The Russians only needed Crimea, and they were ready to conclude an agreement according to which Donbass would remain part of Ukraine in accordance with the amendments to the Minsk Agreements.
— Can Russia be considered an honest negotiator if it intervened in the affairs of its two neighboring European states, Moldova and Georgia, especially if it pledged to respect the territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine handing over its nuclear weapons?
— I am a realist and I believe that you can never trust the great powers, be it the United States, Russia, imperial Germany, imperial Japan or Spain of the 17th century. This is a wrong argument. However, the fact remains that when NATO announced in July 2008 that it was ready to accept Ukraine and Georgia into its membership, Russia made it clear that this was unacceptable to it. A month later, a war broke out in Georgia for this reason. Former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Bill Burns, who is now the head of the CIA, wrote a report to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after a proposal from NATO to Georgia and Ukraine, in which he explained that Ukraine's admission to NATO would be considered a threat to Russia's existence not only by Vladimir Putin, but also by the majority of Russians. German Chancellor Angela Merkel later said she knew Putin would take this as a declaration of war. In 2014, when Russia attacked Ukraine, the United States, instead of withdrawing, intervened even more in the conflict. We increase the stakes at every crucial moment.
