John Mearsheimer on the Russia-Ukraine Situation, what should we have done?
John Mearsheimer, from an interview with Freddie Sayers ( Nov 29, 2022 )
John Mearsheimer: The West is playing Russian roulette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBiV1h7Dm5E&t=473s
Freddie Sayers - On the specifics of Ukraine then, what should we have done, do you think?
John Mearsheimer - Well, first of all, in April 2008, when NATO said Ukraine would become part of NATO and the Russians made it clear that was an existential threat and was unacceptable to them, we should have backed off right then. We should have done nothing more.
Then, the crisis broke out on February 22nd 2014, we should have recognized the severity of the situation and we should have backed off and worked with the Russians to create some sort of modus vivendi where the Russians felt that they weren't threatened by NATO in Ukraine and that Ukraine could remain a neutral state.
But, instead what we did was we doubled-down. Then over the course of 2021 the situation deteriorated and on December 17th, 2021, the Russians sent a letter to NATO and to President Biden, demanding that they get in writing that Ukraine would not become part of NATO.
What we should have done then is backed off and tried to work out some sort of modus vivendi where the Russians were satisfied with the situation in Ukraine and the threat of war was taken off the table. Instead we told the Russians, nothing is going to change. We are going to bring Ukraine into NATO, and we were working very hard to do that - despite the conventional wisdom in the West which says we were not. We were working to bring Ukraine into NATO.
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https://youtu.be/HBiV1h7Dm5E?t=1183
FS - What are the realistic options now?
JM - There are no realistic options now, we're screwed.