The causes and consequences of the Ukraine war A lecture by John J. Mearsheimer

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so good afternoon everyone. my name is nicola guillo. i'm professor of intellectual history here at the EUI. and on behalf of my colleague eric jones, director of the Robert Trumann Center, I would like to welcome all of you for this event that we've organized between the History Department and the Robert Trumann Center.

it's my great pleasure today to introduce our speaker. it's a pleasure, but it's also a daunting task, because John Mearsheimer does not need an introduction, yet he deserves one. John Mearsheimer is the Roland Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, an institution where he's taught for nearly four decades. prior to that, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, after which he joined the Air Force and then took a PhD in Political Science at Cornell University.

now, for those of you with a background in international relations theory, Mearsheimer is a household name. he is, without a doubt, one of the towering figures of the discipline and probably the most prominent representative of the realist school of international politics. his 2001 book, *The Tragedy of Great Power Politics*, is now required reading in any introductory class to the discipline and has achieved the canonical status once held, maybe, by Morgenthau's '48 *Politics Among Nations*. John has written about security concerns, realism, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, deterrence, the role of lies in international affairs, and more recently, on the crisis of liberal internationalism in his latest book, *The Great Delusion*, published in 2018 by Yale University Press.

but even if you don't have a background in IR, in recent weeks, Mearsheimer has become a familiar name in relation to the discussion of the war in Ukraine. seven years ago, in 2015, John gave a talk to an alumni association in Chicago on the responsibility of the West in triggering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. sadly, many of the points he made in that talk turned out to be remarkably precise. by now, this talk has been seen more than 27 million times. this has obviously put John in the limelight, and it has also earned him a bunch of new critics who have tried, sometimes very unfairly, to put some flak in his fuselage.

but the fact is that John has never really left the limelight, and he has a record of being an intellectual irritant to the Washington foreign policy establishment and the defender of contrarian positions. he was one of the signatories of the 2002 open letter in the New York Times advocating against the decision to go to war in Iraq. he recently defended the withdrawal from Afghanistan. now, you can see why new conservatives have never been very well inclined or disposed towards John Mearsheimer. but then, in 1994, he was on also on the voice saying that the Ukrainians should not give away but keep their nuclear weapons.

now, John has always defended his positions out of principle and intellectual discipline, something which has earned him many accolades and this team of friends and adversaries alike. in his devastating critique of American foreign policy thinkers in 2017, Perry Anderson wrote that IR scholars are all too often eager to compromise their integrity by offering some veneer of technical respectability to whatever policy option is fashionable at the moment. but the field also included, he added in the footnote, and now I'm quoting him, "theorists of distinction whose independence of mind has saved them from the temptation of office. John Mearsheimer of Chicago is an outstanding example." end of quote.

and so the current polemics, I think, tell us less about John than about the state of public discussion when it comes to the war in Ukraine. an American journalist has recently defined it an "intellectual no-fly zone." we are in a moment in which, if you follow the sometimes heated debates on social but also traditional media, diplomacy has become synonymous with appeasement, in which advocating anything short of an ill-defined military solution makes you complicit with genocide, and in which even gesturing towards the possibility that responsibilities may be shared somehow means joining, joining an extremist fringe that includes not only the ubiquitous Noam Chomsky but such dangerous fanatics as Jeffrey Sachs, Pope Francis, The New York Times since the May 19th editorial, and possibly now France and Germany.

I'm not even getting into the analogies with 1938 that are the intellectual equivalent of using a high-grade pepper spray to start a conversation. in this context, I think it behooves us, as a public university, and even more so as a European public university, in which at any given moment there's a variety of views on any given topic, to uphold the space for serious and engaged conversation rather than yielding to ambient pressure or, worse, repeating martial sound bites.

finally, beyond legitimate divergences of opinion, I want to emphasize what unites us. I think all of us are here today, and I'm sure I know as a fact I can include John in that statement, that we're here because we are concerned and we care for Ukraine. but it's precisely because of this concern, and because this was unjustifiable no matter how you look at it, that we ought to give ourselves as much intellectual latitude as we can in trying to understand the many causes of that conflict and so as to better put an end to its tragic consequences.

to do this, we don't only have a distinguished guest today in the person of John Mearsheimer, but Eric and I have also asked our good colleague Stephanie Hoffman, who like John teaches IR and like John is a Cornell PhD, to offer a few comments, to which then John will be able to respond, after which we'll have a Q&A. without further ado, please join me in extending a very warm welcome to Professor John Mearsheimer.

[Applause]

just can everybody hear me clearly in the rear? good. if I trail off for one reason or another, just wave your hands like that. it's a great pleasure to be here in Florence, and I greatly appreciate all of you coming out to hear me speak. I would like to thank my old friend Nicholas Guiho for his most generous introduction, and I'd like to thank Eric Jones and the European Union Institute for inviting me to give this talk. and I would like to thank Stephanie, even before she's offered her comments, for giving those comments and letting me expound on various points that I don't fully develop in the talk.

the war in Ukraine is a multi-dimensional disaster, which is likely to get worse in the foreseeable future. when a war is successful, little attention is paid to its causes. but when the outcome is disastrous, much attention is paid to the origins of the conflict. people want to know, how did we get into this terrible situation? I have witnessed this phenomenon twice in my lifetime: first with the Vietnam War, and second with the Iraq War. in both cases, Americans wanted to know, how did their country miscalculate so badly?

given that the United States and its NATO allies played a crucial role in the events that led to the Ukraine war and are now playing a central role in the conduct of that war, it's appropriate to evaluate the West's responsibility for this calamity. I want to make two main arguments today. first, the United States is principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis. this is not to deny that Putin started the war, and that he is responsible for Russia's conduct on the battlefield. nor is it to deny that America's allies bear some responsibility, but they largely follow Washington's lead on Ukraine. my key point, however, is that the United States pushed forward policies toward Ukraine that Putin and his colleagues see as an existential threat to their country, a point they have made repeatedly for many years. specifically, I am talking about America's obsession with bringing Ukraine into NATO and making it a Western bulwark on Russia's border. the Biden administration was unwilling to eliminate that threat through diplomacy, and indeed recommitted itself to bringing Ukraine into NATO during 2021. Putin responded by invading Ukraine on February 24th of this year.

second, the Biden administration has reacted to the outbreak of the war by doubling down against Russia. Washington and its Western allies are committed to decisively defeating Russia in Ukraine and employing comprehensive sanctions to greatly weaken Russian power. the United States is not seriously interested in finding a diplomatic solution to the war, which means the war is likely to drag on for months, if not years. in the process, Ukraine, which has already suffered grievously, is going to experience even greater harm. in essence, the United States and its allies are helping lead Ukraine down the primrose path. furthermore, there's a danger that the war will escalate, as NATO might get dragged into the fighting, and nuclear weapons might be used. we live in perilous times.

let me now lay out my argument in greater detail, starting with a description of the conventional wisdom about the causes of the conflict. it is widely and firmly believed in the West that Putin is solely responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis, and certainly the ongoing war. he is said to have imperial ambitions, which is to say he is bent on conquering Ukraine and other countries as well, all for the purposes of creating a greater Russia that bears at least some resemblance to the former Soviet Union. in other words, Ukraine is Putin's first target, but not his last. as one scholar put it recently, he is "acting on a sinister, long-held belief to erase Ukraine from the map of the world." given Putin's purported goals, it makes perfect sense for Finland and Sweden to join NATO and for the alliance to increase its force levels in Eastern Europe. after all, imperial Russia must be contained.

while this narrative is repeated over and over in the mainstream media and by virtually every Western leader, there is no evidence to support it. I want to repeat that there is no evidence to support it. to the extent that purveyors of the conventional wisdom provide evidence, it has little, if any, bearing on Putin's motives for invading Ukraine. for example, some emphasize that he said that Ukraine is an artificial state or it is not a real state. such opaque comments, however, say nothing about his reason for going to war. the same is true of Putin's statement that he views Russians and Ukrainians as "one people" with a common history. others point out that he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." of course, he also said, "Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain." still others point out that he said, "modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, or to be more precise, by Bolshevik communist Russia." but he went on to say in the same speech, "Of course, we cannot change past events, but we must at least admit them openly and honestly."

to make the case that Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine and incorporating it into Russia, it is necessary to provide evidence that first, he thought it was a desirable goal; that second, he thought it was a feasible goal; and third, he intended to pursue that goal. there is no evidence. let me repeat, there is no evidence in the public record that Putin was contemplating, much less intending, to put an end to Ukraine as an independent state and make it part of a greater Russia when he sent his troops into Ukraine on February 24th. in fact, there is significant evidence that Putin recognized Ukraine as an independent country. in his July 12, 2021 article, which I assume many of you have looked at, about Russian-Ukrainian relations, which proponents of the conventional wisdom often point to as evidence of his imperial ambitions, he tells the Ukrainian people in that article, "You want to establish a state of your own? You are welcome." regarding how Russia should treat Ukraine, he writes, "There is only one answer: with respect." he concludes that lengthy article with the following words: "And what Ukraine will be, it is up to its citizens to decide." that's not evidence of somebody who's interested in swallowing Ukraine and making it part of Russia.

in that same July 12, 2021 article, and again in an important speech he gave on February 21st of this year, Putin emphasized that Russia accepts "the new geopolitical reality that took shape after the dissolution of the USSR." he reiterated that same point for a third time on February 24th, when he announced that Russia would invade Ukraine. he also made it clear that "it is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory" and that he respected Ukrainian sovereignty, but only up to a point. to be a bit more specific, and to quote him, "Russia cannot feel safe, develop and exist while facing a permanent threat from the territory of today's Ukraine." in essence, Putin was not interested in making Ukraine part of Russia. he was interested in making sure it did not become "a springboard for Western aggression against Russia," a subject I will say more about shortly.

one might argue that Putin was lying about his motives, that he was attempting to disguise his imperial ambitions. as it turns out, I have written a book, one of the few books about lying in international politics. it's entitled *Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics*, and it is clear to me that Putin was not lying. for starters, one of my principal findings in the book is that leaders do not lie much to each other. they lie more often to their own publics. regarding Putin, whatever one thinks of him as a human being, he does not have a history of lying to other leaders. although some assert that he frequently lies and cannot be trusted, there is actually little evidence of him lying to foreign audiences. moreover, he has publicly spelled out his thinking about Ukraine on numerous occasions over the past two years, and he has consistently emphasized that his principal concern is Ukraine's relations with the West, especially with regard to NATO. he has never once hinted that he wants to make Ukraine part of Russia. if this behavior is part of a giant deception campaign, it would be without precedent in recorded history.

perhaps the best indicator that Putin is not bent on conquering and absorbing Ukraine is the military strategy Moscow has employed from the start of this campaign. the Russian military did not attempt to conquer all of Ukraine. that would have required a classic blitzkrieg strategy that aimed at quickly overrunning all of Ukraine with armored forces supported by tactical air power. that strategy was not feasible, however, because there were only 190,000 soldiers in Russia's invading army, which is far too small a force to vanquish and occupy Ukraine, which is not only the largest country between the Atlantic Ocean and Russia but also has a population of over 40 million people. you're not going to conquer, occupy, and absorb a country of that size with 190,000 people, and you're not even going to have enough troops to launch a classic blitzkrieg, which is essential to conquer the entire country. unsurprisingly, the Russians pursued a limited aim strategy, which focused on either capturing or threatening Kyiv and conquering a large swath of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine. in short, Russia did not have the capability to subdue all of Ukraine, much less conquer other countries in Europe.

to take this argument a step further, Putin and other Russian leaders surely understand from the Cold War that occupying countries in the age of nationalism is invariably a prescription for never-ending trouble. the Soviet experience in Afghanistan is a glaring example of this phenomenon. but more relevant for the issue at hand is Moscow's relations with its allies in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. the Soviet Union maintained a huge military presence in that region and was involved in the politics of almost every country located there. those allies, however, were a frequent thorn in Moscow's side. the Soviet Union put down a major insurrection in East Germany in 1953. it invaded Hungary in 1956, and it then invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, all for the purpose of keeping those countries in line. there was serious trouble in Poland in 1956, 1970, and 1980-81. although Polish authorities dealt with these events, they served as a reminder that intervention might be necessary. Albania, Romania, and Yugoslavia routinely caused Moscow trouble, but Soviet leaders tended to tolerate their misbehavior because their location made them less important for deterring NATO.

what about contemporary Ukraine? it's obvious from Putin's July 12, 2021 essay, his famous essay, that he understands that Ukrainian nationalism is a powerful force and that the civil war in the Donbas, which had been going on since 2014, had done much to poison relations between Russia and Ukraine. he surely knew that Russia's invasion force would not be welcomed with open arms by Ukrainians and that it would be a herculean task for Russia to subjugate Ukraine if it had the necessary forces to conquer the entire country, which it did not have.

finally, it's worth noting that hardly anyone made the argument that Putin had imperial ambitions from the time he first took office in 2000 until the Ukraine crisis first broke out on February 22, 2014. that's 14 years. nobody made the argument that he had imperial ambitions in his first 14 years in office. in fact, the Russian leader was an invited guest to the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members. he was invited to be there. Putin's opposition to that announcement had hardly any effect on Washington because Russia was judged to be too weak to stop further enlargement, just as it had been too weak to stop the 1990 tranche of enlargement, and just as it had been too weak to stop the 2004 tranche of expansion.

relatedly, it's important to note that NATO expansion before 2014, before the February 2014 crisis, was not aimed at containing Russia. given the sad state of Russian military power, Moscow was in no position to pursue revenge policies in Eastern Europe. tellingly, former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, notes that Putin's seizure of Crimea, that was in February 2014, after the February 2014 crisis started, was not planned before the crisis but was an impulsive move in response to the coup that overthrew Ukraine's pro-Russian leader. in short, NATO enlargement was not intended to contain a Russian threat, but was intended instead as part of a broader policy to spread the liberal international order into Eastern Europe and make the entire continent look like Western Europe. it was only when the Ukraine crisis broke out in February 2014 that the United States and its allies suddenly began describing Putin as a dangerous leader with imperial ambitions and Russia as a serious military threat that had to be contained. what happened? new rhetoric was designed to serve one simple purpose: to allow the West to blame Putin for the outbreak of trouble in Ukraine. and now that the crisis has turned into a full-scale war, it is imperative to make sure that he alone is blamed for this disastrous turn of events. this blame game explains why Putin is widely viewed as an imperialist here in the West, even though there is hardly any evidence to support that perspective.

let me now turn to the real cause of the Ukraine crisis and ultimately the Ukraine war. the taproot is the American-led effort to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's borders. that strategy has three prongs: one, integrating Ukraine into the EU; two, turning Ukraine into a pro-Western liberal democracy (you all know about the Orange Revolution); and three, and most importantly, incorporating Ukraine into NATO. the strategy was set in motion at NATO's annual summit in Bucharest in April 2008, when the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members." Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, making it clear that this decision was an existential threat to Russia and they had no intention of letting either country join NATO. according to a respected Russian journalist, Putin "flew into a rage and warned that if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart." that's Putin talking in 2008.

William Burns, who is now the head of the CIA, was then the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow at the time of the Bucharest summit. he wrote a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that succinctly describes Russian thinking about Ukraine joining NATO. you want to pay very careful attention to what Burns said, and then what I'm going to tell you. Angela Merkel has recently said this. this is Burns. this is his memo. he's the U.S. Ambassador in Moscow. it's his memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite, not just Putin. In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine and NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. NATO," he said, "would be seen as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today's Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze. It will create fertile soil for Russian meddling in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine."

Burns, of course, was not the only policymaker who understood that bringing Ukraine into NATO was fraught with danger. indeed, at the Bucharest summit, at the summit itself, both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were opposed to moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because they feared it would infuriate Russia. Angela Merkel recently explained her opposition in an interview: "I was very sure that Putin is not going to let this happen. From his perspective, that would be a declaration of war." think about what Merkel, who opposed it in April 2008, is saying. she's saying that she knew that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war. in other words, putting Ukraine in NATO would be a declaration of war. and Burns has just told you that Putin's not an anomaly. that every Russian member of the foreign policy elite, including the knuckle-draggers in the recesses of the Kremlin that he has talked to, view it just as Putin views it.

the Bush administration, which was pushing this policy decision for NATO, however, cared little about Moscow's brightest of red lines and pressured the French and German leaders to agree to issuing a public pronouncement that said unequivocally that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually join the alliance. unsurprisingly, the American-led effort to integrate Georgia into NATO resulted in a war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008, just four months after Bucharest. nevertheless, in the wake of that war, the United States and its allies continued moving forward with their plans to make Ukraine a Western bastion on Russia's borders. these efforts eventually sparked a major crisis in February of 2014, after a U.S.-supported uprising caused Ukraine's pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. he was replaced by pro-American Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. in response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian government.

one often hears the argument, I'm sure you've all heard this, that in the eight years between when the crisis broke out in February 2014 and when the war began in February 2022, you see that eight-year window, there, just keep the big picture in your mind. August 2008, that's the Bucharest summit, but the crisis doesn't break out until February 2014, and then the war breaks out eight years later, February 2022. the argument is that in the eight years between when the crisis broke out and when the war broke out this past February, the United States and its allies paid little attention to bringing Ukraine into NATO. in effect, the issue had been taken off the table, and thus NATO enlargement could not possibly have been an important cause of the escalating crisis in 2021 and the subsequent outbreak of war earlier this year.

this line of argument is false. in fact, the Western response to the events of 2014 was to double down on the existing strategy and effectively make Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. the alliance began training the Ukrainian military in 2014, averaging 10,000 trained troops annually over the next eight years. NATO was training 10,000 troops per year for eight straight years. in December 2017, the Trump administration decided to provide Kyiv with defensive weapons. other NATO countries quickly got into the act, shipping even more weapons to Ukraine. in addition, Ukraine's military participated in joint military exercises with NATO forces. in July 2021, less than a year ago, Kyiv and Washington co-hosted Operation Sea Breeze, a naval exercise in the Black Sea that included navies from 31 countries and was directly aimed at Russia. two months later, in September 2021, the Ukraine army led Rapid Trident '21, which was, according to an official press release from the U.S. Army, it was "a U.S. Army Europe and Africa assisted annual exercise designed to enhance interoperability among allied and partner nations." remember, I'm making the argument here, we were turning Ukraine into a de facto member of NATO. it was designed to enhance interoperability among allied and partner nations, to demonstrate units are poised and ready to respond to any crisis.

NATO's efforts to arm and train Ukraine's military explains in good part why it has fared so well against Russian forces in the ongoing war. it's not simply Russian incompetence; it's the fact that we armed and trained those Ukrainian forces and turned them into a formidable fighting force. the headline in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal put it quite nicely. this is quoting that headline in The Wall Street Journal: "The Secret of Ukraine's Military Success: Years of NATO Training." Years of NATO training.

in addition to NATO's ongoing efforts to make the Ukrainian military a formidable fighting force, the politics surrounding NATO's Ukraine's membership in NATO and its integration into the West changed in 2021. there was renewed enthusiasm for pursuing Ukrainian membership in NATO in 2021, and the change took place in both Kyiv and in Washington. let me start by telling you what happened in Kyiv. President Zelensky, who had never shown much enthusiasm for bringing Ukraine into NATO and who was elected in March 2019 on a platform that called for working with Russia to settle the ongoing conflict crisis, reversed course in early 2021 and not only embraced NATO expansion but also adopted a hard-line approach toward Moscow. he made a series of moves like shutting down pro-Russian TV shows and stations and arresting an especially close friend of Putin and charging him with treason. these were all moves that were sure to anger Moscow.

President Biden, who moved into the White House in January 2021, Biden is moving into the White House just as Biden, just as Zelensky is beginning to do a flip on his views towards Ukraine and towards Russia. President Biden had long been committed to bringing Ukraine into NATO and was also super hawkish toward Russia. and you want to remember that when he was Vice President, the Obama administration, President Obama assigned him, Joe Biden, with the Ukraine portfolio, so he was no stranger to this issue.

unsurprisingly, on June 14, 2021, about a year ago, almost a year ago to the day, NATO issued the following communique at its annual Brussels summit. I'm going to quote: "We, we reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest summit that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance. As an integral part of the process, we reaffirm all elements of that decision. We reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions, including that each partner will be judged on its own merits. We stand firm in our support for Ukraine's right to decide its own future and foreign policy course, free from outside interference."

on September 1st, 2021, Zelensky visited the White House, where Biden made it clear in his public statements that the United States was "firmly committed to Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations." then, on November 10, November 10, 2021, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart signed an important document. it's called the U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership. it's available on the website or on the internet if you're interested. this is what it says: "The aim of both parties is to underscore a commitment to Ukraine's implementation of the deep and comprehensive reforms necessary for full integration into Europe and Euro-Atlantic institutions." that explicitly builds not just on "the commitments made to strengthen the Ukraine-U.S. strategic partnership by President Zelensky and Biden," end of quotes, but it also reaffirms the U.S. commitment to the "2008 Bucharest summit declaration."

in short, there is little doubt that starting in early 2021, Ukraine began moving rapidly toward joining NATO. some argue that while that may be true, it should not have concerned Russian policymakers. we have decided it shouldn't have concerned Russian policymakers, why? because NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia. but that's not how Putin and other Russian leaders think about NATO, and it is what they think, not what you think or I think, that matters. and they see NATO as a direct threat. they see NATO expansion into Ukraine as an existential threat. they see it as the brightest of red lines.

to deal with this growing threat, Putin stationed ever-increasing numbers of Russian troops on Ukraine's borders between February 2021 and February 2022. remember, last year, the number of Russian troops on Ukraine's borders continually increased and increased and increased. you ask yourself, why was that happening? it was happening in response to what Zelensky and Biden were doing, and all the arming and training was taking place. you noticed all those military exercises I described took place in 2021. Putin's aim was to coerce Biden and Zelensky into altering course and putting an end to their efforts to integrate Ukraine into the West.

on December 17, 2021, the Russians reached the boiling point, and Moscow sent separate letters to NATO and to Biden. many of you, I'm sure, remember when the Russians sent those letters to Biden and to NATO demanding a written guarantee that number one, Ukraine would not join NATO; no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia's borders; and three, NATO troops and equipment moved into Eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back to Western Europe. Putin made numerous public statements during this period that left no doubt that he viewed NATO expansion into Ukraine as an existential threat. speaking to the Defense Ministry board on December 21, 2021, he stated, and this is quoting Putin: "What they are doing or trying or planning to do in Ukraine is not happening thousands of kilometers away from our national border. It's on the doorstep of our house. They must understand that we simply have nowhere further to retreat to. Do they really think we do not see these threats, or do they think that we will just stand idly by, watching threats to Russia emerge?"

two months later, at a press conference on February 22, 2022, this is two days before they invade, Putin said, "We are categorically opposed to Ukraine joining NATO because this poses a threat to us, and we have arguments to support this. I have repeatedly spoken about it in this hall." he then made it clear that he recognized that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. "The United States and its allies," he said, "continued to pump the current Kyiv authorities full of modern types of weapons." he went on to say that if this was not stopped, Moscow "would be left with an anti-Russia armed to the teeth. This is totally unacceptable."

Putin's logic should be manifestly clear to Americans in the audience who have long understood, I'm sure, that we have a Monroe Doctrine, which stipulates that no great power is allowed to place any of its military forces in the Western Hemisphere. I might know that in all of Putin's public statements during the months leading up to the war, there is not a scintilla of evidence that he was contemplating conquering Ukraine and making it part of Russia, much less attacking other countries in Eastern Europe. other Russian leaders, including the Defense Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Deputy Foreign Minister, and the Russian Ambassador to Washington, also emphasized the centrality of NATO expansion for causing the Ukraine crisis. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the point succinctly at a press conference on January 14, 2022, when he said, "The key to everything," and I'm quoting Lavrov now, "the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward."

nevertheless, the efforts of Lavrov and Putin to get the United States and its allies to abandon their efforts to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border failed completely. Secretary of State Tony Blinken responded to Russia's mid-December demands by simply saying, "There is no change. There will be no change." Putin then launched an invasion of Ukraine to eliminate the threat he saw from NATO.

where are we now and where are we going? the Ukraine war has been raging for almost four months, and I would like to make three separate points. I first of all like to talk about the specific consequences of this conflict for Ukraine, talk a little bit about the prospects for escalation, and talk a little bit about the prospects for ending the war in the foreseeable future. starting with Ukraine, this war is an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine. as I noted earlier, Putin made it clear in 2008 that Russia would wreck Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO. he is delivering on that promise. Russian forces have conquered at least 20 percent of Ukrainian territory and destroyed or badly damaged many Ukrainian cities and towns. more than 6.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country, while more than 8 million have been internally displaced. many thousands of Ukrainians, including innocent civilians, are dead or badly wounded, and the Ukrainian economy is in shambles. the World Bank estimates that Ukraine's economy will shrink by almost 50 percent over the course of 2022. estimates are that approximately $100 billion worth of damage has been inflicted on Ukraine already, and it will take close to a trillion dollars to rebuild the country. in the meantime, Kyiv requires about $5 billion of aid every month just to keep the government running. furthermore, there appears to be little hope that Ukraine will be able to regain use of the Azov and Black Seas. the ports on the Azov and Black Seas anytime soon. before the war, roughly 70 percent of all Ukrainian exports and imports and 98 percent of its grain exports moved through these ports. this is the basic situation after less than four months of fighting. it is downright scary to come to contemplate what Ukraine is going to look like if this war drags on for a few more years.

so this brings me to the second topic. I want to talk about what are the prospects for negotiating a peace agreement and ending this war in the next few months. I am sorry to say that I see no way this war ends anytime soon, and this is a view shared by prominent policymakers on both the Western side and the Russian side. the main reason for my pessimism is that both Russia and the United States are deeply committed to winning the war, and it is impossible to reach an agreement where both sides win. to be more specific, the key to a settlement from Russia's perspective is making Ukraine a neutral state, which means that Ukraine must divorce itself from the West, especially the United States. but that outcome is unacceptable to the Biden administration and a large portion of the American foreign policy establishment because it would represent a victory for Russia.

Ukrainian leaders have agency, of course, and thus one might hope that given all the horror being inflicted on their country, they will push for neutralization. indeed, Zelensky briefly mentioned that possibility in the first month of the war, but he never seriously pursued it. there is little chance, however, that Kyiv will push for neutralization because the ultranationalists in Ukraine, who wield significant political power, have zero interest in yielding to any of Russia's demands, especially one that dictates Ukraine's political alignment with the outside world. the Biden administration and on NATO's eastern flank, and here we're talking about Poland and the Baltic states, they're likely to support Ukraine's ultranationalists along with the Americans on this whole issue of creating a neutral Ukraine.

to complicate matters further, how does one deal with the large swaths of Ukrainian territory that Russia has conquered since the war started, as well as Crimea's fate? it's hard to fathom Moscow giving up any of the Ukrainian territory it now occupies, much less all of it, at least in the foreseeable future. Russia's territorial goals today are probably not the ones they started the war with. at the same time, it's difficult to imagine any Ukrainian leader accepting a deal that allows Russia to keep any Ukrainian territory, except possibly Crimea. I certainly hope I'm wrong, but I see no end in sight to this ruinous war.

let me turn to the final matter, which is the matter of escalation. it's widely accepted among international relations scholars that there is a powerful tendency for protracted wars to escalate. other countries get dragged into the fight, and the level of violence is likely to escalate. the potential for this happening in Ukraine is real. there is a danger that the United States and its NATO allies will get dragged into the fighting, which they have been able to avoid up to this point, even though we are now effectively at war with Russia. there's also the possibility that nuclear weapons might be used in Ukraine, and that might even lead to a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States.

the underlying reason that these outcomes might be realized is that the stakes are so high for both sides, and thus neither can afford to lose. as I have emphasized, Putin and his lieutenants believe that Ukraine joining the West is an existential threat to Russia that must be eliminated. in practical terms, that means Russia must win its war in Ukraine. defeat is unacceptable. the Biden administration, on the other hand, has stressed that its goal is not only to defeat the Russians in Ukraine but also to use massive sanctions to do egregious damage to the Russian economy. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has emphasized that the West's goal is to weaken Russia to the point where it could not invade Ukraine again. in effect, the Biden administration is committed to knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers. at the same time, President Biden himself has called Russia's war in Ukraine a genocide and charged Putin with being a war criminal who should face "a war crimes trial" after the war. such rhetoric hardly lends itself to negotiating an end to the war. after all, how do you negotiate with a genocidal state?

American policy has two significant consequences. for starters, it greatly amplifies the existential threat Moscow faces in this war, and it makes it more important than ever that Moscow prevail in Ukraine. at the same time, it means that the United States is deeply committed to making sure that Russia loses. the Biden administration has now invested so much in the war, both materially and rhetorically, that a Russian victory would represent a devastating defeat for Washington. obviously, both sides can't win. moreover, there's a serious possibility that one side will begin to lose badly. there is a serious possibility that if American policy succeeds and the Russians are losing to the Ukrainians on the battlefield, Putin might turn to nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, told the Senate this past May that this was one of the two situations that might lead Putin to use nuclear weapons if he is losing in Ukraine.

for those of you who think it's unlikely that he would turn to use nuclear weapons to rescue the situation if he's losing in Ukraine, I would remind you that NATO planned to use nuclear weapons in similar circumstances during the Cold War. we were planning to use nuclear weapons in West Germany if the Warsaw Pact overran West Germany. if we were losing against the Warsaw Pact in West Germany, we were going to turn to nuclear weapons to rescue the situation. that's what we're talking about Putin doing. you don't think he'll do it? I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that.

if Russia were to employ nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it's difficult to say how the Biden administration would react, but it would surely be under great pressure to retaliate, thus raising the possibility of a great power nuclear war. there is a perverse paradox at play here. you really want to think about this: the more successful we are, the United States and its allies, at achieving our war aims, the more likely it is that the war will turn nuclear.

let's turn the tables and ask what happens if the United States and its NATO allies appear to be heading toward defeat, which effectively means that the Russians are routing the Ukrainian military and the government in Kyiv is moving to negotiate a peace deal to hold on to as much of Ukraine as possible. in that event, there would be tremendous pressure on the United States and its allies to get even more deeply involved in the fighting. it is not likely, but certainly possible, that American or maybe Polish troops would get pulled into the fighting, which means NATO would not effectively be at war with Russia; it would literally be at war with Russia. this is the other scenario, according to Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, where the Russians might turn to nuclear weapons.

it is difficult to say precisely how events will play out in the Ukraine war, but there is no question that there will be serious potential for escalation, to include nuclear escalation. the mere possibility of that outcome should, should send shivers down your spine. they're likely to be other disastrous consequences from the war, which I cannot discuss in any detail because of time constraints. for example, there's reason to think that the war will lead to a food crisis in which many millions of people will die. furthermore, relations between Russia and the West have been so thoroughly poisoned that it will take many years to repair them, maybe even decades. in the meantime, that profound hostility will foster instability around the globe, and especially in Europe.

one might agree, but note that there's a silver lining. relations among countries in the West have markedly improved. transatlantic relations have improved. NATO and the EU are in better shape than ever. that's true for the moment, but there are deep fissures below the surface which are likely to manifest themselves over time. for example, I would expect that relations between the countries of Eastern Europe will deteriorate as the war drags on. finally, the conflict is already damaging the global economy in major ways, and the situation is likely to get much worse with time. Jamie Morgan, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, says that we should brace ourselves for an economic hurricane. these economic shocks, of course, in turn will affect the politics of every Western country, undermining liberal democracy and strengthening its opponents on both the left and the right.

in conclusion, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is a colossal disaster, which, as I noted at the start of my talk, will lead people all around the world to search for its causes. those who believe in facts and logic will quickly discover that the United States and its allies are mainly responsible for this train wreck. the April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was destined to lead to conflict with Russia. the Bush administration was the principal architect of that fateful choice, but the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have doubled down on that policy at every turn, and America's allies have dutifully followed, even though Russia's leaders made it perfectly clear that bringing Ukraine into NATO would be crossing the brightest of red lines. the United States simply refused to accommodate Russia's deepest security concerns and instead moved relentlessly to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's border. the tragic truth is that if the West had not pursued NATO expansion into Ukraine, it is unlikely there would be a war in Ukraine today, and Crimea would still be part of Ukraine. in essence, Washington played the central role in leading Ukraine down the path to destruction. history will judge the United States and its allies with abundant harshness for its remarkably foolish policy on Ukraine. thank you.

[Applause]

thank you so much for this, uh, rich, um, presentation, um, John. and I see you are very much ahead of me, like you are completely acclimatized to the Florentine weather. well, I don't know how super warm. and I've been here for nine months. you're not only ahead in that respect. as Nicola has already mentioned, we both have a PhD from the same university, Cornell. and admittedly, there were some professors that were there at your time that were also there at my time. and so when my cohort, my cohorts above beyond, when we started our PhD, the question was always, how did John Mearsheimer, and Joe Greco, to be completely fair, come out of the same school as us? because you're one of the few realists, if I may, who came out of Cornell. and so my first question really would be more about whether you can talk a bit about where your, um, theoretical thinking developed. you've been to West Point, you were at Cornell, so where does, where does the theoretical foundation come from? also, in terms of your approaches, rather about grand theorizing, right? so grand theory is what is driving you. a friend of mine will call this sweeping narratives, but she's a comparativist. so for her, IR is a strange business in the first place. but like, so why grand theorizing? and what to use the role of say, area studies? because I mean, you said that until 2014, um, people did not see Russia as a threat. but if we look into scholars who actually were working in the region, on the region, in Central Eastern

Europe, the Baltics, etc. They actually might have told and have told a different story. Same with politicians there, right? I mean, right now, actually, there's lots of complaining about the West's planning, also of the West's planning within the European Union, how Western Europe was imposing a narrative of Russia on Eastern Europe, calling Eastern Europeans irrational, emotional, anti-Russian. So for you, as a scholar of grand IR theory, what's the role of area studies? And also, what's the role of domestic politics?

That's where Cornell comes in for me, because my entire training was that the boundaries between comparative politics and IR are not very rigid. There's lots of fluidity. And you yourself mentioned in your talk just now how, actually, the nationalist elements or political voices within Ukraine would not allow for a neutral Ukraine. So apparently, there are domestic forces who are very much pushing, um, for a certain solution that you say actually prolongs the war. So would there be no nationalists in Ukraine, and Ukraine would then, Zelensky would negotiate with Russia irrespective of what the U.S. thinks? Because that's the question, how much he's under the wing of the U.S. Would there be actually an end to the war? So that would be my, my first question. And I, I admit, I have a few more questions in the first question.

Oh, yeah. Thank you, Stephanie. Uh, I could talk about these questions. I could answer these questions for hours on end, but I won't do that. Uh, she asked me, first of all, where did my, you know, my realist theory come from? How did I get interested in realism and sort of become a realist theorist? The truth is, when I went to Cornell, I did not even self-identify as a realist, much less do any work on realist theory. In those days, there were three main theories of international relations: one were the realist theories, and Walter's book had not yet come out, the '79 book, when I was a graduate student. Realist theories, liberal theories, and Marxism. There was no social constructivism at the time. With the passage of time, Marxism disappeared from the radar scope, and it was replaced by social constructivism. So by the time I was at the University of Chicago and teaching IR theory, it was realism, liberalism, and social constructivism. But anyway, I knew all about Marxism, I knew all about liberalism and realism, but I honestly did not self-identify as a realist because I didn't do grand theory. I wrote a dissertation on conventional deterrence. Then I went to Cornell, actually, to the University of Chicago in 1982, and one of the first courses that I taught was IR theory, and I just did it because we needed somebody to teach it. And I remember I read Robert Gilpin and I read Ken Waltz. This is in '80, February '83, when I'm teaching Waltz, and his book had come out in 1979. And that's when I started wrestling with Waltz's book, which is a very difficult book to read, and I could never make heads or tails of it. Then my good friend Jack Snyder, who taught at Columbia, was writing a book which eventually came out called "Myths of Empire," which was a defensive realist track. And it was in the process of giving Jack comments and going back and forth with him, and reading Ken Waltz and going back and forth with him in the classroom, that I started discovered that I was unsatisfied with their realist theory of international politics and I decided to develop my own. And this was very easy to do at the University of Chicago because the University of Chicago was a place that privileged theory. It was a very theoretical institution. So I naturally gravitated into theory, into IR theory, and I discovered that I was a realist. I've often thought about why did I end up as a realist? And I don't know. I could speculate, but I thought that realism provided the best explanation for how the world works, and I therefore gravitated to it. But there were surely other factors that influenced me. So that's basically how I ended up doing IR theory and becoming a realist.

Now, you asked me about my love of grand theory. I, I'm one of these people who has infinite intellectual curiosity and I love coming up with simple theories about how the world works. I understand full well the danger of coming up with simple theories, and I'll get to this in a second when I talk about area studies and domestic politics. There are limits to what general theories can tell you about the world, but I instinctively love them. I love simplicity. And I think, by the way, one of the reasons that students like "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics" is because the theory that I put forth is a simple theory. You don't have to like the theory, but at least you can understand it because it's simple. So I'm just a simple old boy, I think, by nature, and that's what I think caused me to gravitate to grand theory.

Now, your second, your third, and fourth questions had to do with area studies and domestic politics, and this gets at the limits of, of theory, of grand theory, or or realism. Realism, as most of you folks know, is a theory that leaves domestic politics on the cutting room floor. It, the theory says that domestic politics do not matter. Now, we all know that domestic politics do matter. And the argument that realists like me make is that they don't matter that much. So you can come up with a simple, simple theory that leaves them out, and that theory will still have lots of explanatory power. My intuition, and it's just my intuition, is that a really good theory like realism can explain 75% of what happens. That means it's wrong 25% of the time. And my argument is that it's wrong 25% of the time because those factors that it leaves on the cutting room floor sometimes jump up and bite you in the hindquarters. They matter. Domestic politics sometimes really matters, and your simple systemic theory can explain that particular case. So there are real limits to even the best theory.

Just to come at this from another perspective, theories are simplifications of an incredibly complicated reality. There's no way we can make sense of the world because it's so complicated without simple theories. We need simple theories. But because the world is complicated and theories are simple, they're therefore going to be wrong some reasonable part of the time. And my intuition again is that that's 25%. That's when domestic politics comes in. So I'm not saying domestic politics don't matter. I just don't think in IR they matter that much most of the time.

Now, area studies. Very interesting. One of my big gripes about comparative politics is the invariably people who study comparative politics never take IR courses. They think that people who study IR, you know, are basically second-rate, and these IR theories are not important to know. You want to go inside the black box. All this talk about treating states like black boxes and looking at their interactions is foolish. I always say to comparativists, I say this to young graduate students, take courses in IR, right? It's fine to be a comparativist, to know a ton about what's happening inside Russia or inside Ireland or Brazil, whatever area you want to study, but don't you want to know basic IR theory? How this country that you're studying relates to other countries according to the basic IR theories? Just think about China. If I were young today, I'd learn Chinese, I'd become a China expert, and I'd take lots of IR courses. Best of both worlds. That's my argument.

But, you know, somebody recently said to me, "John, you know, you're pontificating about the Ukraine crisis. Why are you pontificating about the Ukraine crisis? You don't know anything about Ukraine. You don't know anything about Russia." This is an area that area specialists should dominate. My view is, are you serious? Geopolitics, U.S.-Russian relations, Russian-NATO relations is terribly important for understanding the Ukraine crisis. You have to know basic IR theory to have a good feel for this crisis. And at the same time, I would concede, you want area studies in there. Who can tell you all sorts of things about Ukraine and about Russian domestic politics and American domestic politics and German domestic politics as well? So I don't deny that for one second. Uh, and, uh, so my general point is, learn IR theory. You're foolish if you don't, talking to comparativists here. And if you're an IR theorist, you better know the limits of your theories and know that area experts and people who focus on studying what happens inside the black box really do matter.

So my second question is a little more complex, and I apologize. While you give the talk, I had to briefly look at a Putin speech to quote a little something. But, um, so in your talk, you really stress a lot of, like you said, a lot of speeches, and you show this as evidence that actually it was mainly the U.S. NATO expansion, or the threat of NATO expansion towards Ukraine, that was is driving, uh, Putin's war in Ukraine. And you say there's no evidence for these alternative explanations that you gave. So, like, it's pretty mono-causal. And, uh, sorry, I tried to cite you here, it's a false line of argument to pursue these other, these other arguments. So while, as you cited, there are these essential threat elements in his speeches, there are other elements in his speeches as well that actually go in a direction of this mythical unity of the Ukrainian and Russian nation. So actually, there are no two nations. He also uses the word genocide, by the way, when he talks about Ukraine. So on his, sorry, now this will take a while because I'm reading off the phone, but on March 18th, in his, on the concert, making the anniversary of previous unification with Russia, Putin, for example, says, and now 2022, that's when in the big stadium with all the flags, when he came with this white turtleneck sweater, um, and now, of course, I don't find the right part anymore because I moved around. The main, the main golden motive of the military operation that we launched in Donbass and Ukraine is to relieve these people of suffering, of this genocide. So, I mean, this is again, and like in the speech, he makes reference to denazification and how, I mean, which is, if you're not Russian, right, you are Nazi. So, I'm wondering, I mean, I'm sorry, I don't have as many quotes as you had, but I'm pretty sure that in other speeches, I would also find references to these alternative explanations that you say there's no evidence for. So, so my one, my one question is, why pick one narrative over the other? There seem to be more narratives than just the existential threat one. Not denying that existential threat might be an explanation, but there is this, it strikes me by looking through the speeches, that there are additional explanations as well.

Also, like you cited Merkel, for example. So I, I watched that interview as well. It's true, she mentioned that she was worried in 2008 about the war. But she also said, "I knew Putin well, and every time I saw him, he said the Soviet Union was great. How much he's actually missing the old Soviet days." And she's like, "Listen, when I was in these days, living in East Germany, I was not free, and I was very happy when the Soviet Union disintegrated because then I became a free person." So that was always part of their conversation. Again, this suggests that there are more narratives than just the existential threat, NATO expansion one, but also Putin, potentially at least, thinking of the Russian empire, the dismissed Russian empire, or a nation that is broader than what Russia is currently in its borders. So that, that's my first aspect of the question.

So now, if we buy into this, the essential threat narrative is the main explanation as to why Russia invaded Ukraine, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts as to why not also Georgia? And why, why not Finland? I mean, so Georgia and Ukraine both joined the Partnership for Peace in NATO in 1994. So some of the training and the security assistance that you mentioned has been going on for a very long time through this partnership that they have with NATO, as many other Eastern European countries actually have. And, and so, as you say, like Georgia was part of the discussion in 2008, and so was Ukraine, and Georgia that were supposed to join NATO, and then France and Germany said, "Not right now." And so the declaration was this very ambiguous document that kind of alluded to the possibility. It had a Rose Revolution, the revolution happened as well. It had, there was exactly as you mentioned, Russia invaded part of Georgia, but then it stopped there. There's no more further invasion happening in Georgia. Why is Russia, Georgia not an existential threat to, to Russia? And Finland, I mean, people argue that actually Finland's now declaring, also it has applied to become a NATO member, right? But it's not a NATO member yet. That is an unintended consequence of this war, but right now it is not a member of NATO yet, and it shares a very long border with Russia. So why don't we see this very aggressive rhetoric and military action also on the Finnish border, given that this potentially could also be understood as an existential threat? So if you don't mind unpacking a little bit, first of all, why picking one narrative over the other? And then also, um, spell out a little bit more as to why actually other countries where this kind of existential threat narrative could fit to, don't seem to uphold. Sorry, I'm just checking my notes because while you were speaking, I was writing so many things down that I'm not sure, but I think, no, I got the main gist. Thank you. You can come back at me again.

Uh, just on the narratives. The conventional wisdom in the, in the media and in the West more generally, and among Western leaders, is that Putin was interested in conquering Ukraine and absorbing, absorbing it into Russia, and he was bent on creating a greater Russia, and really, Ukraine was the first station on the railroad line. And what I say you have to do is you have to find evidence that he thought that goal was desirable, that goal was feasible, and number three, that's what he had set out to do. There's evidence that that's what he was going to try to do. And my point was, there's no evidence of that. Now, your point is that there are other narratives, maybe other reasons for why he did it, like denazification, dealing with what he called the genocide in Eastern Ukraine. That may be true. I don't dispute that, but it doesn't contradict my basic point. It doesn't address the basic issue that he was bent on an imperial mission, right? So there's no question that he was interested in going into the Donbass in part because he thought that a genocide, that's his rhetoric, was taking place. But again, it doesn't address the basic issue on the table. What we need is evidence that he's an imperialist. And just to go to Merkel, there's no question that Merkel says that Putin made it clear to him, to her, that he thought the Soviet Union was a wonderful enterprise. And remember, I read the quote where Putin said, "In his heart, how could you help but miss the Soviet Union?" That's what he said. Which is consistent with what Merkel said. But then he went on to say, you know, in the rest of the sentence, that this is not going to happen. Anybody who thinks that is not got a brain. So there's no evidence that he said, "I miss the Soviet Union, and what we have to do is recreate the Soviet Union or recreate something that looks like the Soviet Union." You have, in my opinion, you have to provide evidence of that to beat me. It may be possible to do that. Eric and I were talking about that before. There may, we may discover when archives are opened, or there may be pieces of evidence out there now that I've just missed. But you have to show that that's what he was bent on doing.

Actually, I thought where you might go. A number of people have used this argument about me. You know, he made this speech about Peter the Great the other day, and he made it clear that Peter the Great had imperial ambitions and was interested in reconquering, I'm choosing my words carefully here, reconquering territory that the Swedes and others had taken away from Russia. And then he, in a very opaque way, implied that he may be doing the same thing. He didn't mention Ukraine, but one could argue that, you know, he sees what he's doing now in Ukraine as similar to what Peter the Great did. That is, reconquering lost territory. That would contradict my argument. My counter to that is that he said that after the invasion. And I have words in there. I've thought about this long and hard. I think his goals have escalated. This is why I think tragically, he's not going to give up that territory he's conquered. I think he's either going to incorporate that into greater Russia or he's going to create independent republics. His goals have changed. My argument is, there's no evidence before he went in that he was interested in conquering huge swaths of territory and incorporating into Russia. It's like the Germans in World War I. I don't know how many of you know about the March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Oh my god, it's amazing how much territory the Germans took from the Russians via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. Of course, it was all eventually reversed. Okay. But when the Germans went into the war in 1914, they did not have those war aims. They evolved as the war went on. And that's the great danger that we face with regard to Putin in Russia now, that the war has started, that his war aims have elevated, and it'll make it impossible to recreate a vibrant Ukraine, which would be, from my point of view, a desirable goal.

I realized that I thought I only gonna ask two questions and then open to the audience, and time is running out. But I'm looking at Eric, and I thought I'd try to communicate whether we can have a little bit more time. Of course, it also depends on you and on you. So, so why don't we open up for questions? Many questions. Can I start with Sarah? So, thanks. Thank you. This works. Good. So, one is just a factual kind of explanation. Could you explain why if NATO did not see Russia as a threat in 2008, it wasn't worried about it at all, why it was so interested still in expansion? And the second one is something about this concept of winning the war that you were mentioning at the end, which makes negotiations so difficult because both sides want to really win the war. What does winning the war mean? And the reason I ask this is, if I, if we look at Russia's behavior in Syria, I wonder whether permanent instability, stability is perhaps a winning of the war for Russia.

Okay, John, I want to thank you for this. I'm, I'm so glad you laid out this argument. And now I want to ask you, building on what Stephanie said, could we challenge your argument with something other than Russia's imperial domain? Right? So what if we could identify another existential threat to Vladimir Putin, like democracy? If we did that, then we could start the story with the color revolutions and Russia's reaction to those color revolutions. And the beauty of that was that that would explain why the countries that went through the color revolutions actually requested to be brought into NATO and put pressure on the Bucharest Declaration, right? So the advantage there is that now we don't have to lose the agency of these countries, and we can also explain why Russia participates in Partnership for Peace right up through that summit. Russia's not afraid of NATO, but once NATO is being used to protect these democracies, Russia is afraid of democracy. So Russia has to be afraid of NATO. And, and, and in fact, that would help us because a lot of the timing doesn't always work. Like 2014 was triggered by the Maidan, which was triggered not by a NATO enlargement activity, but by a relationship between Ukraine and the European Union. Right? And then, and then once Russia gets in, it's all about democracy. And the beauty of this is not only can we explain the tension between Russia and the West, but we can also explain the development of Russia as a polity over the same period. So we don't even have to look at words, we can look at deeds, as Russia clamps down on democracy domestically. And finally, we can include things that don't really feature us prominently in your narrative, like what is Russia doing in Belarus right now? And why is Russia so concerned about absorbing Belarus into a security relationship? And I think it all goes back to the same existential threat, an existential threat that endogenizes the whole NATO story you tell, and instead makes this a story about a conflict between a regime that doesn't believe in democracy and fears democracy, those elements that want to promote democracy outside.

Thank you. Everyone, ambassador, PhD here. Actually, yes. So I'll actually be very brief because it responds to what Professor Jones has said. If we use this logic of what happens outside of Russia and how it, Russia responds to it, how does imperialism not actually advance your explanation of the causes of the war? Russian imperialism, meaning that Russia needs to direct how Ukrainian and Belarusian internal forces act and in which direction those democratic or not forces can push their own countries. And therefore, Russia's imperialism is the response of Russia to foreign countries' politics, and not Russia being imperialistic. Does not mean, I don't see why it would imply that the cause you identify would not be the cause of the current war.

Okay, thank you. I'll try to be as succinct as possible, just because there are lots of questions. Your question, Sarah, why expansion before the crisis in 2014? John says it's not about balance of power politics. We're not containing Russia. It was basically liberal hegemony, and the idea was liberal hegemony, that was American foreign policy when the Cold War ended. Describes our engagement policy towards China. It explains the Bush Doctrine in the Middle East. Had three strands to it: one is to spread democracy, number two is to incorporate countries all around the planet into international institutions, and three, to integrate them into the world economy, the capitalist world economy. Okay? And what we were doing was moving NATO and the EU, two institutions, eastward, and incorporating more and more states into those institutions so they would be rules-abiding citizens. Two, by moving the EU eastward, we're getting everybody hooked on capitalism, integrating them into the international economic order. And number three, and this was what Eric was getting at with the color revolutions, Rose Revolution, Georgia, Orange Revolution, Ukraine, were spreading democracy, right? So the name of the game was to turn Eastern Europe into a giant zone of peace, much the way Western Europe and our story had been turned into a giant zone of peace. And Europe would be one big seamless web of peace, love, and dope. So that's what was going on. There's no talk of containment. I found it very hard to believe that we, one, would not have been thinking about containing Russia before 2014. But all the administrations are filled with liberal do-gooders like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and so forth and so on. And the end result is you get liberal hegemony.

Now, you say, what does winning the war mean? This is a great question, and one I don't have that much time to go into. But the American case is easy. Winning, as I said, is defeating the Russians in Ukraine and basically strangling the economy to the point where you knock them out of the ranks of the great powers. The Russian case is a trickier case. You know, a lot of people say, "What we have to do is we have to allow Putin to save face." And I say, you don't want to think about it in those terms. You want to think about it and cause, Vitz, in terms of war is an extension of politics by other means. Don't get too wrapped around about what happens on the battlefield. The question is, what's the political goal here? And John's story is that the political goal is more than anything to make sure you have a neutral Ukraine. So winning for Putin is putting an end to Ukraine joining the West, joining NATO, joining the EU. So that's winning. And that's why in my formal comments, I said that for the Russians, if you hope to shut this one down, you've got to have a velvet divorce between Ukraine and NATO and the United States, and Ukraine has to be neutral. So that would be winning in that particular case. But that's a, you know, as I said, an excellent question.

Just with regard to Eric, I actually don't disagree with Eric at all. I want to remind you that my argument, and I tried to say it so many times that I thought maybe I said it too much, our basic aim is to turn Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's border. And that strategy has three prongs: one is to incorporate Ukraine into the EU, to foster a color revolution in Ukraine where it becomes a pro-West liberal democracy, that's where he was going, and third, and most importantly, to bring Ukraine into NATO. Now, I agree with you that the Russians lived in mortal fear of a color revolution in Russia. And for those of you who are interested, you go home and Google the New Yorker magazine, Michael McFaul's experience as America's ambassador to Russia. He was interested in fostering a color revolution in Russia. Putin hated the guy. Read page 12 of his memoirs where he talks about Putin staring him down at a meeting that he had outside of Moscow, right? Putin lived in fear, as you pointed out, of a color revolution. And correctly. And as Eric also correctly pointed out, the, uh, the 2012 crisis, or when the crisis broke out in 2012, it was not about NATO expansion per se, it was about the EU and about a color revolution. So I'm in complete agreement with you. But what I'm saying to you, Eric, is it's a three-prong strategy, all designed to make Ukraine a Western bulwark with regard to the graduate student back there, I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. In my story about this one, and you didn't see it here, but just, I did this interview with the New Yorker where this comes out clearly for me. There's a difference between imperialism and geopolitics. And when I hear the word imperialism used with Putin, I identify that with the argument that he was interested in conquering Ukraine, absorbing Ukraine, maybe conquering Finland, conquering other countries. That to me is what imperialism is about. It's creating an empire. So imperialism and empire go together. For John, this is really all about balance of power politics. It's all about taking NATO and putting it too close to Russia, and the Russians viewing this as a threat, much the way we viewed Soviet ICBMs in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis as a security threat. So for me, it's all about balance of power logic. You can see my realism coming through, and why I don't like the word imperialism. But I do want to be clear here, it's all a function of how I define imperialism and how I define balance of power politics. One could define imperialism in different ways and come at me from a different perspective.

Super. So I'll do one more round of questions. Maybe if you, and we do, I will look at Eric once in a while, and when I suddenly see a subtle sign that tells me to end, I shall end. And Sarah, you have that microphone now. Now then, please give it to Jeff first. Given that you, no, the one closest to you. Sorry, back, back, back. I'm trying to be efficient. So, okay. Uh, thank you. And thank you, John. I encouraged all my researchers to come today because I said you'd give a very entertaining presentation. You didn't disappoint. But, I mean, so you're at EUI. We, we portray ourselves as a premier social science institution in Europe. And I guess I'd like to push you, and it's really following up on Stephanie and Eric, about sort of the social science behind your argumentation. Because, I mean, when I tell my researchers, like, developing IR theory, right? Okay, definitely don't just establish correlations. Give us some sense of the causal processes to connect A to B to C to D to get us to an outcome. I tell them to operationalize their terms carefully. I tell them to think, well, what would threaten my argument with alternate explanations? And I just worry, sort of, it all counts, right? I mean, you sort of gave us a really interesting narrative here that just sort of fails on all those accounts. You, you keep accusing the mainstream narrative of basically cherry-picking stuff to tell us a story. It sort of sounds like you're doing the same thing to tell another story. So that's worrying. I mean, what were your methods? I mean, how many sources did you look at? I assume you can only use English, right? So you're just looking at translated stuff. I mean, that's an issue, right? Key terms for you, existential threat. And you made it clear in the talk, right? It's NATO expansion. Anybody who studies Russian politics, right, would tell you, in Putin's own words, the existential threat was, Aries comment, coming back about ten decades is democracy. He's creating the beginnings of a totalitarian system in Russia. And so one narrative that's out there, an argument of why he did this, he had to act now to invade before Ukraine became a democracy, okay? Because that would undercut and destroy his kleptocratic regime he's created at home. Alternative explanations. Final point, domestic politics, right? It seems really important. You have to know this stuff. You expressed surprise that Putin couldn't have wanted to take all of Ukraine because, look at the setup, they didn't have enough forces. Have you studied from the Russian specialist about the decision-making before the invasion? Putin was listening to three people. Shoigu, who was telling him stories he thought he could actually take and decapitate it. You're assuming there was some rationality in that decision-making process, which simply wasn't there. So I just worry that, you know, if we sort of really think about the social science behind your, your argument, it's sort of, it's not there. Thanks.

Veronika, please. And then Veronika, if you don't mind, give it to your neighbor. I think your hand was up too. No, yes. So, Veronika Angel, postdoc fellow here at EUI. I wonder if there's any room for nuance on your position on Western commitment to Ukraine's EU and NATO membership? Because the opposition to NATO enlargement coming from multiple Western NATO states that you alluded to as well as lukewarm Eastern European support from member states, which you did not mention, but which also characterizes the foreign policy of these countries since they did join EU and NATO, rather confirms the idea that the need for a buffer zone between the West and Russia also permeated NATO's strategic culture, not just the Russian one. So, is it your suggestion that we should believe that the idea of buffer zone creation was never part of post-Cold War U.S. foreign policy? And does that mean that we should read your interpretation of the war as a call for the ideological and material investment in a long overdue creation of this velvet divorce and of territories defined by fragile equilibria? And back to Jeffrey's point as well, you use the word evidence a lot, which elicits no attention to knowledge-making tools. How do you conduct your research? It's quite possible that your position on interpreting Putin's intentions and that of people who study the area is so different because we simply talk to different people. Who are your interlocutors on the ground? Your resources? The archival material? Your concern, um, and so on. Thank you.

I know it's unfair to the people who will ask questions now, but please be a little shorter and if possible, one question per person, just so we get a few more people. And apologies. Next to you, yes. Thanks. I, you ended your speech by saying that, um, history will judge unfavorably should I stand up? Okay, that's what I'm talking about. The United States and its allies. But you didn't really talk about the allies during your talk except to say that they were opposed to the, um, 2008 decision to, um, aim for Ukraine and Georgia to become members of NATO, and they couldn't get their way. And, and Olaf Scholz was in Kyiv, I think, or Moscow in February, just before the war began, and he talked about NATO, the prospect of NATO membership, and he said, "This is not on the table for the foreseeable future." But he didn't say Germany and France are vetoing the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. So my question is, why if Germany and France were opposed to the very principle of NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia, why did they fail to stop the prospect of NATO expansion from getting onto the agenda and remaining there? And a second question, very quickly, what should change? What, what would need to change in the future for that to be possible for the French and the Germans? Do you mind if I take one more question? Or do you prefer we do another round? But so we, we try to, so that I'm just worried that Eric will give me the sign very fast, so I'm squeezing one more question. Can you give the person behind you? Thank you very much. I'm Makoto, and a postdoc here. My question is about cheap talk. So you mentioned you relied on Putin's statements. And I understand that Putin usually doesn't lie to foreign colleagues. But if the war aims, the real war aims, or partial war aims, is unpalatable, isn't it a good reason for them to, you know, generic leader try? For example, when Japan invaded Southeast Asia, Japan wanted the oil in Indonesia. They never publicly said that. So you mentioned that we need, or counter-argument needs, a definite proof that Putin had intent to, you know, have an imperialistic expansion. But if imperialistic expansion itself is unpalatable, then is any kind of unrealistic to expect him to say, "Hey, Angela, actually, I have imperialist ambitions and I have intention to follow through"? And also relatedly, what I think, you know, it could be a case that if the perception of Russia about NATO is very important, then isn't it the case that, you know, the most paranoid people, most people most paranoid to the provocation? Oh, sorry. Then I stopped it. Thank you.

Let me just start with Jeffrey's point. Look, social science has real limits, and you do your best with the evidence, and you always live with the possibility that you're wrong. It may be the case that all the available public evidence points in one direction, but when they open the archives in 20 years, you'll discover that you were wrong. And this last gentleman, or the last question you hear from this gentleman, that this is just, you know, a cover. All this talk about NATO expansion is a cover for the real motive because it's unpalatable. Maybe proved true. I'm not up here saying I have the truth. I'm giving you my interpretation. And with regard to the evidence, before I go, before an audience, and I go before lots of people when I talk, I want to make sure that I've got my arguments down, that the evidence does support me, because I don't want to make a fool of myself. I don't want to end up with egg all over my face. I've read everything I could get my hands on. I've talked to lots of people, and I've given this talk in different forms before lots of audiences, and people have run counter-arguments up against me and pointed to other evidence and so forth and so on. So I'm reasonably comfortable that the available evidence supports my basic line of argument. But that's not to say I'm locked in. And Eric and I were talking before in his office, and I was telling him, if he came across any evidence in a book that he was mentioning to me that contradicted what I had to say, please send it to me as soon as possible, and I'll change my arguments accordingly.

With regard to what an existential threat is, I think the Russians are quite clear in this particular case that an existential threat is there's a threat to their survival in the IR sense of the term, in the same way we viewed nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba as an existential threat. I think there's not much question that the Russians see NATO enlargement to include Ukraine as a, as a threat to their survival, as a security threat of the highest order.

With regard to your interesting question about how do I determine that they didn't have enough forces to conquer all of Ukraine? I, I actually wrote my dissertation on conventional deterrence, which really revolved around the question of a Soviet offensive into Western Europe during the Cold War. I know a huge amount about armored war and conventional war. I went to West Point as an undergraduate. I was in the army. I was in the Air Force. I've studied German operations in World War II extensively. I've studied Israeli armored operations in the Middle East extensively. And I didn't have to rely on anybody's opinions on whether or not the Russians had the capability to conquer Ukraine with 190,000 forces. I could count up how many armored division equivalents they had, how many they needed, what was necessary to conquer Ukraine, what was necessary to occupy Ukraine, and then I know enough about social engineering as well to think about what kind of force levels they need to do that. It is not even close. And all the other people like Barry Posen at MIT, who I know, who are experts about the nitty-gritty of conventional war, agree with me on this issue. So that assessment is based on my own views.

With regard to this young woman over there who commented on my lack of nuance, I think there is no doubt about it that virtually everybody who knows me would agree that nuance is not my, uh, modus operandi. But you raised the interesting issue about a buffer zone, and the Russians wanted a buffer zone, that they wanted Ukraine as a buffer zone, and that's what they care about regarding Belarus as well. It's actually NATO that didn't want a buffer zone. I went to Poland about three or four different times, and I told the Poles, "The last thing you want to do is expand NATO into Ukraine because it's going to be like poking a hornet's nest, and it's going to cause unending trouble for Poland." I said, "You have the ideal situation now in that you have a buffer zone, Ukraine, between Poland and Russia, and what you should do is everything you possibly can to maintain that buffer zone. And if you poke the bear, and the bear takes Ukraine, the bear's going to be right next door to you, and that is not going to be good." But we were not interested. The Poles were not interested. The Baltic states were not interested. And the Americans are certainly not interested. We wanted to march NATO right up to their doorstep. So my argument would be, they should have been interested in a buffer zone, sort of getting in line with your points, but we weren't.

History and allies. This is the third question. What, why didn't the Europeans get their way? The Europeans didn't get their way because the Europeans danced to our tune. We run NATO. This is a matter of power. We have all these fictions that we tell people about joint decision-making. The United States runs NATO, and the Europeans do what we tell them. You could talk to the Russians about this. You want to know why Putin and Lavrov send a letter to Washington on December 17th and say, "That's the response we care about." They don't care about the response from Jens Stoltenberg. How many divisions does Jens Stoltenberg have? Right? It's the United States of America that really matters. No, it's not. But he was talking, he was talking about Merkel and Sarkozy, and Bush got what he wanted. My question is, why didn't Merkel stand up to him? Merkel understood, Sarkozy understood. It was the Americans who were pursuing a remarkably foolish policy. If you just think about what Merkel said, Germany, Germany is going to suffer enormously from this catastrophe in Ukraine. It is going to have really negative effects. And I say to myself, apropos your comments, why didn't she throw down the gauntlet and say, "Under no circumstances are we allowing Ukraine to come into NATO"? That's exactly what she should have done. But the Germans hardly ever do that. They always dance to our tunes. One, history, and I don't think I have to explain that to you. And number two, they have a deal here. And the deal is the United States stays in Europe, acts as a pacifier, provides security for them, and they basically go along with what we want them to do. That's the deal, right? They don't want us to leave. So they don't want to anger us. They don't want to tell us to jump in the lake. And in the end, they cave in. Most of the time. They didn't cave in on Iraq, but most of the time they cave in. And on this one, they caved in big time. And I believe the consequences are catastrophic.

Your point about cheap talk. Look, your point is basically that this is an imperial enterprise and they're covering it up with rhetoric about NATO expansion. And I can't prove that you're wrong other than saying I see no evidence that you're right. If, when they open the archives, you're right and I'm wrong, God bless you, you're right, I was wrong. I'll admit it. But based on everything that's out there in the public record and sort of what fits in my story from a logical point of view, I think you're wrong that, you know, they're not, that they're not buffaloing us, they're not, you know, they're not lying to us. But I can't be 100% certain on that. I'll be very unconventional. I'll let one more question in, but as a gift to you for dinner. So if you'd like, this will be a, could be a conversation topic because what happens to be who happens to be here in the room is one of the architects of European security policy, Robert Cooper. And so if you don't mind, we'll finish with Robert who gives us a question that maybe will serve for dinner conversation. The pressure is on. Before we finish, I mean, European security policy is rather grand term for what the, I worked for the European Union for some time, and I wouldn't describe what it has as actually being a security policy in realist terms. But I wrote a paper, um, the, um, but I was going to say to you, and this is partly based on my European experience, maybe when you write all this down, you could include a footnote about the incompetence of multilateral organizations, organizations, because actually, I found the NATO declaration that issued from Bucharest really extraordinary. I could understand them inviting Ukraine to join or to start the, the membership action procedure, that meant something. I could understand them remaining silent, that meant something. But to say NATO will one day be a member of Ukraine without having any program behind it or anything like that, that was just a big, a piece of, of, um, multilateral incompetence. And remember, this was drafted personally by the heads of government, and that's when you get real incompetence joined together. So it's not kind of pure theory, but it's, um, uh, uh, but nevertheless, multilateral organizations are very curious. Actually, I think the UK played a bad role because if the UK had joined France and Germany in saying, "Look, this is rather dangerous, it needs to be thought about more carefully," maybe we could have got away with saying nothing, which would have been a good solution.

So, Ken, very quickly. Oh, sorry, over time. I've come to appreciate the importance of multilateral institutions, or what you call multilateral organizations. When I first, you know, started thinking about institutions, I tended to be somewhat contemptuous, contemptuous of them, and that was foolish on my part. But the argument I would make is that multilateral institutions are run by the most powerful states. And the EU and NATO are run in large part by the most powerful states. And with regard to NATO and the April 2008 decision, you said that it was evidence of multilateral incompetence. I think there's absolutely no question you're right. You're, you know, I've now studied and talked to people about this, you're absolutely right. But it was the Americans who were responsible. It was the Bush administration. And if you look at the decision-making process, it was, to put it in crude terms, a half-assed decision-making process where the Americans really goofed. I would just say, you, from having sat in, from having spent three days in Germany talking to a number of people about this issue, they would take issue with you on the UK. Their argument is, it's not my argument, this is what a number of people said to me, the French and especially the Germans were real Bolsheviks about opposing the Americans. They said that the British basically agreed with the Germans and the French, but they didn't want to anger the Americans, so they kept their mouths closed. So that was the story that I heard. But that's just more evidence that it was the crazy Americans who were driving the train, and that was the point that I tried to make to you folks.

Apologies to everyone else who wanted to ask questions, but as John, you said, you invited everyone to send you evidence. I hope you also could invite everyone who still has questions to send him questions. And I will just, uh, invite you to, to maybe have spent some time in answering them. In the meantime, please thank me for, for all the time and patience of answering the questions that have been asked and for your presentation.

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Thank you.

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