Suggested reading Why Ukraine's counter-offensive is working Furthermore, if the Russians use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the West, and here we’re talking mainly about the United States, is not going to retaliate with nuclear weapons against Russia, because that would lead to a general thermonuclear war.” ![]() So the Ukrainians would not be able to retaliate against the Russians with their own nuclear weapons. And Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons of its own. “If the Russians were to use nuclear weapons, the most likely scenario is that they would use them in Ukraine. He lays out his rationale for why the Russians might well go there, step by step: He believes that escalation is likely, and the chance of a nuclear event is “non-trivial”. As he puts it, succinctly: “There are no realistic options. Russia will not surrender the gains made in Eastern Ukraine, while the West cannot tolerate their continued occupation meanwhile, a neutral Ukraine is also impossible, as the only power capable of guaranteeing that neutrality is the US, which would of course be intolerable to Russia. But I think there is a good chance that in the end, the Russians will prevail.”īleakly, Mearsheimer now believes that the opportunity for peace has been lost, and that there is no realistic deal that could be reached in Ukraine. This war has got a long time to go and it’s going to play itself out in ways that are hard to predict. You want to be very careful not to judge the outcome of this war at this particular juncture. And the more time goes by, and the more the Russians feel that the West has its gun sights on Russia, and is trying to not only defeat Russia, but knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers, the more Russian nationalism will kick in. But the point you want to remember is that Nationalism is also at play on the Russian side. Nationalism and Realism fit together rather neatly. There’s also no doubt that nationalism is not part of the realist theory of international politics that I have, but nationalism is consistent with realism. “There’s no doubt that when the Russians invaded Ukraine, nationalism came racing to the fore, and that Ukrainian nationalism is a force multiplier. “The key word here is nationalism,” he responds. The smaller power is outperforming the greater, in part through the sheer moral conviction of its people defending their homeland - evidence, surely, of the intangible moral element that is missing from his coldly “realist” world view? I put it to him that the progress of the Ukraine war thus far can be seen as a repudiation of his “realist” theory of international affairs. Mearsheimer concedes that he was surprised by how poorly the Russians have performed, but that doesn’t seem to have affected his assessment of the realpolitik. The underdog nation, by most accounts, is performing astonishingly well against the aggressor. This assessment of the situation on the ground is very different from the reports we hear every day of Ukrainian successes and Russian retreats. It’s sickening to see what’s happening to Ukraine.” And at the same time, they’re destroying Ukrainian infrastructure. ![]() And if they can’t get a neutral Ukraine, what they’re going to do is create a dysfunctional rump state… They’ve taken a huge swath of territory in the East, they’ve annexed those oblasts that are now part of Russia. “What the Russians have said they have wanted from the beginning is a neutral Ukraine. In which case, what was that limited aim? That’s the size army you need to conquer a country like Ukraine, occupy it and then incorporate it into a greater Russia. When the Germans invaded Poland, in 1939, they invaded with 1.5 million troops. And they didn’t have the troops in reserve to do that. There is no way they could have conquered Ukraine with 190,000 troops. “They made no effort to conquer all of Ukraine. “The Russians invaded Ukraine with 190,000 troops at the very most,” he replies. ![]() I want to know how can he still maintain that there is “no evidence” that Russia had ambitions to conquer Ukraine? How else are we to interpret that shocking moment when it became clear that the Russians were launching a full-scale invasion - from the North, the South and the East of the country? When I meet Mearsheimer, I am keen to focus on what we have learned since the February invasion began.
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