In today’s Vatnik Soup, I’ll introduce an American political scientist, John Mearsheimer. He’s best-known for his theory of offensive realism, for his pandering to authoritarian regimes, and for ignoring the sovereignty of independent countries.

Mearsheimer is famous for his theory of offensive realism. The theory assumes that “great powers” such as the US, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and (for some weird reason) Russia are being primarily driven by the rational desire to achieve regional hegemony in an anarchic international system.

His lecture “Why is Ukraine the West’s Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer” has been viewed over 29 million times on YouTube, and its often the cornerstone of any anti-US and anti-NATO argument in the context of Ukraine, including those originating from the Kremlin.

Let’s do a short review about Mearsheimer’s theory: he suggests that Russia had no other choice but to invade Ukraine as the West was provoking them with the constant eastward NATO “expansion”. This view is based on the ideas of “Realpolitik” and “great power politics”.

“Realpolitik" is a system where politics is stripped off from any moral or ideological considerations and which focuses more on the practical side of things. “Great power politics” means that the big players like the US or the PRC decide what happens to smaller…

…countries that are considered to be a part of their “spheres of influence”. Of course, this implicitly strips smaller countries and their citizens of their agency and sovereignty, as it’s up to the big players to decide what their fate should be.

You can guess that Mearsheimer is a citizen of a “great power” and has never, ever, considered the opinion of anyone from the countries he so eagerly wants to sacrifice to Russian control.

In fact, according to him, the US should actually just stop all aid to Ukraine and form an alliance with Putin, so that they together can beat another great power, the PRC. So, if it were up to Johnny, the US really shouldn’t interfere with Putin’s genocidal war in Ukraine at all.

A few days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the great realist stated that Putin “understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet Union”, and that “Putin is much too smart for that”, followed by a series of other predictions that turned out to be just as wrong. Realism, right.

Of course we now know that this was exactly what Putin planned to do, and in fact this plan had been started already back in early 2010s. Putin’s plans were laid out clearly in his 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”.

In a later interview and after Putin had annexed four more Ukrainian oblasts, Mearsheimer still stood by his previous statements, saying that all Putin wants is these four oblasts (although he had previously said he wants just two) as well as “regime change” in Kyiv.

He also absurdly claimed that Putin’s “response to events there [in Ukraine] has been defensive, not offensive.” Soon after this, Putin gave a speech in which he compared himself to conqueror Peter the Great and did not say one word about NATO or its expansion.

Of course, his claim that Russia is a “great nation” is also disputable. It’s a declining power with a small GDP and a huge demographic problem. The country basically acts only as a Mafia-run gas station that completely disregards democracy and human rights.

Degenerate Russia 2: Crime, violence, corruption

Mearsheimer’s view of “realism” is also inherently unrealistic — it completely disregards internal politics and leaves no room for decision-makers. In his world, it doesn’t matter if Russia is run by Stalin, Gorbachev or Putin, or Germany is run by Merkel or Hitler.

Incidentally, Mearsheimer’s never passed any judgment on the most horrific war crimes, including the abduction of Ukrainian children, that Russia has conducted in their genocidal war. For some weird reason, he has done this in the case of Israel: in his 2007 book, …

…The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Mearsheimer refers to a “moral dimension” in the US’s enabling of Israeli “crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.” So, according to him, it’s okay for Russia to be genocidal, but not for the US.

But most of all, Mearsheimer doesn’t understand Russia. At its core, Russia is an imperialist, revisionist, expansionist and aggressive state. Waging small wars along its borders has been a tool of domestic control in “Russkiy Mir” since the time of the Tsars.

In addition, he has no clue about Ukraine — a sovereign country that had suffered greatly under the Soviet Union, its people only wanted to become closer to Western democracies and distance themselves from the corruption and oligarchy brought in by the Soviet leadership.

Euromaidan

Like so many Eastern European countries before them, Ukraine wanted protection against the genocidal, imperialistic power that is Russia. Neither EU nor NATO forces anyone to join them: it’s a voluntary process, in fact not an easy one in either case, whereas joining the Russian “sphere of influence” is usually forced by bloodshed.

In June 2022, Mearsheimer gave a lecture in which he stated that “Putin does not have a history of lying to other leaders,” neatly forgetting Putin’s lies that Russia will not invade Ukraine, that Russia had no role in the downshooting of MH17, that the Kremlin had…

…nothing to do with the poisoning of Navalny, and that the Russian army does not strike at civilian facilities. Or Putin lying to Macron about the Russian state’s full financing of Wagner, only to openly admit it later once they turned against him.There’s of course hundreds, if not thousands, of more lies, these being only the most blatant ones.

Due to his stance on Ukraine, Mearsheimer has been invited to many influential gatherings. He’s part of Moscow-based Valdai Club which incidentally also funded his work. He’s also met with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, but really, REALLY doesn’t want to talk about this meeting at all.

During a Valdai event, Mearsheimer stated that “I’m much more comfortable in Moscow than Washington!”

I wonder if it’s all the money he’s getting from there?

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