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In his famous 201 lecture Mearshimer predicted that it would be too stupid for Russia to invade Ukraine because it would look bad for Russia. Mearshimer did not consider Russia to be militarily capable of accomolishing a fait accompli, and thus ruled out Russian hostility as a given. In fact if you look up Mearshimers work prior to the 2022 war, Mearshimer keeps banging on that the USA should focus against China and that securing Russia as an ally was - and still is - of paramount importance. I view his hostility to Ukraine as part of his larger crusade against perceived misplaced priorities of the state department combined with an extremely ruthless calculus of relative power focus: it is inefficient to support weak corrupt states in Russias proximate orbit and it is better to husband resources if not spending it to bribe/secure Russias allegiance.
Mearshimers military analysis is, unfortunately, severely lacking. In his rush to get the west (really just USA) to refocus against China, he emphasizes that Russia is winning and in the face of such inevitability the west should stop wasting time. His sources for Russian inevitable victory are ridiculous retards like Scott Ritter, ArmchairW, BigSerge and fucking moonofalabama. It is an echo chamber of 'russia stronk!' vatniks that stand in contrast to the nafo chuds, and unfortunately for Mearshimer the inevitable victory of Russia is neither evident nor imminent. The longer Russia stumbles over its slow grind in Ukraines east, the more time is wasted on debating artillery shells instead of nuking Chinas island chain airbases.
Mearsheimer's argument is not complex:
Unlike 'experts' like General Petraeus or Ben Hodges, Mearsheimer actually gets things right. Back in mid-2023 when he wrote that article everyone was hyping the Ukrainian counteroffensive, it promptly sank like a stone because they lacked the mass and firepower to beat the Russians. The war has continued according to Mearsheimer's prognosis. There's no magic trick to achieve victory, you just need mass and firepower. The Russians have it, the Ukrainians have much less. By the way, in 2014 he wrote that while Russia wasn't eager to get immersed in Ukraine and they lacked the power to easily conquer the country. However, Russia would devastate and wreck Ukraine if we continued leading them down the primrose path: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf
Lo and behold, he's been proven totally correct on Russian capabilities (they certainly haven't easily conquered the country) and on causal logic, if we keep immersing ourselves in Ukraine Russia will have a very bad reaction and wreck the country.
Imagine calling these guys ridiculous retards with severely lacking analysis and then watching as they're proven right for making the most obvious, straightforward arguments imaginable.
And why should we nuke China's island bases? Our strategy is clearly defensive, it's far easier to present the war to third parties and voters as defensive if we're not the ones attacking. A nuclear first strike against essentially peripheral targets is certainly an interesting proposal, however I'm not quite sure it advances our position.
If you ignore the things Mearsheimer actually got wrong and ignore things that Petraeus or Hodges actually got right, this would indeed be a compelling line of argument. But if we don't, it's not, and little more than cherry picking.
The war's progression defied multiple of Mearsheimer's prognosis, starting from whether it would start, to how it would last. Other parts of Mearsheimer's prognosis that have been born out- like Ukraine being wrecked- were never contested in the first place. Even the tools of prognosis have repeatedly been exposed as lacking- the crux of Mearsheimer's analysis on inevitable attrition has rested on artillery advantage, even as the late/post-23 trends have demonstrated that the artillery was far more circumstantial, while he's regularly made arguments on capabilities (such as Russia eviscerating Ukrainian air defenses) that have been more than a little overreaching. There's a reason that Russia's turn to airpower has hinged on glide bombs from the ranges they have.
You like to appeal back to 2014 for Mearsheimer, but I see no reason not to go further to the 1990's- as early as 1992- when Mearsheimer was on record advocating for nuclear proliferation to the Germans and Japanese, aka historic Russian strategic rivals, which would have brought permanent nuclear presence to the border of the Russian sphere of influence that Mearsheimer called for respecting... which has been part of the nominal cassus belli for Russian intervention on grounds of proximate nuclear threat.
In other words, Mearsheimer has been advocating crossing contemporary Russian narratives of security red lines for about as long as the Soviet Union's been dead. He's just done it in different forms, but not forms that would escape a revanchist narrative of malign activity of western encroachment.
Mearsheimer is as deserving as the 'expert' title as anyone else, and unsurprisingly not any more impressive outside his field of actual expertise than anyone else. People just tend to forget his field of expertise is international relations theory as a political scientist, not international relations in action, or in policy, or anything particularly to do with the military in general, or as any kind of analyst of the countries he opines on.
I tend not to ask, but what nationality are you for the 'we'?
For whatever reason- admittedly perhaps conflating you with someone else- I thought you presented yourself as a German in the past, or at least European, which wouldn't make sense in this more recent context unless the 'we' is rather expansive. And in the inverse, there are enough Europeans on this forum that 'we' would also be awkward in this context.
The US already had nuclear weapons based in Germany and Japan in the Cold War and still has them based in Turkey. Nuclearization isn't a major change like NATO expansion eastwards towards Georgia and Ukraine, it only alters deterrence logic for those countries themselves. A nuclear Japan could be useful in countering China (another area where Mearsheimer was a decade or so ahead of the curve). Anyway, nuclear threat from Japan and Germany is less than from Turkey and far less than from Ukraine or the Baltics.
Mearsheimer did not say that a Russo-Ukrainian war wouldn't start, he described the conditions under which it would start if US/NATO foreign policy wasn't changed. He described the limitations of Russian power and the difficulties of occupying a whole country. He says that Russia will withstand considerable pain to pursue its security (this was before sanction-proofing) and that it will devastate Ukraine if the West doesn't change its policy, that logically implies war. Where did he say that Russia wouldn't go to war with Ukraine?
He even foresaw the war back in 1992, advocating that Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons since the West was hardly likely to extend nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. He raises Crimea, mixed populations and nationalism on either side, control of the Black Sea Fleet, the fact that the Russians are always going to be stronger conventionally, historical antipathy... all factors we're dealing with decades later! He thought the Ukrainians would be less willing to bow to US pressure than they were, yet surely his predictive value is high.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf
Meanwhile, what have all the talented NATO Ukraine hands and generals gotten us? Hodges seemed to think the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed, despite being a telegraphed attack into a fortified and well-prepared enemy who has air superiority. Petraeus was in the same camp! What were they thinking?
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-breakthrough-could-come-weeks-former-us-general-says-1823389
And then there's the whole 'Putin's Russia is so weak that we can head them off by giving Ukraine more arms but so strong that he'll invade NATO if he wins' camp that is so well-represented in think tanks and media output, especially ISW. Which is it?
I maintain that Mearsheimer has been far more useful on the course of this war than the credentialed experts who seem to be hyping Ukraine.
Australian, we do show up for even the silliest US wars and will presumably be called in against China. What is the point of AUKUS if not to tie our fates together?
Okay, I believe the Australian claim off this alone, definitely not a European-attuned perspective.
You can try to argue that Mearsheimer didn't deny a different war would start, but the war Mearsheimer argued against on grounds of Russian limitations- that Russia wouldn't try to conquer all of Ukraine- is precisely the kind of war Russia launched. It failed, Russia was incompetent, but it is an illustration of Mearsheimer not actually recognizing or acknowledging Russian divergences from his predictions, and the later retreat to semantics of what degree of invasion is / is not conquest of all of Ukraine.
Basic motte and bailey.
Not really, and this goes back to the point of Mearsheimer's limitations outside of his field, in this part how the Europeans view nuclear proliferation.
Setting aside the contextual inaccuracy- Ukraine wasn't in a position to acquire nuclear weapons in 1992, it was in a position to negotiate away the nuclear weapons it had already inherited by 1996, this is ignoring what Russia wanted in this context, and why, and how such a policy pursued by Mearsheimer could be reflected in the current Putin-imperialist zeitgeist, as well as what doing such a policy would have naturally lead to in terms of American involvement with Ukraine.
Mearsheimer was not someone who was advocating foreign policy prescriptions that actually recognized and respected Russian security concerns for their own sake. Mearsheimer is someone who is selective in which security concerns he recognizes as valid, and treats them as transactional devices while downplaying or ignoring the relevance of security concerns he doesn't recognize the validity of. Nuclear proliferation is one of these blind spots.
Put another way, Mearsheimer is someone who believes in great powers dividing spheres of influence and horse-trading power blocks, without realizing he's less an Bismark and more of a Wilhelm at coalition building.
A Ukraine that continues to exist more than two years after nearly all observers thought the state would collapse in two weeks, a Russia that having destroyed its modernized force is in the process of face-tanking its reactivated Soviet stocks while humiliating its pre-war martial reputation, a NATO with a significantly stronger Baltic position and significantly greater available manpower and material capacity, European defense recapitalization as a policy consensus, and the strongest constituent member support for NATO in the last quarter century, and for the EU since before the 2009 Financial Crisis. This is without other things like the changes to the international arms market via displacing Russia, the value of discrediting territorial irridentalist wars of aggression, the confluence of the US and Europeans against China as a second-order effect of China's alignment with Russia, and so on.
I'm surprised you walked into that cluster.
Also, misuse of 'us', since you're not in NATO not part of the NATO constituency interests.
Come now, as a native English speaker, you know the difference between could and would.
Your source is a newsweek article where Hodges doesn't say he believes the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed. It says Hodges says a breakthrough could happen, after Hodges says he ('we' in a context including himself) didn't know the accurate situation to make a conclusion.
Probably, among other things, that the Russians didn't have air superiority, which their tactics over the last years have validated given their reliance to behind-the-lines glide bombing, and that there's no such thing in major wars as a non-telegraphed offensive thanks to the satellite imagery easily available of buildup. These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.
Otherwise, the question doesn't really make sense unless you didn't mean it. The answer is directly in the article: an offensive gain southward that went far enough could expand direct fires coverage to the E-W routes of the Crimean land bridge, complicating the Russian position in Crimea substantially.
By your ! and ? and emotional tone, I suspect you feel this was obviously a bad idea. It's less clear what you think was actually the cost incurred, the chances of success, or what you'd concede were the benefits possible.
E+U > R > E
Both. There's no contradiction unless you reject the Europeans a right to their own perspective of their relative power versus Russia.
Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support. If Russia were to compel / achieve a victory over Ukraine, then depending on the form it could take those forces locked down in Ukraine and move them to other potential areas. If a Russian victory meant that the Russians could move through Ukraine to the Balkans, a Russian intervention wouldn't even trigger NATO depending on the country.
Okay, but it's a silly maintenance. The guy's a goober you'd be lambasting had he had his way based on your past history of other American impositions, which he is by no means opposed to, which makes the utility far more of a stopped clock dynamic than I think you recognize.
Mearsheimer is not a person who's a fan of restrained American conduct for its own sake. In another era, he'd be an overt American imperialist. Much of the media around him in the last years is basic university tenure politics of old professors protecting their original thesis that are the basis of their reputation.
Depends on if you think that's a silly one. Mearsheimer doesn't, except in so much that his views of the Russian sphere of interest was transactional to get them on board for a land war in Asia.
It is a reach bordering on consensus building for you to use 'us' or 'we' to make common position with Americans or Europeans on things the Australians aren't immediate party to and which you do not share common views of, such as NATO, so I will be noting that more often going forward.
The post-Brexit British capitalizing on Australian disgruntlement with the French military arms deal tendencies which were weakening Australia's ability to contribute/support a US-based anti-China coalition without French support despite increasing divergences in the French and Australian government perspectives on China, after the French spent several years having a shadow-feud with the British over the execution of Brexit.
Also, long-term technology transfer.
See this is the reason Mearshimer and the vatnik brigade was wrong in 2022: Russia did not in fact have the million man army of commie fame, it had a corrupt and underprepared army that was so incompetent Ukrainian spies in Belarus were convinced the invasion could not be real because the Russian forces and logistics were so poorly provisioned. The Kyiv thrust was so badly executed that Ritter, McGregor, Serge and all the other worthless vatniks Mearshimer cited as 'experts' had to 180 their assessment of Russian 2022 assaults from 'there are no russian losses kyiv has already fallen anf zelensky is in poland' to 'kyiv was a genius feint to allow capture of the donbass'. Most of this brigade remained continually humiliated by the Kharkiv counteroffensive (my specific introduction to this forum was seeing BigSerge cited here by someone and my supplier mocking that particular vatnik, with BigSerges 'its a genius trap!' rhetoric betraying a laughable understanding of military operations dressed up in distinctly pro-Russian dour seriousness) and the Kherson grind (where the retard brigade once again insisted that Ukraine had no chance of driving Russia back only to pivot into claiming the withdrawal was a sign of Russian genius).
2023 is when Russian force generation let it be the army Mearshimers fools imagined Russia to always be, and when more limited successes started, but that is hardly a reflection of the analytic powers of the vatniks. Russia stumbled into being the army of mass versus Ukraines army of mass, and the slow grind there still does not validate Mearshimers assessments. That Mearshimer is spoken of at all whereas Timothy Synder is ignored points to deliberate ignorance of the intellectual spheres and quality of discourse around: I hold little respect for academics as a whole but if people wish to appeal to academic authority it is necessary to parse competing academic points on their own merits. Sucking off Mearshimer tells me all I need to know and frankly the subsequent cherry picking reinforces my own suspicions: the argument for Russias inevitability is weak and those advancing it don't know enough to dismiss charlatans claiming its inevitability.
Synder is, to use your preferred terminology, retarded.
https://news.err.ee/1609348263/timothy-snyder-war-should-have-ended-in-2022-with-ukraine-s-victory
Look at the things he's willing to say! It's the same old rubbish about nominal GDP magically translating into military power. He still hasn't cottoned onto what RUSI was talking about in 2022 when it comes to shell production not actually being a function of GDP. Just today he's making wildly inappropriate metaphors for it being 1938: https://x.com/martenkokk/status/1792110889841066040
A few things have changed since 1938. The global balance of power. Nuclear weapons. Military affairs generally. Russia and Ukraine being totally different to Germany and Czechoslovakia in terms of politics, aspirations, goals, geography and industrial power...
He's a fantasyland ideologue who lacks any kind of military understanding, sophistication or nuance.
Mearsheimer is overwhelmingly superior. He actually predicts things (often decades in advance) because he has strategic models that work, not just a desperate desire to say what people want to hear. He foresaw this conflict, he foresaw China-US struggle, he foresaw that invading Middle Eastern countries wouldn't work out... What has Synder ever predicted? You're smearing Mearsheimer because he cited some other people that were themselves wrong about different matters.
Did Mearsheimer say 'Russia will stomp Ukraine instantly'? No, he said the exact opposite for years. He said that Russia would struggle to conquer even the eastern part of Ukraine but that it would incur that cost to achieve various strategic goals and that Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia. That's what we're seeing, from Ukraine's increasingly desperate conscription and Russia's recent advances.
Good! Call Synder retarded, Bloodlands is a polemic! But I never claimed he was THE intellectual authority, only that he is one of many, and stroking off Mearshimer just is an appeal to authority. Snyder is RIGHT about Russias revanchism, and he predicted THAT while Mearshimer in 2014 till 2022 was, per your OWN citation, predicting that Russia was peaceful in its intentions and should be courted as a reliable ally against China. Have you READ his shit? He treats Russia as a weak animal with no choice but to lash out in the 2015 lecture you cite. After Russia attacked and starts their insane rhetoric about nuking London and nazis is when Mearshimer goes off the deep end into supporting pro-Russia military inevitability, a laughable statement before Surovikins force generation efforts paid off in 2023.
Mearshimer is by no means a military genius, which is the criteria by which you judged his intellectual heft. Unbound to the neocon or neolib establishments that predicted happiness and sunshine for all in the wake of US 'freedom bombs'? Yes. Blind to his own hyperfocus on China as a threat to focus on? That is my assessment. Mearshimer (fuck I hate typing his stupid longass name) did your standard vatnik cope of 'Russia clearly had a grand plan when they attacked with their weak forces, look at me I'm so smart.' when the reality is much simpler: Putin fucked up, and Russia doubled down on a bad bet.
He didn't say this. Mearsheimer:
He then said that, before the Russians started sanction-proofing, the Russian military and economy was too weak to conquer Eastern Ukraine. And that's basically correct, they haven't easily conquered Eastern Ukraine!
He foresaw basically everything ten years in advance! He clearly knows more than I do, I thought the war would end much sooner. John "Cassandra" Mearsheimer was consistently proven right in the past. I trust he'll be right now that he's had extra time to analyse recent events.
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