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Mearsheimer has demonstrated that he doesn't have expertise on Eastern Europe many times in his speeches and debates, there is no need to read all the corpus of a crank, it is enough just to listen to his speeches.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Like here he is denying that "Putin is bent on creating a greater Russia" (29 minute slide). Demonstrably false.
33 minute slide: he claims that the west's response "so far" is "doubling down". Now, it was 7 years ago. The US started to provide significant assistance to Ukraine, and sanctioned some Russians only after Malaysia airliner was being shot down by Russians (as confirmed by the International Court). How the West should have reacted? Especially, when Russia denied any involvement?
39 minute slide: he claims that Ukraine should guarantee language rights for minorities. Well, if Mearsheimer knew anything about Ukraine, he would have known about
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-truth-behind-ukraine-s-language-policy/
Kivalov-Kolesnichenko language law. Just a bunch of nonsense from an old crank.
No, why do you think that? He tried to pull Belarus and Ukraine into "Union State". It's a well-known fact, maybe not to you, or Mearsheimer.
As suspicious as when a robber tries to rob a bank the day before a new security measures are introduced. The bank security must have provoked him! Russia didn't wait 2008 to try to encroach on Crimea when Ukraine was under pro-Ru president:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict
And he did say in his lecture:
So, I guess, a win for the US? As that's exactly what happened, that is true.
That literally proves his point, that Ukraine in 2014 was moving to suppress the Russian language and in 2018 they did do precisely that by repealing the law!
Do what Mearsheimer said this whole time and make it clear that Ukraine wasn't going to be part of NATO, sweep it under the carpet (like the enormous numbers of people dying in Yemen for example). That would have avoided this whole war. But no, they doubled down instead providing more arms, more NATO integration, more training and so on. Besides, when the US shoots down an airliner, nobody gets sanctioned. Accidents happen.
Not with troops. Putin only started intervening overseas in 2008 and there's a clear reactive tendency. Georgia, 2008, right after NATO membership is promised in some future time, right after the emboldened Georgians go in on South Ossetia. Then in 2014, right after the pro-Russian Ukrainian government gets deposed. One tiny border dispute in 2003 does not an imperialist make.
So I was completely right! You didn't grasp the distinction in what Mearsheimer is saying, the difference between invasion and conquest. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't understand what Mearsheimer is talking about or you've been deliberately mischaracterizing his ideas.
I wonder what happened between 2014 and 2018? Like, maybe, multiple violations of Minsk agreements by Russia, when they took Debaltseve, for example? If Russia violates every agreement it signs with you, you have to learn eventually that it doesn't work.
That's an absolute idiocy from him, to expect something like that to happen. Netherlands would certainly just go along with it. Again, hyperagency of the US, hypoagency of everyone else.
Iran Air Flight 655 incident was admitted by the US, and they paid the victims.
Nothing like that happened when it comes from Russia, they denied and deflected.
Barely any arms.
Putin was only several years in power, and he already demonstrated his belligerence in Tuzla incident, meddling in internal Ukrainian affairs, like poisoning of Yuschenko, Chechnya, continuous occupation of Transnistria, Estonia cyberattacks and so on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_cyberattacks_on_Estonia
You have Saddam, who invaded Iran the year after he came to power, but then you have Hitler who started his land grabs only several years later. Though then you have the Second Chechen War, when Putin was the PM in prosecuting which he was very interested.
That's not what happened in reality (maybe in the alternative reality of Russian propaganda). Russia was encroaching there for years by now, placing their troops and giving away Russian passports. And then shelling Georgian villages, which, obviously, provoked Georgian response.
Yes, attack on Kyiv, Sumy, or Chernihiv was just a faint, not an attempt at conquest. And occupying Zaporizhzhia and Kherson is totally not a conquest (as it was stated by your Mearsheimer in his debate with Sykorsky). My advice: read less grand narrative stuff that likens International affairs to the game of chess or Risk, and more about particular histories and cultures of countries you are trying to discuss. Cheers.
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