WW3: Big Picture Stuff With John Mearsheimer

Lately we’ve been discussing the prospects for the US and NATO to escalate their war on Russia in Ukraine. Sick as it seems—given the carnage inflicted on the American-demanded Ukrainian offensive—many observers believe that the Ruling Class of the West are determined to escalate, in a reckless display of brinkmanship. Not only is Russia a leading nuclear power, but NATO simply lacks the logistical framework with which to prosecute a war against Russia. Ukraine was used as a proxy, partly for that very reason, and that scheme has come a cropper. The sanctions war has failed so far, although there is talk that the EU—having frozen Russian funds in the West—now plans to outright steal Russian funds. As usual, however, the result will likely be another backfire. Russia simply retains escalation dominance in every theatre of this conflict and has yet to excercise that dominance to its full effect. Meanwhile a new theatre may be opening up—in the Sahel region of Africa, sparked by a coup in Niger—which could significantly drain NATO resources if a full scale war erupts, as some predict.

In this situation it’s less than reassuring to read that

More Warmongers Elevated In The Biden Administration

The Biden administration looks set to become even more warlike than it already was if you can imagine, with virulent Russia hawk Victoria Nuland and virulent China hawk Charles Q Brown now being elevated to lofty positions by the White House.

Meanwhile, the US has given Ukraine the greenlight to begin a drone campaign against targets in Moscow that have included civilian buildings:

Ukraine Escalating War Into Moscow With 2nd Drone Strike On Skyscraper Housing Government Ministries

The Neocon thinking behind these provocations appears delusional, if the intent is to convince Russia that this is a stalemated war that will come home to Russia:

Max Abrahms

@MaxAbrahms

The attacks inside Russia against civilian targets do not have the intended communicative effect. The standard Western view is the attacks will signal to Putin the costs of occupying Ukraine so he withdraws. But I believe the attacks only reinforce his priors that NATO is waging a proxy war against Russians whose security depends on weakening Ukraine and securing territories close to Russia. The attacks in Russia validate his worldview.

8:07 AM · Aug 1, 2023

It all seems completely insane—as other prominent commentators have observed. But that seems to be the way we live now.

So, within this context, last night I read with interest Aaron Maté’s recent interview with John Mearsheimer. There’s a video of the interview at the link, along with the full transcript. The video is a full hour long, but I’m excerpting the transcript—severely pruned. It appears to me that Prof. Mearsheimer has somewhat modified some of his earlier expressed views about the likely course of the war. I do recommend the entire interview. Maté asks smart questions and has his own observations to make. I’ve focused in the excerpts on my own particular interests. It appears to me that Prof. Mearsheimer is beginning to see the possibility of an outright defeat for the West, althought he still engages in talk of “an ugly victory” for Russia. Ugly, however, is in the eye of the beholder. I doubt that Putin went into this war thinking it would have a beautiful result. For Putin this is existential. Russia was forced into it, so aesthetics are ultimately beside the point. Most significantly, Mearsheimer is openly talking of the possibility that the Ukrainian army will “break”—echoing the view of Michael Vlahos, which we discussed over the weekend.

Ukraine war is a long-term danger

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, it seems to me that anybody who knows anything about military tactics and strategy had to understand that there was hardly any chance that the Ukrainian counteroffensive would succeed. But I think what was going on here was that the West is very fearful that time is running out, that if the Ukrainians don’t show some significant success on the battlefield in the year 2023, public support for the war will dry up and the Ukrainians will lose—and the West will lose.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: ... The Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, made it very clear that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO until it had prevailed in the conflict. In other words, Ukraine has to win the war before it can be brought into the alliance. Well, Ukraine is not going to win the war, and therefore, Ukraine is not going to be brought into the alliance.

AARON MATÉ: So, do you think it’s fair to speculate that the US policy in Ukraine was even more cynical than it appeared? [B]asically this war was fought because the US refused to agree to neutrality for Ukraine, ... [Y]et, when given the opportunity, the US won’t commit to granting Ukraine a road map to joining NATO, which leads me to [ask], what if the aim was never to actually admit Ukraine into NATO but just ... to de facto turn Ukraine into a NATO proxy, without the obligation, the part of the US and its allies, to actually defend it?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I have a slightly different view. I don’t think it was so much cynicism. I think it was stupidity. I think you can’t underestimate just how foolish the West is when it comes to the whole question of Ukraine—and all sorts of other issues as well. But I think that the West believed—and here we’re talking mainly about the United States—that if a war did break out between Ukraine and Russia, that the West plus Ukraine would prevail, that the Russians would be defeated. I believe we thought that was the case.

[T]he United States and the West more generally did virtually nothing to prevent the war. If anything, we egged the Russians on. I think we believed that if a war broke out, we had trained up the Ukrainians and armed the Ukrainians up enough that they would hold their own on the battlefield. Number one. And number two, I think, we felt the magic weapon was sanctions, that we’d finish the Russians off with sanctions, ... But my sense is, this is worse than a crime. This is a blunder, to put it in Talleyrand’s famous rhetoric.

AARON MATÉ: On the issue of the sanctions, ... Why do you think the US sanctions policy has not worked, and did that surprise you? Did you expect Russia to take more of a hit than it has?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I thought [Russia] would take more of a hit than it has. I think the Russians themselves thought that. ... But my view, Aaron, is that even if we had been more successful with the sanctions, we would not have brought the Russians to their knees.

I think when you look carefully at what has happened since then, it’s quite clear that the Russians were in an excellent position to beat the sanctions, by and large. And it shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone who spent a lot of time studying how sanctions work, that it was not going to do much against a country like Russia, which was so rich in natural resources and had all sorts of potential trading partners that could replace the ones that it lost in the West.

Granted that Mearsheimer is probably correct in this assessment, in my view he fails to give credit where it’s due. Putin saw this war coming, in one way or another, and took steps to shore up the security of Russia’s financial system. But for Putin’s far-sighted preparations Russia would certainly have taken “more of a hit” from Western sanctions.

AARON MATÉ: [L]et me ask you to respond to what Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently said:

Anthony Blinken: In terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what Putin sought to achieve, they’ve already failed, they’ve already lost. The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: [I]t’s the conventional wisdom in the West that these were Putin’s aims. But there is no evidence, zero evidence, to support the claim that Putin was bent on conquering all of Ukraine. [I]t’s simply not true.

The idea that that small force, that small Russian force that went into Ukraine in February 2022 could conquer all of the country is a laughable argument. To conquer all of Ukraine, the Russians would have needed an army that had a couple million men in it.

The Russians had at most 190,000 men when they invaded Ukraine in February 2022. No way they had the capability to conquer the country. And they didn’t try to conquer the country.

This, I think, is a very important point. While Russia had a strong professional military going into this conflict, it was a military that, by and large and unlike the US military, was not geared toward power projection outside Russia’s borders. Not in the major way that an attempt to invade and conquer Ukraine entailed. Thus, we have seen that the transition of Russia from a peacetime stance to a wartime economy and mobilization of industry and manpower has been gradual. As Mearsheimer maintains, Russia’s aims were always limited in that regard—despite the larger strategic vision. It was the US that pushed Russia beyond those limited aims. In the next section Mearsheimer specifically states that a larger war was precisely what the US intended.

AARON MATÉ: [D]o you think that’s a fair rendering of events, that there was a serious deal reached but the West stood in the way?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I would say it was a potential deal; it had real promise, for sure.

I do think that the West moved in, the British and the Americans, to sabotage the negotiations, because we felt we could defeat the Russians.

What he wanted to do was coerce the Ukrainians into coming to the negotiating table and working out a deal. He did not even want to incorporate the Donbass into a Greater Russia. [T]he West moved in and made sure that the Ukrainians walked away from the negotiations and that the war went on.

I take exception to part of this next passage. Perhaps Mearsheimer is just expressing himself infelicitously in stating that “the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict.” Certainly this is a conflict that the Russians were not looking for, or not looking forward to. On the other hand, I believe there can be no doubt that “the Russians” had no illusions about the practical inevitability of conflict—to include warfare—with the West. That conviction or realization can be dated no later than 2008. Since 2008 Russia has been preparing for this conflict, while the US also aimed for conflict but under the rosy self delusion that it would be a walk over, thanks to sanctions shock and awe. Putin recognized the existential threat and resolutely took steps to confront the threat and to assert Russia’s national interests. That’s very different than desperation to avoid conflict.

You can see this in a number of incidents over the years. Certainly, the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a clear signal that Russia would defend its interests—up to and including military action against a prospective NATO member. Again, the Russian intervention in Syria (2015 to present) was another clear signal that Russia would not back down from a military confrontation with the US when Russia’s interests were at stake. Finally, when Putin announced in 2018 that it possessed hypersonic weapons for which the West had no defense, he baldly stated: You wouldn’t listen to use before. Now you will listen to us. Those are not the words of a man who is “desperate to avoid a conflict.” Those are the words of a man who is resolute in the face of a perceived threat.

Nor is Putin backing down from those stances. Just yesterday we learned:

Russia Offers To Negotiate Pulling Nukes From Belarus - Names Key Condition

Moscow has offered to negotiate a nuclear drawdown on the European continent with the United States, with a Kremlin official identifying the conditions for Russia withdrawing its tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus.

But based on the main condition, it is without doubt going to be a non-starter, and yet highlights Russia's very real - and what many may see as very legitimate - concerns. The senior foreign ministry official, Aleksey Polishchuk, told RIA Novosti in a fresh interview that the United States must dismantle its nuclear infrastructure and remove all its nuclear warheads from Europe. 

So …

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: [I]t’s also important to emphasize—and people in the West don’t want to hear it, but it is true—that the Russians were desperate to avoid a conflict. The idea that Putin was chomping at the bit to invade Ukraine so he could make it part of Greater Russia, it’s just not a serious argument. The Russians did not want a war, and they did, I believe, everything possible to avoid a war. They just couldn’t get the Americans to play ball with them. The Americans were unwilling to negotiate in a serious way. Period. End of story.

Now, what can we do today? I think we are well past the point where we can work out any kind of meaningful deal. I think that first of all, both sides are so deeply committed to winning at this point in time that it’s hard to imagine them negotiating any kind of meaningful peace agreement.

But when you get into the details, the Russians are bent on keeping the territory that they have now conquered, and I believe the Russians are intent on conquering more country, more of Ukraine. The Russians want to make sure that Ukraine ends up as a dysfunctional rump state and cannot become a viable member of NATO at any time in the future. So, the idea that the Russians would now agree to give up the territory that they’ve conquered and pull back to the borders that existed in February of 2022, I think is almost unthinkable.

AARON MATÉ: There was a recent acknowledgment in The New York Times from NATO officials that pretty much said the same thing, that their policy, they acknowledge, incentivizes Russia to continue the war and take more territory.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: That’s exactly right. But that raises the question, why don’t Western leaders change the policy regarding bringing Ukraine into the alliance?

So, we are playing—we, meaning the West—are playing a key role here in incentivizing the Russians to destroy Ukraine. It makes absolutely no sense to me from a strategic point of view or from a moral point of view. You think of the death and destruction that’s being wrought in Ukraine, and you think that this could have easily been avoided. It makes you sick to your stomach just to contemplate it all.

In this next section Mearsheimer appears to walk back from his previous position that the war is stalemated—it depends, he suggests, on the meaning of the word ‘stalemate.’ Properly understood, Russia isn’t stalemated. And he now applies the tag ‘desperate’ to the West.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, I think there’s no question that we’re desperate here. You used the word ‘stalemate.’ In a way it’s a stalemate. If you focus on how much territory each side has conquered, it looks like a stalemate. But I don’t look at territory conquered as the key indicator of what’s going on in this war.

In a war of attrition like this, the key indicator is the casualty exchange rate. And, in my opinion, the casualty exchange rate decisively favors the Russians who also happen to have many more people than the Ukrainians do. This is a disastrous situation for Ukraine. It makes it almost impossible for Ukraine to win this war, and it makes it likely that the Russians will prevail.

[W]e’re in a pickle here, in that we’ve picked a fight with a country that has a huge industrial base that can produce lots of weaponry, and our ally—the country that’s doing the fighting for us, the dirty work on the battlefield—does not have weaponry of its own, so we have to supply it. And again, we have real limits to what we can give them.

The Ukrainians are in deep trouble. We have led them down the primrose path, and there is nothing we can do at this point in time to rectify that situation.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Now, a lot of people like to portray my views as anomalous. I’m one of a handful of people, folks like me, Jeffrey Sachs, Steve Cohen [Stephen F. Cohen], who make these kinds of arguments. But back in the 1990s, when the subject of NATO expansion was being debated, there were a large number of very prominent members of the foreign policy establishment who said that NATO expansion would end up in disaster. This included people like George Kennan, William Perry—who at the time was the Secretary of Defense.

AARON MATÉ: [Perry] almost resigned, he says.

Next we see why I picked the year 2008 as the fateful year. That was the year, says Mearsheimer—in effect—in which NATO declared war on Russia. In Russia’s view, which is what matters.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: [T]here was widespread opposition to NATO expansion inside the Pentagon at that point in time. And all this is to say that those people were right.

And one of my favorite examples is Angela Merkel. When the decision was made in April 2008 at the Bucharest Summit—the Bucharest NATO Summit—to bring Ukraine into NATO, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, who was then the French leader, both of them were adamantly opposed to bringing Ukraine into NATO. She opposed it because she understood that Putin would interpret it as a declaration of war. So, there are a lot of people besides Jeff Sachs, Steve Cohen, and John Mearsheimer who understood that this whole crusade to expand NATO eastward was going to end up in disaster.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think the situation between Russia on one side and the West on the other side, and of course Ukraine, is going to be very dangerous for a long time to come.

AARON MATÉ: Finally, Russia has already annexed four Ukrainian oblasts during its invasion, on top of Crimea in 2014. You mentioned earlier that you think Russia wants to take more territory. Where do you think Russia would be satisfied stopping its incursions? Where do you think its territorial ambitions end?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: [T]hey’ll want to take territory that has lots of Russian speakers and ethnic Russians in them. This is why I think they’ll take Odessa if they can, and Kharkiv if they can, and two other oblasts as well.

Furthermore, I think military capability limits how much of Ukraine that [the Russians] can take—that they don’t have the military capability to take all of it.

But … As Mearsheimer proceeds, he raises the possibility of the Ukrainian army “breaking.” And we have, in the last couple of weeks, seen reports of entire Ukrainian units surrendering—a sign of breaking. Further, Mearsheimer appears to recognize that, up till now, the Russians have not utilized all their capabilities.

I think the Russians are now playing hardball, where, as I said to you before, well past the situation that existed in March of 2022, or certainly in the period before the war broke out in February of 2022, where it’s possible to imagine a situation where the Russians pulled out of Ukraine in return for Ukrainian neutrality. Those days are gone, ...

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: The Russians at best can win an ugly victory. I think it’s just important to understand that.

[W]e don’t know exactly what an ugly victory will look like, number one.

We may not know what it will look like, but it comes down to the eye of the beholder. Russia will win, and whether the victory will be beautiful or ugly will depend on the Russia view. Because the war is existential for Russia as a nation—as opposed to being existential in the West only for ideologically committed members of the Ruling Class, a small group—Russia will pursue the war to what is for them a logical conclusion.

And then there’s the whole question of, if Ukraine is really losing, let’s assume that the Ukrainian military cracks, let’s assume that the beating that it’s taking leads to a situation like the one that faced the French army in the spring of 1917—this is when the French army cracked, it’s when the French army mutinied—let’s assume that that happens, and the Ukrainians are on the run. And it may be possible in those circumstances that NATO will come into the fight. It may be possible that the Poles decide that they alone have to come into the fight, and once the Poles come into the fight in a very important way, that may bring us into the fight, and then you have a great power war involving the United States on one side and the Russians on the other. Again, I’m not saying this is likely, but it is a possibility. What we are doing here is, we’re spinning out plausible scenarios as to how this war can play out over time. And almost all the scenarios that one comes up with have an unhappy ending. Again, this just shows what a huge mistake we made not trying to settle this conflict before February 24, 2022.

Rationally speaking, there’s no possible way that NATO enters the war militarily as a result of Ukraine “cracking” or “breaking”. In fact, as I’ve previously stated, I believe that’s the strategy that Russia is pursuing—causing the Ukraine army to break. I don’t think they’d do that if they feared a NATO entry on the battlefield. NATO—and certainly Poland—lacks the weapons, the munitions, the overall resources, the logistics, to fight this kind of war. Nor have they done anything significant to improve that capability in the past year. Top level US generals (Cavoli) have admitted as much.

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