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Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine

For years, the political scientist has claimed that Putin’s aggression 
toward Ukraine is caused by Western intervention. Have recent events 
changed his mind?

The New Yorker, 2022.03.01. -- Isaac Chotiner
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine


The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous 
critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. 
Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel 
Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of 
great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that 
assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national 
security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. 
For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand 
NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has 
increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid 
the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. 
Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that 
“the United States and its European allies share most of the 
responsibility for this crisis.”

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The current invasion of Ukraine has renewed several long-standing 
debates about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although 
many critics of Putin have argued that he would pursue an aggressive 
foreign policy in former Soviet Republics regardless of Western 
involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at 
fault for provoking him. I recently spoke with Mearsheimer by phone. 
During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, 
we discussed whether the current war could have been prevented, whether 
it makes sense to think of Russia as an imperial power, and Putin’s 
ultimate plans for Ukraine.

Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think 
the world got here?

I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at 
the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement 
that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians 
made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an 
existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what 
has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to 
include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on 
Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. 
NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. 
expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American 
liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an 
existential threat.

You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal 
democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” 
places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, 
want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?

If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of 
NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that 
categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. 
expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly 
with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably 
get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong 
strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning 
Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

You keep saying “turning Ukraine into a liberal democracy,” and it seems 
like that’s an issue for the Ukrainians to decide. NATO can decide whom 
it admits, but we saw in 2014 that it appeared as if many Ukrainians 
wanted to be considered part of Europe. It would seem like almost some 
sort of imperialism to tell them that they can’t be a liberal democracy.

It’s not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you’re a 
country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like 
Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, 
because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going 
to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well 
with regard to the United States.

The Monroe Doctrine, essentially.

Of course. There’s no country in the Western hemisphere that we will 
allow to invite a distant, great power to bring military forces into 
that country.

Right, but saying that America will not allow countries in the Western 
hemisphere, most of them democracies, to decide what kind of foreign 
policy they have—you can say that’s good or bad, but that is 
imperialism, right? We’re essentially saying that we have some sort of 
say over how democratic countries run their business.

We do have that say, and, in fact, we overthrew democratically elected 
leaders in the Western hemisphere during the Cold War because we were 
unhappy with their policies. This is the way great powers behave.

Of course we did, but I’m wondering if we should be behaving that way. 
When we’re thinking about foreign policies, should we be thinking about 
trying to create a world where neither the U.S. nor Russia is behaving 
that way?

That’s not the way the world works. When you try to create a world that 
looks like that, you end up with the disastrous policies that the United 
States pursued during the unipolar moment. We went around the world 
trying to create liberal democracies. Our main focus, of course, was in 
the greater Middle East, and you know how well that worked out. Not very 
well.

I think it would be difficult to say that America’s policy in the Middle 
East in the past seventy-five years since the end of the Second World 
War, or in the past thirty years since the end of the Cold War, has been 
to create liberal democracies in the Middle East.

I think that’s what the Bush Doctrine was about during the unipolar moment.

In Iraq. But not in the Palestinian territories, or Saudi Arabia, or 
Egypt, or anywhere else, right?

No—well, not in Saudi Arabia and not in Egypt. To start with, the Bush 
Doctrine basically said that if we could create a liberal democracy in 
Iraq, it would have a domino effect, and countries such as Syria, Iran, 
and eventually Saudi Arabia and Egypt would turn into democracies. That 
was the basic philosophy behind the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine was 
not just designed to turn Iraq into a democracy. We had a much grander 
scheme in mind.

We can debate how much the people who were in charge in the Bush 
Administration really wanted to turn the Middle East into a bunch of 
democracies, and really thought that was going to happen. My sense was 
that there was not a lot of actual enthusiasm about turning Saudi Arabia 
into a democracy.

Well, I think focussing on Saudi Arabia is taking the easy case from 
your perspective. That was the most difficult case from America’s 
perspective, because Saudi Arabia has so much leverage over us because 
of oil, and it’s certainly not a democracy. But the Bush Doctrine, if 
you go look at what we said at the time, was predicated on the belief 
that we could democratize the greater Middle East. It might not happen 
overnight, but it would eventually happen.

I guess my point would be actions speak louder than words, and, whatever 
Bush’s flowery speeches said, I don’t feel like the policy of the United 
States at any point in its recent history has been to try and insure 
liberal democracies around the world.

There’s a big difference between how the United States behaved during 
the unipolar moment and how it’s behaved in the course of its history. I 
agree with you when you talk about American foreign policy in the course 
of its broader history, but the unipolar moment was a very special time. 
I believe that during the unipolar moment, we were deeply committed to 
spreading democracy.

With Ukraine, it’s very important to understand that, up until 2014, we 
did not envision NATO expansion and E.U. expansion as a policy that was 
aimed at containing Russia. Nobody seriously thought that Russia was a 
threat before February 22, 2014. NATO expansion, E.U. expansion, and 
turning Ukraine and Georgia and other countries into liberal democracies 
were all about creating a giant zone of peace that spread all over 
Europe and included Eastern Europe and Western Europe. It was not aimed 
at containing Russia. What happened is that this major crisis broke out, 
and we had to assign blame, and of course we were never going to blame 
ourselves. We were going to blame the Russians. So we invented this 
story that Russia was bent on aggression in Eastern Europe. Putin is 
interested in creating a greater Russia, or maybe even re-creating the 
Soviet Union.
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Let’s turn to that time and the annexation of Crimea. I was reading an 
old article where you wrote, “According to the prevailing wisdom in the 
West, the Ukraine Crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian 
aggression. Russian president Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed 
Crimea out of a longstanding desire to resuscitate the Soviet Empire, 
and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine as well as other 
countries in Eastern Europe.” And then you say, “But this account is 
wrong.” Does anything that’s happened in the last couple weeks make you 
think that account was closer to the truth than you might have thought?

Oh, I think I was right. I think the evidence is clear that we did not 
think he was an aggressor before February 22, 2014. This is a story that 
we invented so that we could blame him. My argument is that the West, 
especially the United States, is principally responsible for this 
disaster. But no American policymaker, and hardly anywhere in the 
American foreign-policy establishment, is going to want to acknowledge 
that line of argument, and they will say that the Russians are responsible.

You mean because the Russians did the annexation and the invasion?

Yes.

I was interested in that article because you say the idea that Putin may 
eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in 
Eastern Europe, is wrong. Given that he seems to be going after the rest 
of Ukraine now, do you think in hindsight that that argument is perhaps 
more true, even if we didn’t know it at the time?

It’s hard to say whether he’s going to go after the rest of Ukraine 
because—I don’t mean to nitpick here but—that implies that he wants to 
conquer all of Ukraine, and then he will turn to the Baltic states, and 
his aim is to create a greater Russia or the reincarnation of the Soviet 
Union. I don’t see evidence at this point that that is true. It’s 
difficult to tell, looking at the maps of the ongoing conflict, exactly 
what he’s up to. It seems quite clear to me that he is going to take the 
Donbass and that the Donbass is going to be either two independent 
states or one big independent state, but beyond that it’s not clear what 
he’s going to do. I mean, it does seem apparent that he’s not touching 
western Ukraine.

His bombs are touching it, right?

But that’s not the key issue. The key issue is: What territory do you 
conquer, and what territory do you hold onto? I was talking to somebody 
the other day about what’s going to happen with these forces that are 
coming out of Crimea, and the person told me that he thought they would 
turn west and take Odessa. I was talking to somebody else more recently 
who said that that’s not going to happen. Do I know what’s going to 
happen? No, none of us know what’s going to happen.

You don’t think he has designs on Kyiv?

No, I don’t think he has designs on Kyiv. I think he’s interested in 
taking at least the Donbass, and maybe some more territory and eastern 
Ukraine, and, number two, he wants to install in Kyiv a pro-Russian 
government, a government that is attuned to Moscow’s interests.

I thought you said that he was not interested in taking Kyiv.

No, he’s interested in taking Kyiv for the purpose of regime change. O.K.?

As opposed to what?

As opposed to permanently conquering Kyiv.

It would be a Russian-friendly government that he would presumably have 
some say over, right?

Yes, exactly. But it’s important to understand that it is fundamentally 
different from conquering and holding onto Kyiv. Do you understand what 
I’m saying?

We could all think of imperial possessions whereby a sort of figurehead 
was put on the throne, even if the homeland was actually controlling 
what was going on there, right? We’d still say that those places had 
been conquered, right?

I have problems with your use of the word “imperial.” I don’t know 
anybody who talks about this whole problem in terms of imperialism. This 
is great-power politics, and what the Russians want is a regime in Kyiv 
that is attuned to Russian interests. It may be ultimately that the 
Russians would be willing to live with a neutral Ukraine, and that it 
won’t be necessary for Moscow to have any meaningful control over the 
government in Kyiv. It may be that they just want a regime that is 
neutral and not pro-American.

When you said that no one’s talking about this as imperialism, in 
Putin’s speeches he specifically refers to the “territory of the former 
Russian Empire,” which he laments losing. So it seems like he’s talking 
about it.

I think that’s wrong, because I think you’re quoting the first half of 
the sentence, as most people in the West do. He said, “Whoever does not 
miss the Soviet Union has no heart.” And then he said, “Whoever wants it 
back has no brain.”

He’s also saying that Ukraine is essentially a made-up nation, while he 
seems to be invading it, no?

O.K., but put those two things together and tell me what that means. I’m 
just not too sure. He does believe it’s a made-up nation. I would note 
to him, all nations are made up. Any student of nationalism can tell you 
that. We invent these concepts of national identity. They’re filled with 
all sorts of myths. So he’s correct about Ukraine, just like he’s 
correct about the United States or Germany. The much more important 
point is: he understands that he cannot conquer Ukraine and integrate it 
into a greater Russia or into a reincarnation of the former Soviet 
Union. He can’t do that. What he’s doing in Ukraine is fundamentally 
different. He is obviously lopping off some territory. He’s going to 
take some territory away from Ukraine, in addition to what happened with 
Crimea, in 2014. Furthermore, he is definitely interested in regime 
change. Beyond that, it’s hard to say exactly what this will all lead 
to, except for the fact that he is not going to conquer all of Ukraine. 
It would be a blunder of colossal proportions to try to do that.
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I assume that you think if he were to try to do that, that would change 
your analysis of what we’ve witnessed.

Absolutely. My argument is that he’s not going to re-create the Soviet 
Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in 
conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to 
understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive 
and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine. The 
argument that the foreign-policy establishment in the United States, and 
in the West more generally, has invented revolves around the claim that 
he is interested in creating a greater Russia or a reincarnation of the 
former Soviet Union. There are people who believe that when he is 
finished conquering Ukraine, he will turn to the Baltic states. He’s not 
going to turn to the Baltic states. First of all, the Baltic states are 
members of NATO and—

Is that a good thing?

No.

You’re saying that he’s not going to invade them in part because they’re 
part of NATO, but they shouldn’t be part of NATO.

Yes, but those are two very different issues. I’m not sure why you’re 
connecting them. Whether I think they should be part of NATO is 
independent of whether they are part of NATO. They are part of NATO. 
They have an Article 5 guarantee—that’s all that matters. Furthermore, 
he’s never shown any evidence that he’s interested in conquering the 
Baltic states. Indeed, he’s never shown any evidence that he’s 
interested in conquering Ukraine.

It seems to me that if he wants to bring back anything, it’s the Russian 
Empire that predates the Soviet Union. He seems very critical of the 
Soviet Union, correct?

Well, I don’t know if he’s critical.

He said it in his big essay that he wrote last year, and he said in a 
recent speech that he essentially blames Soviet policies for allowing a 
degree of autonomy for Soviet Republics, such as Ukraine.

But he also said, as I read to you before, “Whoever does not miss the 
Soviet Union has no heart.” That’s somewhat at odds with what you just 
said. I mean, he’s in effect saying that he misses the Soviet Union, 
right? That’s what he’s saying. What we’re talking about here is his 
foreign policy. The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not 
you think that this is a country that has the capability to do that. You 
realize that this is a country that has a G.N.P. that’s smaller than Texas.

Countries try to do things that they don’t have the capabilities for all 
the time. You could have said to me, “Who thinks that America could get 
the Iraqi power system working quickly? We have all these problems in 
America.” And you would’ve been correct. But we still thought we could 
do it, and we still tried to do it, and we failed, right? America 
couldn’t do what it wanted during Vietnam, which I’m sure you would say 
is a reason not to fight these various wars—and I would agree—but that 
doesn’t mean that we were correct or rational about our capabilities.

I’m talking about the raw-power potential of Russia—the amount of 
economic might it has. Military might is built on economic might. You 
need an economic foundation to build a really powerful military. To go 
out and conquer countries like Ukraine and the Baltic states and to 
re-create the former Soviet Union or re-create the former Soviet Empire 
in Eastern Europe would require a massive army, and that would require 
an economic foundation that contemporary Russia does not come close to 
having. There is no reason to fear that Russia is going to be a regional 
hegemony in Europe. Russia is not a serious threat to the United States. 
We do face a serious threat in the international system. We face a peer 
competitor. And that’s China. Our policy in Eastern Europe is 
undermining our ability to deal with the most dangerous threat that we 
face today.

What do you think our policy should be in Ukraine right now, and what do 
you worry that we’re doing that’s going to undermine our China policy?

We should be pivoting out of Europe to deal with China in a laser-like 
fashion, number one. And, number two, we should be working overtime to 
create friendly relations with the Russians. The Russians are part of 
our balancing coalition against China. If you live in a world where 
there are three great powers—China, Russia, and the United States—and 
one of those great powers, China, is a peer competitor, what you want to 
do if you’re the United States is have Russia on your side of the 
ledger. Instead, what we have done with our foolish policies in Eastern 
Europe is drive the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. This is a 
violation of Balance of Power Politics 101.

I went back and I reread your article about the Israel lobby in the 
London Review of Books, from 2006. You were talking about the 
Palestinian issue, and you said something that I very much agree with, 
which is: “There is a moral dimension here as well. Thanks to the lobby 
of the United States it has become the de facto enabler of Israeli 
occupation in the occupied territories, making it complicit in the 
crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians.” I was cheered to read that 
because I know you think of yourself as a tough, crusty old guy who 
doesn’t talk about morality, but it seemed to me you were suggesting 
that there was a moral dimension here. I’m curious what you think, if 
any, of the moral dimension to what’s going on in Ukraine right now.
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I think there is a strategic and a moral dimension involved with almost 
every issue in international politics. I think that sometimes those 
moral and strategic dimensions line up with each other. In other words, 
if you’re fighting against Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945, you know the 
rest of the story. There are other occasions where those arrows point in 
opposite directions, where doing what is strategically right is morally 
wrong. I think if you join an alliance with the Soviet Union to fight 
against Nazi Germany, it is a strategically wise policy, but it is a 
morally wrong policy. But you do it because you have no choice for 
strategic reasons. In other words, what I’m saying to you, Isaac, is 
that when push comes to shove, strategic considerations overwhelm moral 
considerations. In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if the 
Ukrainians were free to choose their own political system and to choose 
their own foreign policy.

But in the real world, that is not feasible. The Ukrainians have a 
vested interest in paying serious attention to what the Russians want 
from them. They run a grave risk if they alienate the Russians in a 
fundamental way. If Russia thinks that Ukraine presents an existential 
threat to Russia because it is aligning with the United States and its 
West European allies, this is going to cause an enormous amount of 
damage to Ukraine. That of course is exactly what’s happening now. So my 
argument is: the strategically wise strategy for Ukraine is to break off 
its close relations with the West, especially with the United States, 
and try to accommodate the Russians. If there had been no decision to 
move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be 
part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine.

That advice seems a bit implausible now. Is there still time, despite 
what we’re seeing from the ground, for Ukraine to appease Russia somehow?

I think there’s a serious possibility that the Ukrainians can work out 
some sort of modus vivendi with the Russians. And the reason is that the 
Russians are now discovering that occupying Ukraine and trying to run 
Ukraine’s politics is asking for big trouble.

So you are saying occupying Ukraine is going to be a tough slog?

Absolutely, and that’s why I said to you that I did not think the 
Russians would occupy Ukraine in the long term. But, just to be very 
clear, I did say they’re going to take at least the Donbass, and 
hopefully not more of the easternmost part of Ukraine. I think the 
Russians are too smart to get involved in an occupation of Ukraine.
More on the War in Ukraine

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     A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West.

     How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war.

     The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv.

     The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

     A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war.

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