American political scientist and international relations scholar John Mearsheimer elaborates on Nato in an interview... https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine#:~:text=We do have that say,the way great powers behave.
Mearsheimer has some interesting things to say about great power politics and other things, but I haven't encountered much of anything that he's had to say about Ukraine that wasn't garbage. I can't find the original article on understandingwar.org, but the point was made that while the pre-war comments made by the Bush administration about NATO membership for Ukraine probably ruffled some feathers in Moscow, it was largely irrelevant to the invasion. Russia simply doesn't see any small or weak country as deserving any rights whatsoever, and the signals of weakness by the US and NATO indicated an opportunity to invade. It should also be noted that all of the former Soviet States begged to join NATO, it wasn't like anybody twisted their arms. They all knew the horrors of living under Russian occupation. As Polish Foreign Minister Radislaw Sikorski stated "We'll eat grass before we let ourselves become a Russian colony again". Notions of NATO expansion as an act of aggression are hollow. Before the invasion, Mearsheimer said that he thought Putin was "too smart to invade", which is an indication of how little Mearsheimer understands his motives and characteristics. There's no reason to think his opinions about other issues inside the Kremlin are any better. Mearsheimer has also veered into making predictions about battlefield outcomes, such as that Russia was destined to win the war because they had many more artillery shells. He's not a military expert, so that fact he's pretended to be one has further eroded his credibility. In rebuttal to his particular claims, people who do have military expertise (such as former NATO commander General Ben Hodges) have noted that the number of shells they have can be rendered irrelevant if depots, headquarters, and transportation can be destroyed. Also, Russian artillery is typically shorter range, less precise, and more likely to be a dud or prematurely detonate. To be sure, the quantity of Russian artillery has been a factor in the war, but it by no means guarantees any outcome. What the Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org) has observed is that Russia really has no hope for winning the war, except to break NATO support for Ukraine. Unfortunately, Mearsheimer has become one of the Kremlin's "useful idiots" spouting Kremlin narratives.
The likes of world renowned intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Christopher Hedges have also given similar statements. I had created threads on them over here... Noam Chomsky on NATO... Christopher Hedges on Nato...
