John Mearsheimer on Nato

[Ajay0]

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

Quote

 

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.

 

 

[Elliott]

@Ajay0 do you have any idea why he doesn't go back to 1994 Russian invasion of Chechnya? Or why Ukraine is existential requirement for Russia?

[enchanted]

Nice article. 

41 minutes ago, Ajay0 said:

This is the way great powers behave.

You could justify the actions of both Russia and the US with a great statement like this. Finding out which country, if any, is behaving more consciously  and from a higher developmental stage can help give an insight into the situation. 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 07:33 AM by enchanted

[Breakingthewall]

The problem is that seems that the militarization of Ukraine with US support and the threat of including it in NATO wasn't a clumsy move, but rather one intended to provoke this war.

Biden, when he was vice president, promoted the coup. When he became president, it took him weeks to say that Putin was a murderer. That statement was a declaration of intent.

It seems the idea was to humiliate Russia until it provoked a conflict and then isolate it, achieving Putin's downfall and the balkanization of Russia so that its resources could be controlled.

This has been impossible, but other positive objectives for the US have been achieved, such as the recession in Germany, the sale of energy and weapons to Europe, the obligation for all NATO countries to increase their defense budget to 5%, the reconstruction of Ukraine advised by Black Rock, or also and as some say, having achieved ownership of a large part of the Ukrainian lands

Edited yesterday at 09:39 AM by Breakingthewall

[Ajay0]

Jacobo Árbenz, who was the  the second democratically elected President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954, was overthrown in a military coup with western military assistance and corporate backing.

Arbenz had earlier fought in the Guatemalan revolution which ended the western backed dictatorship of Jorge Ubico whose policies favored the elite, western companies and dispossessed the native people of their lands. 

Arbenz's agrarian policies benefitting the masses however was opposed by the west which led to the overthrow of his democratically elected government, and replacement by the brutal military dictatorship of Carlos Armas.

Árbenz's popular policies were largely rolled back, with land confiscated from small farmers and returned to large landowners.