I just watched an interview with the guy.

John Mersheimer

He’s a lecturer in a university in Chicago (or of Chicago?) and belongs to a realist school of thought. In the manner of great philosophical professors he talks a lot, but says comparatively little. His thoughts on Ukraine can be fully summarized as:

“Russia has nukes, therefore we must back down”

That’s it, that’s the whole deal. He retells the story in many different ways, but it all boils down to that Russia should be allowed to do whatever, because it has nukes. When pressed whether or not USA should defend the Baltic states due to Article 5 of North Atlantic charter, he said yes at first, but then backed down when the interviewer asked him a follow-up question if that meant nuclear war. He didn’t say he wanted to avoid a nuclear war, he just started talking about how “difficult” that question was and that he was talking about conventional response and so forth.

I lost respect for the man two minutes into the interview, when he spoke of Ukrainian 2008 application to NATO and he asserted USA ‘forced’ NATO to say Ukraine will be a part of NATO, but failed to mention France and Germany forced NATO to say Ukraine will not be a part of NATO in the near future, certainly not until Russia is okay with it. He then goes on to claim this decision by NATO drove Russian aggression, because they were afraid of NATO expansion to their borders.

The man is either a liar on the Kremlin payroll or else completely unable to look up a single well-publicized event that is absolutely vital to his credibility as a university professor. They both mean about the same for the respect he deserves.

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