John Mearsheimer - what provoked the invasion?

John Mearsheimer has emerged as the most credible voice of an alternative interpretation of what triggered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His 2014 Foreign Affairs article and a recent New Yorker interview are here and here. 

He has an article in The Economist which has a narration of the sequence of events leading up to the invasion. It's a must read for anyone trying to make sense of the situation and thinking of possible ways to defuse it.

The trouble over Ukraine actually started at nato’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin “flew into a rage” and warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America ignored Moscow’s red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing Ukraine closer to the EU and making it a pro-American democracy.

These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as “defensive” is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.

The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden administration. This commitment is reflected throughout an important document—the “US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership”—that was signed in November by Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, and Dmytro Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart. The aim was to “underscore … a commitment to Ukraine’s implementation of the deep and comprehensive reforms necessary for full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.” The document explicitly builds on “the commitments made to strengthen the Ukraine-US strategic partnership by Presidents Zelensky and Biden,” and also emphasises that the two countries will be guided by the “2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration.”

Unsurprisingly, Moscow found this evolving situation intolerable and began mobilising its army on Ukraine’s border last spring to signal its resolve to Washington. But it had no effect, as the Biden administration continued to move closer to Ukraine. This led Russia to precipitate a full-blown diplomatic stand-off in December. As Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, put it: “We reached our boiling point.” Russia demanded a written guarantee that Ukraine would never become a part of nato and that the alliance remove the military assets it had deployed in eastern Europe since 1997. The subsequent negotiations failed, as Mr Blinken made clear: “There is no change. There will be no change.” A month later Mr Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine to eliminate the threat he saw from NATO.

This narrative is important for audiences who have been fed the staple of a Stalinist Putin who, power drunk by his own ambitions to recreate the old USSR, has embarked on this senseless war. The war may have completed the Stalinisation of Russia, but that's a different matter. 

None of this is not to condone nor even reduce the indignation at the naked invasion of another country by Russia. Also, as Eric Levitz (HT: Adam Tooze) has written, "to argue that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a predictable response to American policy choices is not to say that it was a justified response to those choices". The war is a crime and its perpetrators are war criminals. 

We are stuck in a very bad and dangerous equilibrium where both sides have driven themselves into two deep corners. No matter what the damage Russia suffers, Putin will not and cannot be seen to be pulling back without serious and credible assurance about the reason why he ventured into such a high risk intervention - Ukraine remaining within the Russian influence zone. Putin will do whatever it takes to keep Ukraine out of the western influence zone. 

Without realising this almost existential origins of Russian thinking, the west has been doubling down on sanctions and supplying arms to Ukraine. After having gone the full hog by crossing several red lines on sanctions, the western leaders will now find it difficult to rein back. After having spun a narrative about the invasion around the senseless and unprovoked actions of an isolated (Covid 19 paranoia), mentally deranged, and Stalinist Vladimir Putin, any assurance to Russia against NATO expansion would be seen as a sell-out, an appeasement. 

For Russia too, as the invasion lingers on with every new day of bombardment, the horrors of death and destruction is certain to make Ukrainians more united against Russia. In the circumstances, even if Kyiv falls and a new pro-Russian regime is installed, it will be seen as an occupation government. Russia will have to spend massive resources and bleed its own manpower to merely keep the regime in power. 

At the same time, the widening sanctions will start to bite and strengthen domestic discontent and opposition against Putin. In recent years, Putin's compact with the Russians had two parts - Rusky nationalism and a lifestyle that allowed access to the capitalist way of life. While the former will be flogged as much as possible in the days and months ahead, the latter may have been lost for the foreseeable future. The departure of western consumer brands, and loss of access to US and European education, foreign holidays, modern technology like social media and forms of digital entertainment etc are important factors whose consequences will manifest in the coming days. Once popular discontent goes beyond a threshold, even Putin's iron grip over Russia through his Siloviki inner circle will become tenuous. 

If the Russian siege of Kyiv gets prolonged and the rising human and financial costs of war and western sanctions become prohibitive, and Zelensky continues to remain in power, Putin could become completely cornered. If then the Russians are forced to compromise with a Zelensky without being able to extract any clear assurance against NATO expansion, that could result in the worst of all worlds. 

It will only usher in a deceptive calm and cold-peace, and leave the region a tinder box. Worse still, if Putin finds his own domestic position being weakened to the point of losing power, he may even find the nuclear option attractive. At the least, the Cold War is back with a vengeance. 

It will leave the west bogged down in engaging with Russia and ensuring things don't get out of control in the region. The only winner in this would be the Chinese, who would suddenly find the western scrutiny and pressure on its indiscretions and aggressions getting marginalised.