Professor John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago talks 
with the American Committee for US-Russia Accord on War in Ukraine, 
with Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Nicolai Petro, 
Marlene Laruelle and James W. Carden. 
For more: https://usrussiaaccord.org
References:
https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MearsheimerUkraine.html

0:01
thank you for joining us uh today uh for this what will be an important
0:06
conversation with professor john mirzheimer we meet uh at the most dangerous geopolitical
0:13
crisis moment in europe since world war ii i can't think of anyone who could
0:18
speak to that moment more effectively john mearsheimer is many things
0:27
on the zoom in these last weeks he's been receiving some 1 000
0:32
emails a day which i think speaks to the um
0:38
interest in perhaps not agreeing with professor mira scheimer but hearing a different point of view an alternative
0:44
point of view a counter to what we hear on our screens and uh
0:49
in on our computers so it's very important to have that debate i
0:55
want to just say that the group sponsoring this today is the american committee for east west accord
1:02
uh it was launched in the 70s at a time of dayton's strength parity
1:08
my late husband stephen cohen relaunched the committee in 2014
1:13
a perilous moment in ukrainian russian u.s relations nato
1:18
and i think that with a small team a very important board we've worked against headwinds
1:25
to fulfill a mandate of bill of at least building dialogue
1:30
restraint realism different point of view again that alternative point of view
1:36
which is missing in our media and politics and we believe our work even
1:42
against the headwinds and the brutality we witness is more important more important than
1:48
ever um i want to introduce briefly someone who doesn't need an introduction
1:54
professor miersheimer uh he's uh noted for his courageous book with steve
1:59
walt on the uh issues of american support for israel
2:05
uh he is the our wendell harrison distinguished service professor of political science at the university of
2:10
chicago where he's taught since 1982 graduated from west point phd in
2:16
political science from cornell university and has written extensively about security issues in international
2:21
politics uh distinguished scholar his principal work on ukraine
2:27
though i may be wrong it was a very important essay in september october foreign affairs
2:32
2014 why the ukraine crisis is the west's fault
2:38
the video of that talk has been viewed more than 9 million times
2:43
again speaking to an interest in points of view that may not be popular but are important to hear as we try to find our
2:50
way out of this crisis so i thank you uh john and remember the traveling in germany where
2:57
you and steve took on joshua fisher and timothy gardnach
3:02
against a room of hostile bankers and you survived that so i'm grateful to you in this difficult time
3:08
uh this crisis time this geopolitical crisis time for joining us thank you
3:16
thank you katrina uh thank you very much for inviting me to be here and i recall our travels in germany
3:23
fondly uh especially when steve and i uh debated the uh ukraine issue
3:30
uh back then uh i agree with what you said by the way
3:35
katrina when you said that this is the most dangerous crisis since
3:41
the second world war i think it's actually more dangerous than the cuban missile crisis which is not to minimize
3:46
the danger of that crisis but i think basically what we have here
3:52
is a war between the united states and russia
3:58
and there's no end in sight i cannot think of how this can end
4:04
in the near future and i think there's a very dangerous
4:09
uh chance of escalation first of all escalation to where the united states is actually doing the
4:16
fighting uh against russia the two sides are clashing militarily which hasn't
4:23
happened so far and i think there's a serious danger of nuclear escalation here i'm not saying
4:29
that it's likely but i can tell stories on how it actually happens
4:34
so the question is how did we get into this mess you know so what caused it
4:41
and the reason it's very important to deal with that issue is it has all sorts of implications
4:48
for understanding russian thinking if you want to understand how the russians
4:55
think about this crisis you have to understand the causes
5:01
now the mainstream view which i of course reject is that vladimir putin is either a
5:08
congenital aggressor or uh he is just determined to recreate the
5:16
soviet union or some version of the soviet union he's an expansionist he's
5:22
an imperialist i think that argument is wrong and my view is that this is really all about
5:29
the west's efforts to turn ukraine into a western bulwark on russia's borders uh
5:38
and the key element in that strategy of course is nato expansion and in my story
5:45
it all goes back to the april 2008 decision at the nato summit
5:51
in bucharest where it was said that both georgia and ukraine would become part of nato
6:01
the russians made it manifestly clear at the time that this was unacceptable that
6:07
neither georgia nor ukraine were going to become part of nato and in fact the russians made it clear that they viewed
6:13
this as an existential threat very important to understand those words
6:19
from the russian point of view from the get-go this was perceived as an existential threat lots of people in the
6:25
west do not believe it is an existential threat to the russians but what they believe is
6:32
irrelevant because the only thing that matters is what putin and his fellow
6:37
russians think and they think it is an existential threat
6:43
now i think to be honest that the evidence is overwhelming that this is
6:48
not a case of putin acting as an imperialist and it is a case of nato expansion
6:56
if you look at his february 24th speech justifying why russia invaded ukraine it is all about
7:04
uh nato expansion and the fact that that is perceived to be by him
7:11
uh an existential threat to russia if you look at the deployment of forces in
7:16
ukraine it's hard to make the argument that the russians are bent on conquering
7:23
and occupying and integrating ukraine into a greater russia
7:29
if you listen to zelinski talk about a possible solution the first thing he goes to is talking about creating a
7:37
neutral ukraine that tells you that this is really all about nato expansion
7:42
and ukrainian neutrality furthermore there is no evidence of uh putin saying
7:50
that what he wants to do uh is actually
7:55
make ukraine part of russia there's no evidence of him saying that
8:02
this is feasible and that he intends to do it
8:08
there's no question in his heart he would like to see ukraine be part of russia
8:16
in his heart he would probably like to see the soviet union come back but as he has made manifestly clear that is not
8:23
possible and anybody who thinks that way is not thinking straight he has in fact
8:28
said that so i would like someone to point out to me the evidence where
8:34
he makes it clear that what he is actually doing in terms of formulating policy is
8:41
trying to create a greater russia or reconstitute the soviet union
8:46
all this is to say if you believe like i do that he is facing an existential
8:52
threat you're in effect saying he views this as a threat to russia's survival
8:58
and if he's in a situation like that he cannot lose when you face an existential threat you
9:04
don't lose you have no choice you have to win now this brings us to the american side
9:12
what are the americans doing what we're doing which is what we did
9:19
after the crisis broke out on february 22nd 2014 is we're doubling down
9:25
uh we have decided that what we're going to do is we are going to defeat russia
9:33
inside of ukraine we're going to deliver a decisive defeat against the russians
9:40
inside of ukraine and at the same time we're going to strangle their economy we're going to
9:47
put wicked sanctions on them and we're going to bring them to their knees
9:52
we in other words are going to win and they're going to lose
9:58
furthermore the biden administration and the president himself has gone to enormous
10:04
lengths to ramp up the rhetoric and portray the russians as the font of all
10:10
evil and to portray us as the good guys and to create the impression in people's
10:17
minds that this is a situation that doesn't lend itself to compromise because you can't compromise with the
10:23
devil in fact what has to be done here is we have to win
10:29
now you know that it would be a devastating defeat
10:34
for joe biden if the russians were to win this war and of course as i just
10:40
said to you from the russian point of view they have to win this war because this is an existential threat that they
10:48
are facing so the question you then want to ask yourself is where does that leave us
10:55
both sides have to win it's impossible for both sides to win
11:00
not when you think about the situation that we're facing here
11:06
so how do we get a negotiated settlement i i just don't see it happening i don't
11:12
see the russians giving any meaningful ground and i certainly don't see the americans given any meaningful ground
11:20
so what is likely to happen there's now talk on our side and even on
11:25
the russian side that this war is going to go on for years in other words we're going to have a war
11:32
between the united states and russia that goes on for years now i understand that we
11:38
are not involved in the fighting at this point but we're about as close as you can get to being involved
11:46
and then you start saying to yourself is it not possible that we will get dragged into
11:53
this one there's a huge amount of political pressure on the biden administration for
11:58
us you know to implement the no-fly zone to actually go in for humanitarian
12:04
purposes to ukraine and so forth and so on so far by so far biden has been able
12:09
to resist that pressure but will he be able to resist it forever and what if we have a military incident
12:17
that drags us into the fighting so we could very well end up in a situation where
12:24
the united states and russia are fighting against each other in ukraine
12:30
then we come to the issue of nuclear escalation i think first of all if the united
12:36
states gets dragged into a fight against russia and it's a conventional war in ukraine
12:42
or over ukraine in the air the united states will clobber the russians
12:48
if the ukrainians are doing so well against the russians militarily you can imagine how much better the americans
12:55
will do in air-to-air engagements and even on the ground right in that situation don't you think
13:02
it's possible that ukraine i mean excuse me that russia
13:07
would turn to nuclear weapons i think it's possible uh i've studied a lot of military
13:14
history i've studied the japanese decision to attack the united states at pearl harbor in 1941 i studied the
13:21
german decision um to launch world war one during the july crisis in 1914
13:28
i've looked at the egyptian decision to attack israel in 1973. these are all
13:33
cases where decision makers felt they were in a desperate situation and they all understood that in a very important
13:41
way they were rolling the dice they were pursuing an incredibly risky strategy
13:46
but they just felt they had no choice they felt that their survival was at stake
13:53
so what we're talking about here is taking a country like russia right that thinks it's
13:59
facing an existential threat that thinks that survival is at stake and we're pushing it to the limit we're talking
14:06
about breaking it we're talking about not only defeating it in ukraine but breaking it economically
14:14
this is a remarkably dangerous situation and i find it quite remarkable that we're approaching this whole
14:21
issue in such a cavalier way and by the way i think a lot of this has to do with the fact that so many people who are
14:27
involved in thinking about this problem today were raised during the unipolar moment and not
14:34
during the cold war during the cold war someone like jack can tell you even better than me we thought long and hard
14:40
about nuclear war we thought long and hard about u.s soviet relations and how that might lead to a nuclear war
14:48
people grew up in the unipolar moment are much more cavalier about these issues and i think this presents a very
14:54
dangerous situation now i would note that even if the russians
14:59
and the americans don't end up fighting each other but the ukrainians are able
15:04
to stagger the russians in ukraine and deliver significant defeats on them the russians
15:11
may still turn to nuclear weapons it's possible is it likely no but it's possible and that scares me greatly and
15:18
it should scare most americans and certainly most europeans so all this is to say when i look at the
15:24
u.s russia relationship today i think we're effectively at war with each other although again the americans are not
15:31
fighting against the russians on the battlefield but this is a very dangerous situation
15:37
now what about ukraine don't the ukrainians have any agency
15:42
i mean after all it's their country that's being destroyed one could make the argument that the west especially
15:49
the united states is willing to fight this war to the last ukrainian
15:54
and the end result is ukraine is in effect being wrecked as a country given
16:00
that they have agency is it not possible that the ukrainians themselves will say
16:05
enough is enough and put an end to this sadly i don't think that's the case and
16:12
i think the fact is that the united states will not allow
16:17
the ukrainians to cut a deal that the united states finds unacceptable the
16:22
washington post had a piece on monday that made it very clear that the administration and our nato allies are
16:30
very worried that the ukrainians are going to cut a deal with the russians that makes it look like the russians won
16:38
or that in fact concedes that the russians have won at least to some extent we do
16:43
not want that to happen as i said before the biden administration is out to inflict a decisive defeat on russia if
16:52
the ukrainians decide to cut a deal and allow russia to win in some meaningful sense
17:00
the americans are going to say that's unacceptable and the americans will work with the right-wing nationalists
17:06
in ukraine to undermine zelensky or his successor
17:13
so i see no way ukraine can stop step in and put a stop
17:19
to this crisis i just see it going on and on
17:24
let me conclude by saying that george kennon said
17:30
in the late 1990s that nato expansion was a tragic mistake
17:38
and that it would lead to the beginning of a new cold war at first it looked like he was wrong we
17:44
had the first tranche of expansion in 1999 and we got away with it we had the
17:50
second tranche of expansion in 2004 and we got away with that but then when the decision was made in
17:58
april 2008 for a third tranche which would include georgia and ukraine it's quite clear
18:05
that we had moved a bridge too far and the end result i'm sad to say is
18:12
that i think that kennen's prediction has proved true thank you
18:23
okay well um thank you professor timer for that um
18:29
rather alarming uh wake-up call um i hope some people in uh in positions of power here in washington uh are
18:36
listening um i'm going to introduce our esteemed accurate panel and after the panelists
18:43
make their remarks we'll circle back and begin the q a and hopefully begin a discussion among the panelists
18:50
and with those of you in the audience who have been kind enough to join us today
18:56
marlene laruel is director of the institute for european russian and eurasian studies at the
19:03
george washington university where she is research professor of international affairs she
19:10
like our other panelists is a prolific writer and lecturer and she has two books out over the past year memory
19:18
politics and the russian civil war and is russia fascist
19:23
unraveling propaganda east and west nikolai and petro is professor of
19:30
political science at the university of rhode island his scholarly awards include two
19:35
fulbrights one to russia and one to ukraine and numerous other awards
19:41
last year he was a visiting fellow at the institute of advanced studies at the university of bologna in italy uh today
19:49
at 4 30 streaming live on youtube he will be part of a discussion uh that
19:55
is discussing the ukraine crisis um as part of the watson institute at brown
20:02
and we've posted the details in the in the chat so we would urge people to go
20:07
and check that out uh and last but not least uh ambassador jack matlock uh he served as u.s
20:15
ambassador to the soviet union from 1987 to 1991
20:20
he was senior director for european and soviet affairs on president reagan's nsc staff and he
20:26
was ambassador to czechoslovakia from 1981 to 1980.
20:31
three he is the author of numerous articles and books including the superb and ever relevant superpower illusions
20:38
how myths and false ideologies led america astray and how to return
20:44
to reality uh so mr ambassador uh thanks for joining us and the floor is
20:50
yours well thanks very much i think we have heard from professor
20:56
mirzheimer a brilliant analysis of what the situation that we're in
21:04
and i agree totally with everything he has described and
21:09
i must say that in looking at things today i am
21:14
i cannot be optimistic um and first of all
21:19
i think that so it has made clear that whatever happens
21:24
in the future uh ukraine cannot be preserved as a
21:31
you might say a viable and successful state within those borders that it
21:36
inherited in 1991 and i say inherited because these borders were set
21:43
actually literally by communists and
21:49
they they include areas that had not been traditionally
21:55
part of ukraine and the tragedy of ukraine one of them has been that as they were
22:02
struggling as all the other ex-soviet states to throw off the shackles of
22:07
communism and all the irrationalities of that they were confronted
22:13
with a population that was deeply divided and they were also
22:20
subjected to a constitution which did not allow federalism a federal
22:27
system which would somehow give more local autonomy
22:32
to different groups so that you had a seesaw
22:39
elections uh where by slightly more than 50 percent the
22:44
presidency would be won by one side of the other and then that president would
22:49
name all the equivalent of the state governors the provincial leaders
22:54
that was a recipe for disaster and because there was no leader
23:00
coming forward that really defined a you might say a new sense of ukrainian
23:07
statehood which would be comfortable both to the ukrainian
23:13
speakers and the russian speakers so ukraine's problem
23:19
was internal now as we have gone forward in our policies
23:26
i think that as professor mirzheim made clear what we have to consider
23:33
is not our analysis of the way things are but what the russian perception is
23:41
uh after all people act on their perceptions and the russian perception is
23:48
that we have aggressively um uh attempted
23:54
uh to detach um both ukraine and georgia
24:00
uh from uh any substantial influence by russia
24:05
by the way if another country had done something similar to one of our neighbors
24:11
we would have reacted i believe perhaps even more forcefully
24:18
than president putin has so i think we have to bear that in mind
24:25
there's almost a hysteria today in condemning russia
24:30
as a uh as a unprovoked aggressor
24:36
yes russia has been an unprovoked aggressor but they had a precedent
24:41
what do you think the u.s attack on iraq was
24:46
a country nearly halfway across the world which did not threaten us and had not
24:53
threatened us we had attacked it invaded it
24:58
cheered for our technology that they enable them
25:03
no images of how this affected the people on the ground you know i'm ashamed to say that the
25:10
united states has given president putin every trick
25:16
in his playbook now that doesn't make it right what he has done
25:22
but we need to now this attempt in effect to wage a
25:27
virtually total war against russia um
25:32
i think is deeply and deeply misguided
25:39
we face so many threats
25:46
mutual threats we're not over the covert uh uh epidemic yet
25:52
uh this fighting and all of the refugees and so on
25:58
this almost certainly is going to make it worse uh and we have the whole
26:05
nuclear threat which uh professor mirzheimer has described very well
26:11
but and what about the long-term threats of global warming
26:16
uh how are we going to continue to deal with all these flows of refugees whether they be
26:23
economic or or what not we are simply undermining the real long-term interests
26:32
of our countries in getting into this sort of fight
26:37
and i'd also say those who think we're simply going to choke russia and bring it down
26:44
should understand that this is going to have a serious effect on many other people
26:51
uh in my day when i was in the soviet union the soviet union had to import
26:58
close to 30 million tons of grain a year just to survive
27:04
this was a tremendous uh liability and it's one that we were able to use to
27:10
pressure them in many ways right now both ukraine and
27:16
russia are a net and major grain exporters
27:21
it tells you what the new system is like and how different it is from the soviet
27:26
union by the way and this affects many countries you start cutting off
27:32
that trade and also the trade not only in
27:40
energy uh but also in precious metals and other things which are essential uh for much
27:46
of modern technology you know i think that uh we're going to see if we continue these policies and it
27:53
looks as if we're going to a real pushback by people who are not willing really
28:01
to take some of the cost to them uh for uh these sanctions because they
28:06
are there and finally i would say don't underestimate the russian ability
28:13
to over in a fairly short period of time to overcome some of the technological
28:20
problems i also think that the use of the of the dollar as a weapon which is what
28:27
we have been doing is going in the long run to undermine
28:32
our dominance of the world financial system that may take a decade or two
28:38
but i think there are very serious implications entirely a sign
28:43
from the nuclear threat which is very much there though i agree
28:49
with professor merzheimer it is not probable but it is possible
28:55
and we have to worry about that
29:06
okay thank you mr ambassador uh marlene you're up thank you so much everybody thank you
29:12
for inviting me um several points i wanted to make the first one is that i agree about the
29:18
shared responsibility of the west in the kind of strategy deadlock and the fact that russia is seeing nato expansion as
29:26
an existential threat but i would still dissociate the strategic deadlock
29:31
which is a shared responsibility from the decision to do war and to do that kind of war a full-scale
29:37
invasion targeting civilian and for me sorry this is russia's alone decision in
29:43
fact it's putin's alone decision taken against sorry the will of the majority of the
29:50
russian political establishment so i think there was other ways for russia to react than the war and the war is
29:55
weakening sorry russia's legitimacy on the long run
30:01
i have three key points i just wanted to make the first one is the question of avoidability the war was avoidable it
30:08
was not written in the putin's regime dna that they would invade there was
30:14
many other way they wanted to be influential and to keep spheres of influence and of course russia is a
30:20
former colonial imperial center it has disdain toward the new uh post-soviet
30:26
societies but that could have stayed only as a kind of cultural social aspect and that should may not have be
30:33
transformed into into a war and when i say that there are there are many ways of being a great power and i think
30:39
russia has genuinely tested several of them and really in the 2000 thoughts
30:45
that integrating into the world community into the world economy would make its
30:51
voice heard and its claims kind of partly recognized and it's only when
30:56
they realized that this integration strategy was not working that the kind of classical fashion fear
31:03
of influence mechanism was not working that they began looking to other strategies that were more related to
31:09
kind of maintaining keeping or provoking territory territorial instability in the
31:15
the the countries around so what i'm trying to say that they have been for me a shift from russia thinking it can keep ukraine
31:22
in a sphere of influence away from nato to moving to a strategy that is now
31:28
about territorial conquest to at least grab of land and i agree russia
31:33
and putin doesn't want to recreate the soviet union or the russian empire it's not a buddha it's using now grab of length as
31:42
a kind of solution to the failure of being respected as a great power and i think that's a that's a a a very
31:49
concerning uh a trend my second point is that professor schamer you were saying
31:54
about it's all about nato expansion for russia and i think it was the case until
32:00
now sure it is now anymore i think now unfortunately it has become much more complex on the russian side and i think
32:07
we have to recognize there has been a kind of crescendo a gradual move in the way
32:12
russia is framing the conflict that is of concern what we have now it's
32:17
narrative that are ambiguously either about the strategic concern of a ukrainian nato or that is about purely
32:26
denying legitimacy as a state and as a nation there have been really ambiguous
32:31
comments in uh putting a species and of uh several of other
32:36
official governments i mean there are real strategies of this statistician of ukraine that i found problematic i found
32:44
there are russian kind of schizophrenic narrative about ukrainians need to be told by force that they are a brotherly
32:52
nation with russia and all the narrative about the nazification i mean ukraine
32:57
has a far-right culture russia has won the us as one you have transnational far-right groups i don't think the way
33:04
it has been framed by russia is legitimate it's really and you may have seen the real novosti articles a few
33:11
days ago it's really calling for mass killing and of course it's free and obviously it's not an official statement
33:17
by putting our level off but it has been authorized so my what i'm trying to say now is that
33:22
it has become more complex on the russian side i think because of the failure of getting their great power
33:28
claim respected now they have moved to something that is much more complex and much more dangerous
33:33
and my third point is that the russians vision is not static and i think we have it's not written in stone as we have
33:40
seen it's evolving and i think we have to realize now that things are still evolving on the russian side because war
33:46
is a kind of revolutionary open-ended moment and so russia is still adjusting
33:51
its own vision its own narrative and its own capacities on the ground and all that is influx and i think it's
33:57
important for us to realize that you have all these contradictory narratives arriving from the russian side sometime
34:04
russia seems to say it's just about getting a friendly regime in keith and being sure that ukraine is natural
34:11
sometimes it seems to be saying like ukraine should be partitioned and eastern territories should join russia
34:17
or be a kind of buffer zone and sometimes it's about ukraine is not legitimate to exist at all
34:24
and i think we should realize this complexity because what is telling us it's telling us that there are tensions
34:30
at the kremlin the kremlin is not a unified uh system you have it's an ad
34:36
a construction and there is a party of war in russia that is pushing for the radicalization of narrative that is very
34:43
unhappy with the diplomatic talks going on now and i think it's really important for us to realize at least this three
34:50
language of russia on the war and the nato one is unfortunately not the only one now and we have to be sure we try to
34:58
invite russia to going back to discussing the neutrality issues which is the the easiest one in fact and
35:04
avoiding the russian uh policy moving toward really accusation of ukraine not
35:11
being a legitimate state because that would make the discussion relatively impossible to to
35:17
to finalize and i agree with you about the fact that i mean we need to fast to find
35:23
faith-saving solution for russia and we need to be sure that if ukraine is able to cut a deal with russia there is no
35:30
u.s kind of regime strategies or maintaining of sanctions that would of
35:35
course make things impossible on the russian side to be to be accepted so i'm just i will stop here but just to say
35:41
that i think things are still very much in flux that it's mostly a shared responsibilities but the war is putin's
35:47
responsibility largely against the will of his own governments and that's we have now worrisome narratives coming
35:55
from the russian side abuts ukraine legitimacy to exist that we should take into consideration and do our best to
36:02
try to push russia to go back we're just discussing the strategic aspect and and
36:07
stopping nato expansion and not moving to really narrative that are that are
36:12
disempowering the pure existence of of ukraine i will stop here thank you
36:20
okay thank you very much um nick it's all yours thank you
36:26
i have a few words to say about tragedy
36:31
and international relations theory tragedy in international relations
36:38
has certain general characteristics but each generation must also deal
36:44
with its own particular tragic demons i would
36:49
highlight three of those the loss of the ability to communicate
36:55
the loss of a common legal framework and the loss of shared values
37:02
the loss of the ability to communicate precludes dialogue indeed
37:09
many politicians and diplomats no longer understand what dialogue means
37:16
they think it means indicating that to one party what the other party wants
37:22
but that is essentially what a prison warden does to his inmates in fact the logos india logos
37:31
means to gather together and it is sometimes rendered as
37:36
relationship the famous opening line of the gospel according to saint john could thus be
37:44
read in the beginning was the relationship
37:50
the proper objective of dialogue is not a momentary accord
37:55
but a profound self-transformation that establishes a new relationship with
38:02
the enemy classical greek tragedy is thus quintessentially
38:07
a series of dialogues in which we expose our own tragic flaws
38:13
to ourselves this exposure is meant to bring about
38:19
catharsis a purging of the soul that restores
38:24
healthy perspective by removing hatred our reluctant willingness to sign
38:32
technical agreements with other countries while emphasizing at the same time our
38:38
values disagreements with them is thus the exact opposite of dialogue
38:48
our second tragedy is the loss of a common legal framework i refer here to the much discussed
38:54
distinction between an international legal order and a rules-based order
39:02
the west has in recent years worked hard to replace the former with the latter
39:09
while breezily suggesting that they are the same thing much of the rest of the world however
39:16
has said they are not and has suggested that what the west is really trying to do here
39:23
is to privatize the international legal order and to make it serve whatever rules the
39:30
west finds most beneficial our third tragedy has a rather long and
39:38
distinguished pedigree i'm referring here to the fruits of the poison tree of american exceptionalism
39:46
which causes many americans to emphasize the values that divide us from the rest
39:53
of the world rather than the many interests that we share
39:58
this is what has transformed us from a mere nation state into an all-judging nation church
40:07
that as andrew baseevich has pointed out unites primarily to worship at the altar
40:15
of american greatness since 2003
40:20
american officials have consistently chastised russia for her quote breach of
40:26
values end quote but make no mistake
40:31
other states are never far behind these three tragedies are mutual
40:37
reinforcing and they lead to a foreign policy that can be summarized in a single
40:44
phrase there can be no dialogue with the axis of evil
40:50
except about its terms of surrender to our rules
40:55
if one were to search for historical analogies i suspect that the world order that we
41:00
are headed toward will look a lot like the early 17th century
41:06
with its efforts to impose the one true faith during the 30 years war
41:13
we've been told that putin is trying to return us to the power politics of the 19th
41:19
century my greatest fear is that is that we may one day look back
41:25
on that with regret as an offer we should have taken thank you
41:36
katrina you need to um thank you for your all of you for your most sobering
41:42
cogent range of analyses of the situation we confront i want to turn it over to some of the q
41:49
a we have but before that if there's any discussion any question john you may
41:56
wish to reply uh or there may be questions from the panelists
42:01
or additional comments in light of your other panelists comments well i'd love to reply but i think it's
42:07
better if we go to q and a rather than have me talk again okay we
42:13
are going to do that um and there many
42:18
so this is a question i mean i think for
42:25
marlene and um
42:38
to what extent professor mearsheimer uh do you believe the ukrainian far
42:43
right stops the government and kiev from cutting a deal with the russians
42:50
i think that when zielenski ran for president he made it very clear
42:56
that he wanted to work out an arrangement with russia that ended the crisis in
43:05
ukraine and he won and what he then tried to do was move
43:12
toward implementing the mints ii agreement if you were going to shut down
43:17
the conflict in ukraine you had to implement mints too and mince
43:24
2 meant giving the russian speaking and the ethnic russian
43:29
population in the easternmost part of ukraine the donbass region
43:35
a significant amount of autonomy and you had to make
43:40
you uh the russian language and official language of ukraine once again that had
43:48
to be done i think zelensky found out very quickly that because of the ukrainian right it
43:55
was impossible to implement mints too therefore even though the french and the
44:01
germans and of course the russians were very interested in making mints to work
44:08
because they wanted to shut down the crisis they couldn't do it in other words the ukrainian right was
44:15
able to stymie zelensky on that front now zielinski understands
44:22
that if he cuts a deal with russia today
44:27
he has to face the ukrainian right that's why zielinski
44:32
has said that any peace agreement has to be approved by the ukrainian public he's
44:39
going to ask for a referendum because zelinski understands that he cannot take
44:45
the ukrainian right on by himself so basically we have a situation where
44:51
zelensky is stymied now very importantly the americans will side with the
44:57
ukrainian right because the americans and the ukrainian right both do not want
45:04
zelinski cutting a deal with the russians that makes it look like the
45:10
russians won so this is the principal reason i'm very
45:16
pessimistic about ukraine's ability to help shut this one down
45:23
nikolai this is a question about it's really about language but it's something deeper than that
45:29
do you believe the ukrainian language and identity in the west around vive is going to become the predominant
45:35
cultural engine of the ukrainian idea identity and what effects will this war leave on majority russian-speaking
45:41
cities that is something
45:48
we can only speculate about on the one hand it uh looking at
45:54
historical examples of brutal invasions in the past the american seizure of
46:01
half of mexican territory in the mexican-american war and how relations have evolved since
46:06
then the um english conquest of ireland
46:12
which is still uh traumatic and and has a left um
46:19
a gash in in the territories of northern ireland um we can say
46:25
that uh there it engenders a period of great hostility
46:32
but that over time you know uh there there's a monument on
46:38
the battlefield of poltava that i visited in ukraine and it's in three languages and it says time heals all
46:45
wounds and i think in the long run there's nothing
46:51
there's no way to escape the destiny that ukraine and russia
46:58
must share together because those countries are not going anywhere and uh no matter what the current
47:04
generation thinks of the next generation thinks that is absolutely no predictor
47:10
of uh several generations down the road
47:17
could i add something at risk yeah i mean what we are seeing now is that
47:22
the russians speaking ukrainians are siding with ukraine largely the russian-speaking cities are largely on
47:28
the ukrainian side i mean you always have people who are on the russian side we there are some small flaws of
47:35
refugees going on the russian side because that's where they feel more comfortable the donbass population those
47:41
who were already secessionists are more on the russian side but i think we should realize that
47:47
the war is reshaping reshuffling the ukrainian identity and what you seems to have emerging now is a
47:53
largely more unified ukrainian identity in which russian-speaking ukrainians
47:59
feel good at home with ukraine so i think that is something that all the knowledge we had about all this kind of
48:05
regional division of ukraine culturally linguistically they will be totally transformed by the
48:11
war so i'm not sure we will have endless himself is not representing a kind of galicia western type
48:18
western ukraine type of identity is represented a much more kind of unified russian speaking ukrainian speaking at
48:25
the same time identity so i think many things are so much in flux that there will be a new ukrainian nation and many
48:31
of this question will kind of be totally transformed thank you um this is for ambassador
48:38
matlock um ambassador what insights do you have into the current state of u.s diplomacy
48:44
and its deficiencies it often seems that the idea of compromise is anathema to american
48:49
officials and americans and gov in general because issues are portrayed in terms of pure good and evil that only allows for
48:57
total victory and i was very interested in what professor mirsheimer alluded to
49:02
which is that the biden administration officials so many of them are of a different there they
49:08
grew up in the unipolar moment so they don't have the experience of uh the cold war and a duel
49:18
well i think one of the problems is that our diplomacy since the late 1990s
49:26
has been virtually the opposite of that which we used to in the cold war
49:33
um we had several i would say operational principles when
49:39
we began to negotiate it into the cold war we seem to be almost at its height
49:46
around 1983 1984 but we decided that we would start
49:53
first of all trying to look for areas of common interest
49:58
and concentrate more intention on them second to listen very carefully to what the
50:06
soviets were saying to stay always in communication and though president reagan for example
50:14
condemned the soviet union as an evil empire he never insulted any soviet leader
50:21
he treated them with respect and when he met them personally
50:27
his first words were usually we hold the peace in our hands
50:32
we must act responsibly and you know uh then
50:38
also issues like human rights and so on which were largely
50:44
comments on their internal affairs we begin to shift more to a private
50:49
conversation rather than public condemnations and public demands
50:55
which we understood would be you know tend to be rejected
51:02
and within about a three-year period we had found uh that since it was in the
51:10
interest of both countries to end the arms race to end the confrontation
51:16
we negotiated an end and it was not a defeat for the soviet union
51:22
uh now since then we have the idea that somehow we won the cold war in
51:29
in the sense that russia was defeated no the soviet union we ended it with the
51:34
soviet union two years before the soviet union broke up it broke up not because
51:40
of our pressure from the outside but because of problems inside
51:47
but you know beginning in the late 90s and the first such move
51:53
was the decision to start expanding nato and at first it was acceptable but it
51:59
should have been clear from the very beginning if we were going to expand nato we had
52:04
to stop at a certain point there was going to be a red line and i joined
52:10
uh you know i joined george cannon and others then testifying to the senate
52:16
that a decision to expand nato would be one of the worst
52:22
strategic decisions we could have made since the end of the cold war
52:28
but even so we could have gotten by with it if we had if it had just included a
52:33
few east european countries so it seems to me that then we started a
52:39
a policy of in effect treating russia as if it were a defeated
52:44
nation at the same time we interfered directly in their own
52:50
elections so we were very much involved in the 1996 election that uh
52:56
that re-elected uh boris uh then we and
53:01
also then we began to walk out of almost every arms control treaty which had been
53:08
the basis of our ending the cold war uh and then uh when
53:14
uh putin began to complain about some of the things we were doing
53:20
like uh about putting antiballistic missiles in eastern europe
53:26
we we simply ignored that we never addressed his complaints most of which i
53:32
would consider quite valid from a russian point of view it was not that necessarily all of them
53:38
were totally accurate but they were they represented perceptions which we should have dealt with
53:45
instead we increasingly not only the media the principal media but the
53:51
government began to personalize everything and i think that we played a role in
53:58
creating the vladimir putin that we see today including
54:03
giving him precedence for what he is doing and why we can't recognize that is beyond me
54:12
thank you ambassador matlock i um there are a set of questions here i'm just gonna this this one might be for
54:18
marlene is putin getting true and accurate information from his inner circle concerning the results in the war
54:26
on the battlefield um this is about putin's inner circle i might ask you marlene
54:32
you know there is an assessment that putin is unhinged talking about ambassador
54:38
matlock's personalization of the situation but i think people would be interested in a
54:43
brief sense of the circles inside moscow the war party but also the
54:49
roots that inform putin's thinking at this stage based on the speech he gave
54:55
a few weeks ago yeah it seems so all the information we have is telling us that putin was
55:02
largely misinformed he's still reading kind of old-fashioned reports giving to by to him by security services and it
55:10
seems they were painting an image that the war would be easy to win in ukraine that ukrainians will be receiving
55:16
russian as a liberator that keith would feel very rapidly that the lenski would flee that the ukrainian army wouldn't
55:22
resist that the russian army would make it very easily so i think that was there was a real kind of a
55:28
strategic mistake done by on the russian side is in in getting the accurate information
55:34
probably because it's difficult to approach uh putin we know he has been very
55:40
isolated during the pandemics and people wanted all these people around him wanted to give him the
55:47
most positive vision and that probably conducted to that decision and now we can see so we know that some services of
55:54
the fsb have been kind of fired or clean up after the the
55:59
the mistakes of their judgment was revealed and now we have a much more realistic if i miss a strategy
56:06
of russia in ukraine uh taking into consideration the what is happening on
56:12
the ground in trying just with quotation marks to take control of the as of c and the the large uh donbas
56:19
in term of what is really happening in putting inner circles is very difficult we know there is a circle of advisor or
56:26
circle of friends who are able to access him and who seems to be feeding him with with information and
56:33
interpretation but this inner circle is totally outside the government or even
56:39
the presidential administration purview and i think that's important to realize that because
56:44
when we do diplomatic talk or when the diplomatic stocks are going on we are the ukrainians are talking to official
56:50
figure of the government but no one is accessing this kind of private circle around putin that seems to be really uh
56:58
very influential so there is this kind of parallel two states the official one
57:03
and the informal one and we cannot access the informal one in trying to cut a deal and i think that's part of the
57:10
problem on on the way we we try to interpret what is happening on the on the russian side and then as i was
57:16
saying there is a party of war that we can have some element of id identification
57:23
we see some kind of tip of the iceberg and i was mentioning these three announced t articles a few days ago
57:28
really calling for mass killing in in in ukraine that i think is telling us that there are some patrons inside the
57:35
system that push for this kind of radical solution and we also know that many members of the government are
57:41
against the war i mean now they have to be consolidating around the leader but
57:46
we're surprised and shocked by the decision so i think we have to realize that there is no unity at the kremlin
57:52
it's it's a complex entity a complex black box with many different uh level
57:58
and groups and we want to try to speak to to to the more kind of rational one the one that consider that strategic
58:05
issues should be the key yeah of course and our obviously our behavior influences
58:11
in war parties around the world of course we have a war party here also
58:17
nick you wanted to say something and then i was thinking i would go to professor mirsheimer to say a few words
58:23
in response to some of the questions and comments from participants
58:29
nick sir yes in partial response to the question that
58:36
was asked about um the possibility of
58:42
eastern ukraine what i call russophile ukraine
58:47
being transformed into a more ukrainian uh pro-ukrainian
58:55
um community um yes as i said that was that was that's
59:02
something that uh is inevitable in the short run but as marlene was
59:09
commenting i was i remembered a quote that i read from ukraine
59:16
so this is march 24th of this year by mikhail dubinanski
59:24
who is a very well-known commentator and i just want to read it to you because
59:29
it hits at the heart of the issue which hasn't gone away
59:36
quote in ukraine there is also an alternative view to what is happening
59:41
the view that this big war in ukraine really hasn't changed much
59:47
forcing this war into the framework of our customary habits and prejudices
59:53
from this perspective february 24th 2022 looks not so much
59:59
like a magical gateway into a new world but more like a broken doorway
1:00:04
through which to drag all the baggage of the recent past all the old fixations insults and
1:00:11
recriminations that defined ukraine's public agenda before this full-scale invasion
1:00:19
it took but a moment for the front lines to stabilize before this traditional
1:00:25
internal hate re-emerged end quote thank you powerful
1:00:32
thank you um thank you for a brilliant analysis of
1:00:38
this perilous moment i wanted to go back to professor mirsheimer to comment
1:00:44
or to just speak in closing about um
1:00:50
the moment and what lies ahead thank you thank you katrina i mainly
1:00:56
wanted to respond to three sets of points that marlena made uh
1:01:02
first of all you talked about putin targeting civilians or the russians targeting
1:01:08
civilians it's obviously very hard to tell exactly what's happened here but with that
1:01:16
caveat in mind you want to remember that the americans have been pushing
1:01:23
to arm civilians in ukraine and to tell those civilians
1:01:29
to fight against the russians so by definition in lots of the fire
1:01:36
fights that are have taken place and will take place russians are going to be fighting
1:01:42
against civilians because those civilians are fighting against the russians
1:01:48
so just remember this is a very complicated business second point has to do with putin's
1:01:55
thinking and also your comments about the narratives that are taking place
1:02:00
inside russia the fact is we have no idea who putin is
1:02:06
talking to and we really have no idea exactly what
1:02:11
he's thinking these days there's just no way we could know that
1:02:16
and it is you use the term black box it's kind of a black box we can look at what
1:02:22
he said on february 24th or february 21st and so forth and so on but who knows for
1:02:28
sure what he's thinking uh when it comes to narratives
1:02:34
i've spent a lot of time thinking about how public discourse matches up with decision making in a
1:02:42
crisis if you go to a decision like the cuban missile crisis or the german decision to
1:02:49
invade france in 1940 basically you have a handful of policy makers in the room
1:02:56
who are making the decision to do something and what they think is what matters and the
1:03:03
narratives that are swirling around in the broader public really don't matter
1:03:09
uh so i understand that if you look at the narratives in russia today you can find
1:03:16
all sorts of evidence of people talking about doing x or doing y or doing z
1:03:22
in ukraine but in the end what really matters is what putin and his close
1:03:28
advisors are thinking and why exactly they decided on february 24th to invade
1:03:35
ukraine and we really don't have good information to analyze that situation at
1:03:41
this point in time my final set of comments excuse me have to do
1:03:46
with your point about russian interest in grabbing territory
1:03:52
in ukraine i actually think the russians had zero interest in grabbing territory in
1:03:59
ukraine and that includes eastern ukraine the main reason that the russians wanted
1:04:06
to implement the mints ii accords and wanted to work with zielinski to do
1:04:12
that is they wanted to shut down the problem in eastern ukraine they did not want to
1:04:19
conquer the donbass furthermore when things really began to
1:04:25
get bad in mid-february they recognized
1:04:30
those territories in the donbass as independent states they didn't move to
1:04:37
make them part of russia as they had done with ukraine
1:04:42
and with regard to the future it's not at all clear that russia will
1:04:48
move to take those parts of eastern ukraine that it's conquered and integrate them into a
1:04:56
greater russia i wouldn't be surprised if they created an independent state
1:05:01
simply because it's probably more trouble than it's worth to conquer that territory
1:05:06
so i don't think the russians contrary to the conventional wisdom in the united states have really had any interest in
1:05:14
conquering ukraine because as i said many years ago in the 2014 essay in foreign affairs that
1:05:21
katrina referenced in her introduction for
1:05:26
russia conquering ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine
1:05:32
thank you
1:05:39
you're muted katrina um i wanted to just say a few words
1:05:44
first of all this is an example it seems to me today of
1:05:49
the importance of public debate of informed debate of debate informed by an
1:05:55
understanding of history um we we meet in 2022 but as so many of you
1:06:01
know very well this is a situation which has long roots from our land way back
1:06:06
but i mean at least 2014 as john's essay reminds
1:06:11
uh but i just want to say briefly about the amer the american committee for east west accord
1:06:17
i mean it is shocking i know to ambassador matlock that we are at a moment where the embassies and consulates are shut down
1:06:23
you spent much of your time as ambassador i think trying to ensure that russians could travel
1:06:30
and that there would be access but from nuclear nonproliferation
1:06:35
to economics to energy uh these have been heedlessly dangerously discarded as
1:06:41
projects of cooperation um and we look back um we look at the
1:06:47
end of the soviet union but we also look today at 2014 where decisions were made
1:06:53
nato expansion was referenced different points of nato expansion but i i think i conclude with i don't
1:06:59
think there's ever been an absence of american discourse democratic discourse as such a faithful
1:07:07
but the ability to continue this discourse in the not you know the face of what
1:07:12
professor mearsheimer rightly referenced a frenzy a frenzy of
1:07:18
you know there is barbarity uh but there's also an understanding that
1:07:23
uh there's a need to end it and if we're gonna end it there has to be some sense of history so i just want to
1:07:30
thank you all uh for participating in this civil debate
1:07:36
and uh there's more to be done and i hope we will continue more of these and i thank you professor mirsheimer
1:07:43
it's i'm sure it's a very it's a very difficult uh you know obviously for ukrainians and for
1:07:49
this geopolitical crisis but to have a voice uh that is speaking
1:07:55
in the ways you are is important uh there is a lockdown of
1:08:01
information and analysis and history as you mentioned the narratives narratives are important
1:08:08
so um my view is you know we can't have a stable world until there's partnership if not
1:08:13
you know partnership between the u.s and russia uh it's going to be very hard to get to
1:08:21
uh we are working at the nation and that acura with people inside russia the independent
1:08:27
press and trying to uh ensure that my last point is that the demonization of
1:08:33
russians doesn't swallow up and can contribute to an enduring cold
1:08:40
war but thank you very much for all joining taking time out of your busy days and um
1:08:46
grateful to you professor mir shima my pleasure katrina
1:08:53
and please if you might people come to us russia accord.org if you seek um it's a site where we do
1:09:02
present alternative views in the belief that they are needed now more than ever thank you very much
1:09:12
[Music]