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It makes no sense to blame the West for the Ukraine war
The controversial arguments of John Mearsheimer have gained a worldwide audience. But they fail to convince.
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Ukrainian servicemen get ready to repel an attack in Ukraine's Lugansk region in Feb, 2022.
PHOTO: AFP
Gideon Rachman
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made an unlikely celebrity of Professor John Mearsheimer. His 2015 lecture – Why is Ukraine the West’s fault? – has now racked up 28 million views on YouTube.
In that lecture, and in later articles and talks, the University of Chicago academic argued that the West had provoked a war in Ukraine – by pursuing policies that Russia saw as an existential threat. In particular, Prof Mearsheimer has repeatedly argued that it was folly for the United States to promise to bring Ukraine into Nato. He predicted that Russia would not tolerate this and that “the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked”.
