The editors of Switzerland’s leading newspaper, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, knew they had a terrific headline when political scientist John Mearsheimer said, “I would have done the same as Putin. I would have attacked Ukraine even earlier.”
As the paper no doubt realized, the controversy-loving University of Chicago professor had made an outrageous statement even by his own standards. It’s one thing to accuse the West of provoking Russia’s illegitimate president to invade Ukraine in defense of Russia’s strategic interests. It’s a whole different ball game actually to endorse Putin’s invasion by associating oneself with it so clearly and openly.
In effect, Mearsheimer has justified and legitimized Putin’s war and genocide, thereby making himself complicit in the Russian dictator’s crimes. This is where Mearsheimer’s brand of so-called geopolitical “realism” ultimately leads: not just indifference to morality, but the wholesale rejection of morality and its replacement with immorality.
It is important to note that this statement is Mearsheimer’s personal endorsement not only of Putin’s war but also of his genocide of Ukrainians. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine began a systematic effort to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy their language, culture, history and identity. That is genocide, by any definition.
Mearsheimer believes Putin bears no animus toward Ukrainians — that he is acting in a purely rational manner focused only on Russia’s strategic interests. That’s nonsense. As scores of books, articles and journalistic accounts have made clear — including shockingly forthright statements by Putin, former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and many other members of Russia’s elite — Putin and his set detest Ukrainians for having the gall to believe they aren’t Russians. Russia's powers that be are determined to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, state and culture.
“It’s quite clear that Putin is a first-class strategist and behaves rationally," Mearsheimer has said in German (my translation). "This doesn’t mean that one has to agree with his behavior or must consider it good. Since April 2008, when NATO declared Ukraine would become a member, Putin has made one thing very clear: that he and his Russian elites regarded NATO membership for Ukraine as an existential threat for Russia. Since then he has acted according to this conviction. That includes the decision in February 2022 to invade Ukraine. From the viewpoint of Russia’s interests he therefore behaved smartly.”
But two points require a closer look: first, that Putin promoted Russia’s interests by invading, and second, that Ukraine was on the path to becoming a NATO member.
It is at least unclear how one can characterize as a brilliant strategic move a three-year war that has cost Russia close to a million dead and wounded and thousands of tanks and personnel carriers destroyed; revealed its armed forces as incompetent and third-rate; induced Sweden and Finland to join NATO; ruined Russia’s economy; and transformed Russia into a rogue state dependent on North Korea and China. If this is smart behavior by a rational Putin, then heaven help us if he ever rejects Mearsheimer’s advice and begins to act irrationally.
Equally absurd is the notion, now a tenet within MAGA world, that Ukraine was marching toward NATO membership before the invasion. The exact opposite was the case. NATO and its member states had expressly rejected membership for Ukraine. Indeed, the West suffered from a recurring bout of “Ukraine fatigue.”
The fact that NATO and its members still oppose Ukrainian membership exposes the hollowness of Mearsheimer’s claims. After all, if membership and the attendant threat to Russia were truly strategic priorities for NATO, why extend membership only to Sweden and Finland, and not to Ukraine?
Things look even more fantastic when one considers the condition of the armed forces of NATO countries. It’s no secret that it was and still is abysmal. Putin and his spies must have known that NATO posed no threat to Russia. A truly rational Putin would have known that NATO was a paper tiger and that Ukraine’s chances of joining were worse than nil.
Naturally, it’s possible that Putin was trapped in his own ideological predispositions and couldn’t think straight. But that’s just another way of saying that he wasn’t rational or that his notion of rationality consisted of Russia’s self-destruction.
What else is there to say as one observes a leading scholar commit intellectual and moral suicide? Perhaps that Mearsheimer owes Ukrainians — and Russians — an apology for associating himself with Putin’s irrationality, war and genocide.
As for the rest of us, his silence would be enough.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”
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