John Mearsheimer, an eminent University of Chicago political scientist, warned years ago that the West’s liberal-minded foreign policy would lead to Ukraine getting “wrecked” by Russia.
THE OLD WARNING
As invading Russian forces blazed a fiery path toward Kyiv Thursday, conservative Twitter users resurfaced a video clip of Mearsheimer predicting just such a disaster for Ukraine during a June 2015 talk.
Mearsheimer, a grandee of the realist school of international relations, argued that “the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”
- The U.S. and its expanding roster of NATO allies should stop “encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians” and instead “work to create a neutral Ukraine,” he said.
In a Foreign Affairs article published months earlier, Mearsheimer made the case that the West triggered Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea by recklessly promoting democracy in Ukraine.
- “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly,” Mearsheimer wrote.
- “Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics … that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence and democracy.”
- “U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border,” he continued. “Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.”
THE NEW RIGHT
As Russia-Ukraine tensions escalated in recent months, Fox News host Tucker Carlson repeatedly blasted the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s handling of the conflict in Mearsheimer-like terms.
- “At this point NATO exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin, who, whatever his many faults, has no intention of invading Western Europe,” Carlson said on his popular talk show in December, echoing other dissidents. “Vladimir Putin does not want Belgium. He just wants to keep his western borders secure. That’s why he doesn’t want Ukraine to join NATO, and that makes sense.”
- On Wednesday, Carlson returned fire against critics who have accused him of being a Putin stooge, saying: “It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?”