John Mearsheimer's lecture "Why is Ukraine the west's fault" has been getting a whole lot of attention lately mainly because of its title and because it appeals to the narcissistic and solipsistic worldview of many westerners. - it's from 2015 so it's 7 years out of date. Simply put, if you actually listen to the lecture as opposed to simply waving a link to it around in lieu of an actual argument, events since then have proven him catastrophically wrong.
- Mearsheimer starts out by giving a backgrounder in which he feels the need to explain that France is next to Germany and Ukraine is next to Russia. That pretty much sets the level for the rest of the lecture. (He also completely omits Great Britain from his discussion of European geopolitics.) Oh good now he's describing the massacre of peaceful protesters in 2014 as "an overreaction" and "messy"

"What they're doing is not trying to conquer Ukraine. That's not going to happen. Putin's much too smart for that."
 "The idea that he [Putin] bears any resemblance to Adolf Hitler is laughable in the extreme, It's hard to believe that that serious people make that argument. The idea that he's bent on creating a Greater Russia? I think if he could do it he'd do it. He can't do it. Russia is a declining Great Power...I think Putin is much too smart for that. .... Is he crazy or irrational? I don't think so."
On NATO: "You only give Article 5 guarantees to countries where you have a vital strategic interest like Germany during the cold war."
What are the US "vital strategic interests" in for example, Montenegro, Albania or Luxembourg?

 https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

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