Keith Gessen

Arnaud Bertrand Verified account @RnaudBertrand · Oct 16

As someone who wrote an article literally titled "Why Mearsheimer is wrong on China" (arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/why-mearshei…), it's clear I'm no diehard fanboy of the guy.

However, on Ukraine, honesty requires recognizing that he was more right than most, starting with predicting the war in the first place. At the beginning of the war I wrote a long thread listing all the strategic thinkers who predicted it (x.com/RnaudBertrand/…), and Mearsheimer's prediction really stands out as the most complete, almost like a script of what followed.

It is true, though, that since the war started, he's sounded a bit like a broken record in announcing Ukraine's imminent collapse, which hasn't exactly materialized.

He has this bad habit of running everything through the iron laws (according to him) of great-power competition, the very same framework that leads him astray on China.

A framework that, as per his own admission, doesn't leave any room for the individual characteristics of a state: as he himself puts it in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics “The theory pays little attention to individuals or domestic political considerations such as ideology. It tends to treat states like black boxes or billiard balls”.

Which is very unnuanced: it’s painfully obvious to any student of history that there is more to geopolitics than raw power, and that a nation’s history, culture, sense of itself, contemporary zeitgeist and ideology are absolutely critical in shaping its behavior.

In many ways, Mearsheimer's "offensive realism" is the lazy man's approach to geopolitics: it spares you the trouble of reading a country’s history or understanding how its people see the world.

Mearsheimer actually tacitly recognizes this. If you listen to him on his own country, the US, what he is ironically very good at predicting is how they WON'T follow his theory: in the same breath, he’ll tell you the US should stop wasting resources in Europe and the Middle East to focus on China, and that it won’t, because of the Israel lobby, a crusading liberal ideology and the groupthink of the "blob". In other words, because of domestic politics, ideology and individuals: precisely what his theory tells you ought to be ignored.

Which shows that when it’s a country he actually knows from the inside, he has no trouble seeing that the black box/billiard ball is in fact a living, breathing nation in all its complexity and nuance.

All that being said, what is his main point on Ukraine? Famously, and bluntly, that “the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

With about a fifth of its territory under Russian control, about half a million Ukrainian casualties (russiamatters.org/news/russia-uk…), a population that has shrunk from almost 42 million before the war to around 29 million in government-controlled areas (globaloffice.org.ua/en/naselennia-…), 14% of its housing stock damaged or destroyed (thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/ccf8044…), an economy a fifth smaller than before the war in real terms (gmk.center/en/infographic…), and a state whose entire civilian budget is financed by foreign aid (ces.org.ua/en/tracker-eco…), it’s hard to think of a more fitting word.

Ukraine is, factually, wrecked. Still fighting, with a courage and resilience no black-box theory could have predicted, but wrecked.

I don’t think anyone can seriously argue otherwise. The most direct responsibility lies with Russia, which made the choice to invade. But nobody - on either side - can be happy with that outcome, or deny that more could have been done to avoid it.

Which is, when you strip it down to its essence, the gist of what Mearsheimer is saying. It's not that sophisticated but it's also common sense, and probably the most humanistic position one could have held: for all his talk of black boxes, he turned out to be the one most concerned with the people inside them.

So, no, long story short: Mearsheimer hasn’t “discredited himself over Ukraine”. The ones who should worry about their credibility are those who led Ukraine down the very primrose path he warned about, and still haven’t had the decency to admit where it took the country.

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Keith Gessen @keithgessen · Oct 16

@Insidiator69 Bro, they wrote it down. nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/16117… The question is what "jurisdiction" meant and whether Baker's statement constituted a promise or just thinking-out-loud. The actual treaty is the 2+4 treaty, plus addendum, which also happens to be ambiguous.

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Adam Schefter Verified account @AdamSchefter · Oct 16

Today is the 20th anniversary of Dennis Green’s famous post-game rant.

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Henrijs @Henrijsecrire · Oct 16

@keithgessen just another pedoruzzia kremlin sorosite cotton head whining

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