John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…We’ve talked about how wars get started. How do you hope the war in Ukraine ends? What are the ways to end this war? What are the ways to achieve peace there? To end the, I would say, senseless death of young men, as always happens in war? I’m sad to say I don’t have a good answer to that. I don’t think there’s any real prospect of a meaningful peace agreement. I think it’s almost impossible. I think the best you can hope for at this point is, at some point the shooting stops, you have a ceasefire, and then you have a frozen conflict. And that frozen conflict will not be highly stable. And the Ukrainians in the West will do everything they can to weaken Russia’s position, and the Russians will go to great lengths to not only damage that dysfunctional rump state that Ukraine becomes, but the Russians will go to great lengths to sow dissension within the alliance. And that includes in terms of transatlantic relations. So you’ll have this continuing security competition between Russia on one side, and Ukraine and the West on the other. Even when you get a frozen peace, or you get a frozen conflict, and the potential for escalation there will be great. So I think this is a disaster. That’s a very realist perspective. Let me ask you sort of the human side of it. Do you think there’s some power to leaders sitting down, having a conversation, man to man, leader to leader, about this? There is just a lot of death happening. It seems that, from an economic perspective, from a historic perspective, from a human perspective, both nations are losing. Is it possible for Vladimir Zelensky and Vladimir Putin to sit down and talk, and to figure out a way where the security concerns are addressed, and both nations can minimize the amount of suffering that’s happening, and create a path towards future flourishing?…

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