John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…So he has consistently put, as a primary concern, security? As does the United States, he’s put for Russia’s security, making sure that NATO doesn’t get close to its borders? I think that’s clear. Yeah, I think as I emphasized early on in our conversation, that leaders privilege security or survival over everything else. And by the way, he gave a number of talks and press conferences in addition to writing that famous article that you referred to on July 12th, 2021. So we have a pretty clear record of what he was saying, and I would argue what he was thinking, in the run-up to the war in February 2022. And if you read what he said, it’s quite clear that he privileged security or survival. He was deeply concerned about the security of Russia. And Russia is a quite vulnerable state in a lot of ways, especially if you think back to what it looked like in the 1990s, as you know better than I do. It was in terrible shape. The Chinese talk about the century of national humiliation. One could argue that for the Russians, that was the decade of national humiliation. And it took Putin, I think, quite a bit of time to bring the Russians back from the dead. I think he eventually succeeded, but it took a considerable amount of time, and I think he understood that he was not playing a particularly strong hand. He was playing something of a weak hand, and he had to be very careful, very cautious, and I think he was. And I think that’s very different than the United States. The United States was the Unipol. It was the most powerful state in the history of the world, the most powerful state relative to all its possible competitors. From roughly 1989, certainly after December 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, up until, I would argue, about 2017, we were incredibly powerful. And even after 2017, up to today, the United States remains the most powerful state in the system. And because of our geographical location, we are in a terrific situation to survive in any great power competition. So you have a situation involving the United States that’s different than the situation involving Russia. They’re just much more vulnerable than we are. And therefore, I think Putin tends to be more sensitive about security than any American president in recent times. Europe on one side, China on the other side. It’s a complicated situation.…

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