John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…By way of advice, let me ask you, if I were to have a conversation interview Vladimir Putin and Zelensky individually, what should I ask them? If you, me and Vladimir Putin are having a chat, what are good ideas to explore? What are good questions to ask? What are good things to say on or off the mic once again, that could potentially even slightly, lessen the amount of suffering in the world caused by this war? I think if you get an interview with Vladimir Putin, there’s just all sorts of questions you could ask him. And my sense is that Putin is a straight shooter. He’s also very knowledgeable about history, and he has simple theories in his head about how the world works. I think he would level with you, and all you would’ve to do is just figure out what all the right questions are. That would not be hard to do. You could ask him why was he so foolish? For example, why was he so foolish as to trust Poroshenko, Hollande and Merkel in the Minsk Accords. Why after his famous talk at Munich in 2007 where he made it clear that he was so unhappy with the West, did he continue to, in a very important way, trust the West? Why didn’t he mobilize the Russian military before late September, 2022, once the negotiations that we were talking about before involving Istanbul and Naftali Bennett. Once they broke down, why didn’t he immediately mobilize more of the Russian population to fight the war? Just all sorts of questions like that. Then, you could ask him questions about where he sees this one headed. What’s the best strategy for Russia if the Ukrainians will not agree to neutrality?People like John Mearsheimer say, “You’ll probably take close to half of Ukraine. Is that true? Does it make sense to take Odessa.” And John Mearsheimer also has questions about China, your future relationships with China?…

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