John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…Well, there could be more nuanced things like no military involvement between the United States and Ukraine, but economic involvement, sort of financial support, so normalizing economic relationships with Ukraine, with Russia, all being- I think you could probably get away with that. I think the tricky question there that you would have to answer is what about EU expansion? And I think EU expansion is probably a no-no for the Russians because most people don’t recognize this, but there is a military dimension built into EU expansion. It’s not purely an economic alliance or relationship or institution, whatever word you want to use. There’s a military dimension to that. In the run-up to the war, actually in the run-up to the 2014 crisis, when it first broke out, the Russians made it clear they saw EU expansion as a stalking horse for NATO expansion. So EU expansion is tricky, but I think your point of close economic relations between … or healthy economic relations to use a better term between Ukraine and the West is possible. I think the Russians have a vested interest and if it’s a neutral Ukraine, they have a vested interest in that Ukraine flourishing, but that then brings us back to the territorial issue, right? Well, so do you believe it’s possible for individual human relations to counteract the structural forces that you talk about? So meaning the leaders being able to pick up the phone and make agreements that are good for humanity as a whole and for their individual nations in the long term?…

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