u/Comer_Agua

TL;DR: The biggest issue with John’s framework is that he uses a structural framework about how states behave (offensive realism) and applies it as the cause and explanation of the Ukraine war. As a result, there is a level mismatch with his framework that produces conceptual, methodological, and agency issues. Because of the limits of the framework, it can only positively identify NATO as a real pressure for Russia, but is unable to demonstrate how that external pressure translates into the decision to invade. I will showcase John’s argument step by step to demonstrate this.

I will base John’s argument on this:

https://www.youtube.com/live/qciVozNtCDM?si=Cva54ZzzO5XC6Buc

John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis 

1.      Great Powers Assumption

John states that great powers prioritize their own survival and react strongly to foreign alliances near their borders. I don’t object to this, but this becomes the primary anchor of the rest of his argument, and he doesn’t develop a real sense of Russian agency.

2.      NATO Expansion Creates an Existential Strategic Threat

John demonstrates this by showing things like Putin speeches, Russian official statements, Burns memo, Lavrov statements, historical warnings from Russian officials, and John says the threat NATO poses is a long-term geostrategic threat that weakens Russia’s position in the black sea and in a potential Russia vs NATO war.

The problem with this argument is that what John demonstrates is a national security concern but nothing requiring immediate invasion, and just because politicians say something is a threat doesn’t demonstrate analytically how NATO expansion to Ukraine is an objective threat. You can accept all the premises and still conclude that the threat posed to Russia isn’t existential. John's argument leaves ambiguity about what constitutes an existential threat and once you give context Johns argument doesn’t rise to the threshold of something requiring immediate military invasion.

Who feels threatened in Russia?

Russia is an autocracy, so most power lies at the top of the government. The factions in Russia that fear NATO the most are Putin’s elite circle, Kremlin senior officials, and Russian elites. They all agree NATO expansion poses a security concern but very few of them actually believe the remedy is full scale invasion. In the leadup to war, invasion planning was constrained to a tiny circle within Putin’s elite and when the invasion started several senior officials, elites, and people in Putin’s inner circle were in disbelief over the choice of full-scale invasion, key figures were excluded from decision making and some officials like Sergey Lavrov weren’t even informed of the invasion until after it started or right before it began. Nikolai Patrushev, who is one of the more hawkish anti-West Kremlin officials, preferred a more diplomatic solution rather than a full-scale invasion. How Putin blundered into Ukraine — then doubled down

In addition to elites and government officials, the Russian population’s attitude between 2015-2021 was mixed, with fragmented support and passive acceptance, but not population wide support or fear of NATO.

If Russia’s immediate sovereignty was threatened by NATO expansion into Ukraine, there would be much stronger elite convergence, planning, and more society wide mobilization, but instead, there has been fragmented support among the populace and passive acceptance and depoliticization, which isn’t consistent with a country that is facing an immediate existential threat. This doesn’t prove John wrong, but it shows how the nature of John's theory creates conceptual ambiguity that plagues his argument.

What kind of threat does NATO expansion pose?

The threat that NATO expansion to Ukraine/ Belarus poses to Russia is a long term strategic one that encircles Russia in the black sea region, which makes its geostrategic long-term position weaker in a hypothetical war with NATO or with controlling trade in the region.

I don’t reject the national security concern, but I disagree with John's call to frame this as an existential threat. An existential threat poses immediate threats to sovereignty, material interests, and political circumstances. John, in the lecture, never explains what materially happens to Russia if Ukraine joins NATO and never goes past asserting that the threat is intolerable, without demonstrating that John can’t truly explain why the danger is so urgent that it necessitates a full-scale invasion.

There is no real chance of a NATO ground invasion coming from the west, and Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. So, the threat that NATO poses to Russia is real. Still, nothing that threatens Russia’s immediate sovereignty justifies a full-scale invasion over a litany of less destabilizing methods of coercion.

3.      Russia Warns the West

I agree with John here. Russia warned the West for decades about NATO expansion, and NATO expansion certainly radicalized Russia’s response.

4.      The West Continued Escalating

I agree that the West continued with military and political ties with Ukraine after 2014, but John’s framework steps over the political agency of Eastern Europe and Ukraine. That makes it sound like unprovoked escalation from the West when in reality Ukraine’s movement toward the West was also shaped by its own security concerns, domestic political developments, and historical experiences with Russia. This does not eliminate the strategic concerns of Russia. But this shows that the escalation process wasn’t the West changing lines on a map, but Ukraine and Eastern Europe pursuing their own goals, which contributed to the escalation.

5.      Russia Invaded to Neutralize the Threat

John demonstrates that Russia saw Ukraine becoming a de facto NATO member and, under defensive realist logic, used invasion to forcibly block western integration. But John’s framework doesn’t demonstrate why invasion was specifically chosen over other forms of coercion and escalation, considering the deleterious effects that full-scale invasion comes with, like sanctions, economic isolation, stronger NATO unity, and strategic encirclement in the Arctic.

The picture that John presents is a picture of badly handled NATO expansion contributing to a real national security concern, but due to the structural nature of John’s framework, and how the theory doesn’t require a detailed account of Russian agency, domestic politics, and the dynamics of Putin’s regime.

In the lecture, John admits the shortcomings of his own theory and says things like “realism, as most of you folks know, is a theory that leaves domestic politics on the cutting room floor”, and “the theory says that domestic politics do not matter.”

As a result, the theory is ironically unable to demonstrate how NATO expansion led to invasion because John’s theory doesn’t require an account of Russian agency, meaning it’s unable to show how the external pressures of NATO expansion are interpreted and translated into decisions in the Kremlin.

If Putin is willing to tolerate such extensive political, economic, and strategic costs just for one country not to align with the West, this suggests that there must be a more central motivation for war than just national security concerns. Why does the response to NATO expansion radically differ when you take into account the structure of Russia’s government, leadership positions, and leadership psychology?

Conclusion

John Mearsheimer's realism is much better suited as a general explanation of how states behave because the mechanisms supplied by realism are better suited at the level of structural pressures and tendencies. But when you extend this framework as a cause and explanation of the Ukraine war, it becomes insufficient because it lacks the necessary mechanisms at the level where wars are decided to function as an adequate cause of wars claim.