JOHN MEARSHEIMER’S REALISM AND THE UKRAINIAN

Abstract

Abstract. The paper sheds light on the ongoing debate around the Ukrainian war in American and Western scholarship, the focus is especially on John Mearsheimer’s views on the Western perception and attitudes towards Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. An in-depth critical analysis of Mearsheimer’s essay titled “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault” published in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his other works have shown that putting the blame on Putin and demonization of Russia for the Ukrainian crisis is a dominant and prevailing discourse in the West. In this ongoing debate, John Mearsheimer seeks to change such narratives viewing them as one-sided and biased, forcefully and persuasively arguing that the Western nations led by the United States are to blame for this international crisis that has led to military conflict in Ukraine. The prime cause of the Ukrainian conflict according to Mearsheimer, lies in the eastward expansion of NATO since the 1990s, which is seen by Russia as a grave threat to its national security. Another reason of why there is a bitter tension between the West and Russia is that the American and European leaders’ beliefs of international politics are shaped and guided by a flawed view in which they tend to trivialize realism, contemporaneously subscribing to liberalism, a school in international relations theory that dominates the discourse about the Transatlantic security. Although Mearsheimer’s realist stance and views about the Ukrainian war and European security do not constitute mainstream discourse in the West, they contribute to a proper understanding of this international crisis from the perspectives of realism.