Blaming the West for Russia’s invasion is not ‘realism’, but moral self-deception – CapX

Blame the West arguments about foreign wars tend to proceed under various banners, with the anti-colonial left usually in the lead.

When it comes to Ukraine, however, it s chiefly figures in the Realpolitik tradition who are providing intellectual support for the idea that the West, not Russia, is really to blame for the conflict. A 2015 lecture by the University of Chicago s John Mearsheimer, a prominent advocate of Realpolitik, has gone viral as a guide to understanding the supposed causes of Ukraine s predicament.

In Mearsheimer s view, Western powers (mainly the US) have the primary responsibility for the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia, according to Mearsheimer, was pushed into a corner and left with little choice but to act the way it did. Western powers poked the Russian bear in the eye, to use his expression, when they should have known better. 

In a recent interview for the New Yorker, Mearsheimer rehearses the same arguments:

Nato expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes EU expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat .

The crux of the Realpolitik view is that Western support for Ukraine s self-determination, and making its own decisions on whether to join Nato or the EU, is inherently a threat to Moscow.

If we accept that Ukraine joining these Western institutions does constitute an existential threat to Russia, then Russia cannot be blamed for reacting in a violent manner to such manifestations of self-determination.  Indeed, it s the West s fault for encouraging Ukraine down such a dangerous path.

via capx.co

The Realpolitik view would be persuasive but for the compromised status of Russia as a nation state. My view (and a fortiori the most reasonable view) is that you don’t get the benefit of Realpolitik reasoning if you run a mafia-type state. You can have a pretty darn morally compromised state (e.g., the US, Germany, the UK) far less than a liberal democracy, and still get treated as an equal in the Game of Thrones that is contemporary international relations. But if you are sufficiently evil, you don’t even qualify for that.

And yes, morals do play a role in international relations. Not a big role, and not the determinative role. If they were all that matters, we would intervene at once, to the extent of providing a No Fly Zone at least, to stop Putin from slaughtering innocents from L’viv to Mariupol. But Putin has nukes, so we are relegated to providing only as much aid as possible without triggering WW3. Morals matter because people are willing to bear some costs altruistically to help the people in Ukraine. They’re not willing to die for them (though some are) but they are willing to pay more for gas, and take some risks, but not too much. There are lots of game theoretical complexities to work out here, but basically, that’s it. So Mearsheimer has a point, but it only goes so far, and not as far as he argues. Russia has no more legitimate interest in Ukraine by dint of geographical proximity that we do by dint of promoting a (self-interested) rules-based international order. Or the Ukrainians do by their stake in democracy, except that many of them are willing to die for that ideal. In the end, the sides that apply more power, as multiplied or diminished by how adroitly or maladroitly they apply it, will win. But the moral case for democracy and freedom in Ukraine does count for quite a bit, even under the rules of the jungle, because it translates into a real measure of power. Not incidentally, this people power of democracy has been greatly enhanced in the last few years by the expansion of the media. Thank God for small favors (if all turns out well — not a forgone conclusion).