A Zero Sum, Worldview Consumes the Clueless West Leadership
The Global Global Revamps the Script of the Unipolar Order
What are the prospects of bringing the Ukrainian war to a close? I viewed a recent discussion on The Duran YouTube channel seeking an “Endgame for the Ukrainian War”. This particular episode was the first time that Professor John Mearsheimer appeared as a guest commentator on the show. In case you are not familiar with him, he is a distinguished professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. Between him and Alexander Mercouris along with the broadcast host, Glenn Diesen, the triad of speakers represented viewpoints coming from three different regions of the trans-Atlantic West. Specifically, Alexander, (A native Greek) lives in Britain, Glenn in northern Europe, and John is an American.
The conversation that ensued on Sept. 10 was focused on the current conflict going on in Ukraine, coming from independent-minded individuals willing to examine the political/military realities of the situation, unbiased by any favored ideology pushed by government authorities. It was fortunately an exercise in free speech perhaps only tempered by the fact that Mearsheimer is an employee at a prominent American university.
Professor Mearsheimer is in his own words:
“Above all else, I am an international relations theorist. More specifically, I am a realist, which means that I believe that the great powers dominate the international system and they constantly engage in security competition with each other, which sometimes leads to war”…
“Although I have dedicated my life to scholarship, I have also tried to engage in the policy debates of the day”.1
The commentary between these three gentlemen, and in particular the scholarly discussion that occurred between Mercouris and Mearsheimer most markedly, was definitely not scripted by the U.S. State Department. Mearsheimer it should be noted has been a critical spokesman of the Ukraine conflict going way back before the actual hostilities broke out when Putin launched Russia’s special military operation (SMO) in February 2022. He has followed the developments occurring in that part of the world in the role he describes above. His assessments as an international relations expert and scholar are widely respected and given credence due to his long and distinguished career as a tenured professor at a prestigious university. However, his analysis is not necessarily endorsed by, nor popularly covered by the mainstream press here in America. Yet, his dissenting voice is as close to mainstream acceptability as you could expect in a mindscape where gaslighting and censorship have become more normalized in our corporate-controlled news and media outlets, especially when it comes to reporting the news on the Ukraine war.
One summary statement voiced by Mearsheimer that all agreed upon is that the conflict today could have been totally avoided had NATO pursued a policy of allowing Ukraine to remain a neutral country, neither aligned with Russia nor the NATO West. Had anyone with sufficient clout among our (Western) government officials recognized or listened to the Russians protesting the eastward expansion of NATO, moving inexorably towards Ukraine and Russia’s western border; along with the insistent and unmistakable demands being made by all the Russian leaders since Yeltsin in the mid-nineties, it was not that difficult to project what would happen if NATO, turning a deaf ear to Russian protestations, continued its insistence that Ukraine be inducted into the NATO alliance. Russia’s red line—demarcated for decades—was being crossed and there were woeful repercussions that were bound to occur.
Professor Mearsheimer categorically pronounced the determination by NATO (traceable to April 2008) to recruit Ukraine as a potential candidate for NATO membership as a catastrophic strategic blunder, and is to be blamed for undermining and sabotaging peaceful relations between Russia and the trans-Atlantic, & European Western nations.
Now aside from that geopolitical assessment that squarely puts the fault of this war on the West’s doorstep, in addition to any purely strategic or geo-political rationale under discussion, there remains a shared pessimistic attitude within the Duran interview participants regarding a potential peaceful settlement being reached any time soon.
I consulted a Substack article written earlier (June 23) by Mr. Mearsheimer in which he gives an in-depth analysis of the many reasons why this war in Ukraine has no easy solution. That sobering piece doesn’t even emphasize the obstacles to reaching a negotiated peace accord that directly relates to a U.S./U.K.-led refusal to recognize Russia’s legitimate security concerns on its Western flank.
A Good Guy, Bad Guy—Zero Sum, Worldview Consumes the Clueless West Leadership.
It’s been almost 3 months since the good professor wrote his Substack article entitled: The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War Is Headed. Since that time, you might wonder if there has been sufficient evidence that could move its author to reevaluate his original prognosis. Does he now detect a glimmer of hope in ending this conflict owing to the willingness of the combatants to come to the negotiating table?
Have the losses sustained on the battlefield and the realities on the ground caused the collective West to moderate its stance concerning the absolute necessity of inducting Ukraine into NATO membership status?
In fact, it is apparent by what was shared in the September 10 interview that the likelihood of a negotiated peace settlement is confounded by the prevailing inability of our Western leadership to grasp any other notion outside its conviction that Russia will eventually fold, its army collapse or somehow the Russian citizens will oust Putin. The removal of Putin has been the fantasy of the West since he kicked out the oligarchs from the West when they swooped in like carpetbaggers right after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The two elements that Mearsheimer did not write about in his original Substack article, but which he emphasized as being very important to understand in the Duran interview get to the psychological underpinnings that are driving the attitudes of Western leadership. Western political/military leaders possess a chronic inability to understand why Russia looks at the admission of Ukraine into the NATO bloc as an existential threat. Mearsheimer remarked how time after time he has observed a glaring and predominating abject obstinacy—willful ignorance if you will—amongst the top political leaders driving American and NATO policy-making decisions. To wit:
1. The trans-Atlantic democracies are the good guys on the world stage and they are correct to defend the national sovereignty of the Ukraine nation, no matter the exorbitant cost of weapons and spent lives. The Russians are, of course, identified as the bad guys ruled by the villain Putin and it’s inconceivable to think otherwise.
2. The inclusion of Ukraine into the NATO alliance of nations is not a security threat to Russia and therefore they (the Russians) are completely mistaken in perceiving it as such. The Western democracies pressure Ukraine to join NATO to ensure peace and stability in the region, no matter that Moscow believes otherwise.
These critical components at the base of Western thinking have only led to the collective West doubling and tripling down, despite the massive casualties and destroyed armaments while declaring that they are backing Ukraine all the way. Our guests on The Duran show all agreed that they are pessimistic about hostilities ending any time soon. As Mearsheimer’s article contends, all parties directly involved in the war now feel that to lose would be an existential threat to the political survival of their own State or regime.
The other dynamic that Mearsheimer underscored in the interview was the twist of fate that the U.S. possesses at the moment, which serves as another impersonal driver to fomenting more war. Believing itself invulnerable to a conventional, (non-nuclear) attack from Russian forces—having the breadth of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans separating us from the frontlines—America has the luxury of funding the war and escalating the counter-offensive moves of the Ukrainians while not taking any casualties of American soldiers.
That is part of the exquisite irony that is underway as this war continues. Looked at from a humanitarian vantage point, even from a more noble and empathic, Christian and compassionate perspective, the sacrifice of the flower of youthful, Slavic men numbering in the hundreds of thousands is a travesty beyond description.
And the geopolitical calculus which is prosecuted by nations from afar, yet paid for by blood spilled on Ukrainian soil by her native sons is being fought for what in the final analysis? Well, we have heard the words of the leaders of Germany, Biden and Blinken too. We Americans are programmed to believe that this is all about saving a nation headed for democracy and freedom for its people. Yet, out of the mouths of Angela Merkel, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s minister for foreign affairs, and Ursala von der Leyen, the 13th president of the European Commission since 2019, we hear the real reasons why we find ourselves involved in this dreadful situation as Mearsheimer describes it.
Simply put, it was never about democracy in Ukraine; it was always about taking out Putin and balkanizing Russia into weakened, scattered confederacies whose collective landmass could be strip-mined by the corporate-cartelized West.
That’s the modus operandum of the leftover remains of geopolitics bequeathed to us by a failing (financial) empire that only knows how to divide and conquer and use war as a last-ditch remedy to inject military spending into ponzified, (central-bank-controlled), deficit budgets that threaten the civilian sector with bankruptcy and collapse.
Update: Collective West refuses to admit Ukraine offensive has failed.2
While debating how to finish this post, I viewed The Duran video with the above title to get some more insight into the most recent developments occurring in Ukraine. It is worth viewing to get the complete and nuanced analysis presented by the co-hosts, Alex and Alexander.
Here’s a takeaway I got from their commentary that kind of ties into where I think I was going with the bottom line before getting their latest reporting.
High-ranking officials from the U.S., Britain, Germany, and the E.U. just completed visits to Kyiv. They all individually met with Zelensky. Zelensky then was interviewed by (British) media sometime afterward. His answers in those interviews were parsed by our Duran hosts. They feel, based on those visits by top government representatives and by the innuendo in Zelensky’s remarks, that the collective West is seeking to freeze the conflict and bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table. It is speculated that the plan would draw up an armistice, similar to what occurred between East and West Germany, or more like the uneasy truce that exists between North and South Korea.
Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State is thought to be pushing Zelensky into requesting for talks with the Russians. Zelensky seems unwilling to sit down to any kind of deal, and so far, has balked at making any gesture of diplomacy.
The point that the Duran guys made is that the British, Americans, and Europeans are all talking amongst themselves. They come up with what they consider a brilliant strategy for exiting a very bad scenario while making it appear as though they saved Ukraine from an even worse fate had they never stepped in. They present their latest plan to Zelensky, which he disapproves of…; their attempt is to salvage a major disaster and make it look like it was worth throwing away all those lost boys’ lives and the billions of misspent dollars in blown-up hardware.
And then we come to a final question posed by Alex; What is Russia’s response going to be? Will they settle for freezing their gains while accepting a door left ajar for eventual Ukraine's entry into NATO somewhere down the road?
Not a chance!? And so that begs the unsavory conclusion broached by Alex. The West will try and escalate whatever leverage they can muster to force Russia to the negotiating table instead of just trying to broker an honest parley. Meanwhile, more lives are massacred while the narrative to save face proceeds on a murderous, desultory road.
The utter failure to accommodate the genuine/legitimate national security concerns of a sovereign nation-state, to which Russia is entitled, and on which principle has been resoundingly upheld by the global majority of nation-states refusing to support the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West—that failure, exhibited by the globalist’s mentality refusing to respect or acknowledge grievances brought before an international body or council will and must be remedied in the form of a new international pact that moves forward the idea that a new architecture of peace through development can proceed.
That happens when the globalist, (anti-human) approach of neo-feudalism, population reduction, and greenie, climate alarmism which ultimately leads to de-industrialization, balkanization, and austerity is unmasked as unworkable and unrealistic.
To say nothing of bankruptcy reorganization of the collapsing financial indebtedness of the central banking system run on the londollar.
Notes:
Mearsheimer.com
The Duran, YouTube video post September 16