Wrecking Ukraine

Time respects no person
What you lift up must fall
They're waiting outside
To claim my crumbling walls
--John Mellencamp

2015 lecture by Prof John Mersheimer of the Univ of Chicago that explains the West's primary role in the Urkraine situation. Could have been made yesterday.

The punchline, made at about 44 mins at the end of his formal remarks, is this:

"I actually think that what's going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."

Indeed.

Mearsheimer spoke to a student group from Cambridge a week or so before the invasion. Seven years had done little to alter his view. He did note that after a lull from 2015-2020, the near-term factors driving Russia's acute response included Ukraine's government recent aggressive actions against Russian-speaking citizens in the east, and ramped up arming/training of Ukraine military by the US and other NATO associates.

Mearsheimer also opined that he didn't think Putin would invade because the costs of war and occupation did not justify the potential benefit. Besides, Russia appeared to be winning the strategic battle as, in his view, the country's concerns regarding NATO expansion et al were capturing Western attention.

Apparently Putin didn't share that view.

Nevertheless, Mearsheimer's prescription both then and now is the intuitive one. Make Ukraine a neutral state, including the guarantee of no NATO expansion. 

That would stop the wrecking of Ukraine.