Professor Mearsheimer talks to Cambridge about Ukraine
Tuesday, March 1, 2022 11:52 PM
A great nation's foreign policy involves power, money, trade, oil and arms,
but it proceeds from ideas.—William Pfaff
Dear Friends + Interlocutors,
Below please find the link to a video of John Mearsheimer talking to King’s Politics, a student group at Cambridge University, England, on or about February 16th. The topic is Ukraine. A lot has happened since then.
The point is, why? What caused Russia's conflict with Ukraine? Why would Vladimir Putin be so concerned that he would finally order a Russian invasion of the country? Professor Mearsheimer provides answers and some much needed background.
There is only one problem. Professor’s Mearsheimer’s warning and sage advice, going back to 2008, were not heeded by the leadership in Washington. The simple reason is, in my humble opinion, because Washington has been effectively hijacked.
A clear indication of hijacking is that the installed leadership in Washington—which calls the shots for what is still euphemistically termed “The West”—constantly and consistently acts against the best interests of “The West”. I’m talking for decades, not just now.
I think Karl Rove’s oft-quoted remark to a Washington reporter in 2004 is apropos. Rove was denigrating fact-based critics of the disastrous Bush Administration policies in Iraq…
“That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
No doubt this kind of pronunciamento is what Rove picked up during his peregrinations through the Cheney Regency, while listening to Dick Cheney and to the arrogant Neocons Cheney had appointed throughout the State Department and Pentagon and to White House itself.
Rove was a political hack who worked for the nominal POTUS, G.W. Bush, and was known as “Bush’s Brain”. It was Rove who saw the potential for promoting G.W. in politics based on little more than his last name.
The mindset which Rove describes in Washington is responsible for the current war in Ukraine.
Patrick
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Herewith Mearsheimer’s commentary...