Posted on 02/27/2025 3:22:02 PM PST by Mariner
The recent public clash between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reignited debates about Zelensky’s role in the outbreak of war with Russia. A classical realist analysis provides the best framework for understanding both the conflict and Zelensky’s role in it.
Simply put, the classical realist framework holds that, in an anarchic international system, where no central authority enforces order, states must rely on their own power for survival. It further holds that an important consequence of this reality is the “security dilemma” — a dynamic that emerges when one state’s attempts to enhance its security are perceived as threats by other states, triggering cycles of mistrust and escalation. These systemic pressures, combined with flawed leadership — marked by ambition, hubris and miscalculation — tell us much about how manageable crises can spiral into devastating wars.
The unfolding tragedy in Ukraine provides a powerful case of this dynamic, revealing both the role played by the insecurities of the various players and the role of human agency, especially that of Zelensky, in triggering the war.
Some in the West have elevated Zelensky to the status of a 21st-century Churchill — a wartime leader standing resolutely against tyranny. But this comparison is misleading. Churchill confronted an existential threat from a power bent on global conquest. Zelensky, by contrast, operated in a context where diplomatic alternatives existed. His refusal to take these off-ramps, both before and after hostilities began, reflected a dangerous mix of incompetence, misunderstanding, overconfidence and nationalist fervor. Realism reminds us that while anarchy and the security dilemma create conditions for conflict, it is human agency that often converts these structural tensions into war.
(Excerpt) Read more at yahoo.com ...
Realpolitik.
Realism teaches that great powers act according to interests, not sentiment.
Flawed assumptions in the article.
He assumes there were diplomatic off-ramps. Where are the diplomatic off ramps when Russia simply kept occupying and violating Ukrainian borders?
Sure, those places had been Russian before. But the borders were in place for 15 years in 2014.
Also, the weakness and ineptness of the Biden presidency was an open invitation to Putin.
The author’s analysis has a number of flaws. The security dilemma is a problem created by both sides. Putin had as much responsibility to lower the heat as Zelensky. So much of the talk blaming this war on NATO expansion fails to take into account why the eastern European nations were so eager to join NATO. The author also repeats the misinformation that Russia had agreed to withdraw during the Istanbul talks. It did not. There were also other Russian demands during the negotiations that made any agreement impossible regardless of any intervention by Boris Johnson. And finally, the author disregards the other motivations for Russia’s invasion: the long standing desire for Ukrainian lands and the desire to bring Ukraine back under Russian control. This was never completely about the perceived threat of NATO expansion.
This war, then, is not merely the result of impersonal structures. It reflects the enduring relevance of classical realism’s emphasis on human nature and the leadership skills of key players. Unlike Churchill, who had no diplomatic alternatives, Zelensky had options.
It is difficult to know if the world would have been better or worse if Britain had sued for peace.
There would have been horrible things in the world.
It is easy to imagine a China mostly conquered by Japan, with tens of millions dead.
A Soviet Union conquered by Germany, with tens of millions of dead.
A mostly intact British Empire.
A United States which may not have suffered a Pearl Harbor.
These are all hypotheticals. I think Churchill did the right thing, as difficult as it was.
The time for Britain to stay out of it was 1914, and let the Germans conquer the Russians, would have saved the world a lot of grief.
He was right about that as Starmer made the comparison recently.
Starmer as I understand took down a portrait of Churchill.
Trump made a point of saying that he had brought back the bust of Churchill for as I remember the SECOND time that had been put away by Biden and Obama bin laden before him.
That was Trump trolling again although a little more subtle than his usual troll job.
"In realist terms, domestic politics and international security are interconnected. Nationalist impulses can heighten external threats. Zelensky’s assumption that Western rhetorical support would shield Ukraine from Russian retaliation revealed not only hubris but also a critical misunderstanding of Western strategic interests."
Given out national debt, coupled to state, municipal and county, school district and public university system debts, and considering the massive consumer debt in this nation, our "strategic interests" should be in first healing ourselves.
If Ukraine loses and Russia wins, two dangerous lessons to the world will be clear: (1) if you want to be safe, get nuclear weapons; and (2) do not trust security promises from the US, NATO, or Russia.
Does this matter? Only if you do not want more countries in the world to go nuclear for the sake of survival. And just as in a bar in a bad neighborhood, unless management keeps order with hard fists and weapons at the ready, things can go bad quickly. And we are on the cusp of that happening across the world.
Thank you for making the point about nuclear weapons.
Of course, there are complications. But Clinton, Obama, and Biden all made stupid policy decisions which taught world leaders the same lesson: The only real security for independent leaders is in having nuclear weapons, or in depending on another nation for a nuclear umbrella.
The Balkans did not have nuclear weapons. Libya gave up their nuclear program - they were invaded. Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons tied to the former Soviet Union - Russia refuses to respect their borders.
Another Bolshevik strawman. An entire army of them. The truth is Putin has been murdering Ukrainians who oppose his regime since long before Zelensky appeared on the scene. It is, of course, classical Moscow Kremlin Bolshevism to blame its victims for its crimes. Apparently, Kyiv had a short skirt and deserved to raped by Moscow. Again.
Wrong. Zelensky didn’t have a choice. His choices were and are 1: Have his country violently and genocidally erased from the face earth or 2: Accept whatever aid he can could get and fight from there. There is no door number 3 as long Moscow mass murderers and destroys entire cities to achieve its political policy goals.
My overriding concern is the state of debt in our nation, at all levels both public and private.
This nation is about 4 percent of the world's population, and the EU alone is far larger, with all of Europe almost twice as large. It is time for the world's ills to not be laid at our doorstep, expecting us to shoulder yet more of other nations' problems by adding to the debt.
“Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War..”
Sorry about your total head up @$$ notion. Ukraine Never had nuclear weapons.
That "realist point" was completely unmentioned because it is simplistic at best and false at worst.
1. Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons at the end of the Cold War. They had the physical possession of Soviet-era nuclear weapons that were going to end up in Russian hands under any conceivable scenario after the breakup of the Soviet Union. See items below for more detail.
2. Russia was seen as the successor of the Soviet Union from every diplomatic perspective -- almost unanimously across the world. Russia assumed the permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council formerly held by the Soviet Union. Russia was tasked with dismantling the Soviet nuclear arsenal under the terms of arms treaties previously in place. And Russia took on the task -- at tremendous expense -- of decommissioning obsolete Soviet-era nuclear arms and power plants. They were actually doing Ukraine a favor by dealing with that disaster.
3. There was no way in hell the western nuclear powers (the U.S., the U.K., and France) would ever tolerate another nuclear power in eastern Europe -- especially one as corrupt, dysfunctional, and backward as Ukraine. Those powers would have allowed Russia to retain full control over Ukraine for a thousand years before they'd ever let Ukraine retain a single nuclear weapon from the Soviet stockpile.
As it happens, the US paid for Russia to decommission Ukraine's nuclear weapons, so the expense was on US taxpayers, not a bankrupt Russia. The description "corrupt, dysfunctional, and backward" applies to Russia more so than it does to Ukraine.
Worse than that, the KGB installed Putin into power by a series of staged terror attacks that they blamed on Chechens. The KGB even blew up an apartment building full of Russians for that purpose. Once in power, Putin and his KGB and gangster allies routinely kill or imprison his political opponents. Those are not features of Ukrainian politics.
It’s always amusing to see Russia projected onto Ukraine by those duped by Moscow Kremlin gaslighting. The filth and mass murder of Russkiy Mir isn’t so funny, though.
Secondly, you are posting things here that are based on what you think would have been in Ukraine’s best interest. None of that matters. This was never about Ukraine. It was about what the globalist leaders in the U.S. and U.K. wanted in Ukraine. And a Ukraine with even a single nuclear weapon was never an option.
Since Russia is always a bad neighbor, the US and NATO were eagerly sought out for membership or affiliation by former Warsaw Pact members and former Soviet republics. Putin is such a stupid thug that he even managed to drive Finland and Sweden into NATO membership last year. My guess is that Poland will soon build nuclear weapons for potential use against Russia.
Once Putin dies or is ousted, the current Russian Federation may well unravel. Today's Russian Federation is as ramshackle as the Soviet Union was, but without any credible ideological foundation. The Putin and oligarch formula of "Let us steal together" has run its course.
Baloney. Z is the puppet of the real perpetrators, who started down the path before they even picked Z as their puppet.
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