Who is right in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, John J. Mearsheimer or the liberals?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/CJPS.2022.001Keywords
offensive realism, Mearsheimer, liberalism, Russia, UkraineAbstract
The aim of the article is to present the views of the founder of offensive realism, John J. Mearsheimer, on the issue of Ukrainian security from the 1990s to 2022 and to indicate which of them were criticized by liberal researchers. The research problem is which assumptions of a realist and liberals have been empirically verified. The most important conclusion from the article is that Mearsheimer accurately diagnosed the issue of Ukrainian nuclear deterrence. At the same time, his theses regarding the causes of Russia's aggression in 2014 and 2022 are not relevant to the strategic situation. The opposite is true for liberal thinkers. The work is a comparative analysis. The methods used in the article are primarily content analysis and the tracing process.
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