Thread by @dandrezner

Damn. @kath_stoner ain’t messing around on this #APSA2022 panel on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Makes it clear at the outset that she thinks Mearsheimer’s arguments about the causes of the war are horses**t.

P.S.: Mearsheimer is also on this panel.

Mearsheimer, in his response, claims that Putin’s long July 2021 essay on Ukraine provides zero evidence that Putin wanted/intended to absorb Ukraine into Russia.

The next speaker @darelasn spends the first five minutes of his presentation pointing out the myriad ways that Russia wanted to absorb Ukraine and has wanted to do so for more than a century, falsifying Mearsheimer’s claims.

A fair closing point by @darelasn that it is far from clear whether Crimea would want to join Ukraine ever again.

.@OxanaShevel is up next. She quickly dismisses Mearsheimer’s claims as lacking empirical foundation. Posits the war has its roots not in the domestic politics of Russia and Ukraine. If it was really NATO expansion, Putin should have escalated after Sweden & Finland joined.

A good closing point by @OxanaShevel that Ukraine’s turn toward the West wasn’t due to NATO or EU but rather because of shifts in Ukrainian domestic politics. Mearsheimer’s theory denies Ukraine any agency.

Now we’re at the Q&A portion of the panel. The first three questions are for Mearsheimer, challenging him theoretically and empirically.

I get this dynamic but it’s still weird that the dude who said the most wrong stuff gets the bulk of the questions.

Mearsheimer acknowledges that if the war in Ukraine is an existential threat then Russia should go for general mobilization now that the war is going badly for them. So it will be interesting if this comes true or is falsified over the next few months.