CONFISSÕES DE UM NORTE-AMERICANO FORA DA CAIXA

Recebi um vídeo de conferência de prof. John Mearsheimer que, depois de um longo relato das intervenções militares norte-americanas desde a Segunda Guerra Mundial, conclui que a culpa da guerra na Ucrânia é dos norte-americanos.

Tentei mas não consegui inserir esse vídeo neste apontamento.

Comentei a quem me enviou o vídeo.

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Olá amigos,

Seguindo à risca as vossas sugestões, vi o vídeo do prof. prof. John Mearsheimer e não vi nada de novo.

Aliás, se o JM pretende confessar os pecados do país em que nasceu e reside, deveria juntar mais uma grande quantidade de barbaridades a começar pelo genocídio do povo índigena, vulgo ameríndios ou índios americanos . Hollywood encenou cenas dessas barbaridades, que distribuiu pelo mundo com geral aplauso e fabulosos lucros. Quem é que não viu Apocalipse Now ou o Último dos Moicanos?, por exemplo, entre centenas, talvez milhares, deles. Quem é que não sentiu a estupidez da espécie humana reflectida no arrasamento de Hiroshima e Nagasaki?

Se há culpa que não pode ser atribuída aos norte-americanos é a de terem escondido as suas bestialidades.

Não sei se o prof. Mearsheimer é católico praticante e, por confessar os pecados já mil vezes confessados, supõe que redime o povo a que pertence, esqueça. Na História não há absolvições por confissões de pecados.

Talvez pudesse ter acrescentado, como atenuante  desses pecados que são muitos,  dezenas de milhares de militares norte-americanos mortos em defesa de uma Europa livre do nazismo e do fascismo. Esqueceu-se? É tonto, penso eu.

 

O prof. Mearsheimer nasceu e reside num país onde a liberdade de expressão não é restringida; na Rússia, já teria sido preso e, eventualmente envenenado. É pela liberdade de expressão de pensamento e decisão do seu destino que os ucranianos resistem aos russos.*

Quanto à conclusão final de tão longo estendal, também nada de novo. Logo no começo do arrasamento da Ucrânia pelos russos, o deputado do PCP João Oliveira afirmou convicto e coerente (como é seu timbre e sem a lenga lenga do prof. Mearsheimer) que a culpa é dos norte-americanos!

E ainda há quem critique o PCP por não reprovar o arrasamento da Ucrânia!

O senhor nunca lerá este texto. Quem leu o seu texto e ficou embevecido com ele fique sabendo que andando a estupidez humana a uma velocidade superior à sua inteligência, a justificação da estupidez presente por alegação da estupidez passada encaminhará a espécie humana para sua extinção.

Pense nisso.

 

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* Este parágrafo foi acrescentado ao texto inicial.

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Correl . - John Mearsheimer is wrong about the crisis in Ukraine 

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14/8

By Invitation | Russia and Ukraine
John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally
responsible for the Ukrainian crisis
The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia

This article is part of our Summer reads series, which also includes:
* Lithuania’s prime minister on the predictability of Russia’s invasion
* A young Afghan woman on breaking free of the burqa
* Herman Narula on why the metaverse matters

THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962
Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to
prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.

There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible for
how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The mainstream
view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on
creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former Soviet Union. Thus, he
alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.

But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is principally
responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a
war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to
escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.

The trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April
2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to announce
that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders responded
immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to
Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr
Putin “flew into a rage” and warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so
without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America
ignored Moscow’s red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a
Western bulwark on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements:
bringing Ukraine closer to the eu and making it a pro-American democracy.

These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising
(which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian president,
Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from
Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of
eastern Ukraine.

The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the
current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member
of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration
decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as “defensive” is hardly
clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow
and its allies in the Donbas region. Other NATO countries got in on the act,
shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to

participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-
hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32

countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval
destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.

The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden
administration. This commitment is reflected throughout an important
document—the “us-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership”—that was signed
in November by Antony Blinken, America’s secretary of state, and Dmytro
Kuleba, his Ukrainian counterpart. The aim was to “underscore ... a commitment
to Ukraine’s implementation of the deep and comprehensive reforms necessary
for full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.” The document
explicitly builds on “the commitments made to strengthen the Ukraine-u.s.
strategic partnership by Presidents Zelensky and Biden,” and also emphasises
that the two countries will be guided by the “2008 Bucharest Summit
Declaration.”

Unsurprisingly, Moscow found this evolving situation intolerable and began
mobilising its army on Ukraine’s border last spring to signal its resolve to
Washington. But it had no effect, as the Biden administration continued to
move closer to Ukraine. This led Russia to precipitate a full-blown diplomatic
stand-off in December. As Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, put it: “We
reached our boiling point.” Russia demanded a written guarantee that Ukraine
would never become a part of NATO and that the alliance remove the military
assets it had deployed in eastern Europe since 1997. The subsequent
negotiations failed, as Mr Blinken made clear: “There is no change. There will be
no change.” A month later Mr Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine to
eliminate the threat he saw from NATO

This interpretation of events is at odds with the prevailing mantra in the West,
which portrays NATO expansion as irrelevant to the Ukraine crisis, blaming
instead Mr Putin’s expansionist goals. According to a recent NATO document
sent to Russian leaders, “NATO is a defensive Alliance and poses no threat to
Russia.” The available evidence contradicts these claims. For starters, the issue
at hand is not what Western leaders say NATO’s purpose or intentions are; it is
how Moscow sees NATO’s actions.

Mr Putin surely knows that the costs of conquering and occupying large
amounts of territory in eastern Europe would be prohibitive for Russia. As he
once put it, “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever
wants it back has no brain.” His beliefs about the tight bonds between Russia
and Ukraine notwithstanding, trying to take back all of Ukraine would be like
trying to swallow a porcupine. Furthermore, Russian policymakers—including
Mr Putin—have said hardly anything about conquering new territory to recreate
the Soviet Union or build a greater Russia. Rather, since the 2008 Bucharest
summit Russian leaders have repeatedly said that they view Ukraine joining
NATO as an existential threat that must be prevented. As Mr Lavrov noted in
January, “the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand
eastward.”

Tellingly, Western leaders rarely described Russia as a military threat to Europe
before 2014. As America’s former ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul notes,
Mr Putin’s seizure of Crimea was not planned for long; it was an impulsive move
in response to the coup that overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader. In fact,
until then, NATO expansion was aimed at turning all of Europe into a giant zone
of peace, not containing a dangerous Russia. Once the crisis started, however,
American and European policymakers could not admit they had provoked it by
trying to integrate Ukraine into the West. They declared the real source of the
problem was Russia’s revanchism and its desire to dominate if not conquer
Ukraine.

My story about the conflict’s causes should not be controversial, given that
many prominent American foreign-policy experts have warned against NATO
expansion since the late 1990s. America’s secretary of defence at the time of the
Bucharest summit, Robert Gates, recognised that “trying to bring Georgia and
Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching”. Indeed, at that summit, both the
German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy,
were opposed to moving forward on NATO membership for Ukraine because
they feared it would infuriate Russia.

The upshot of my interpretation is that we are in an extremely dangerous
situation, and Western policy is exacerbating these risks. For Russia’s leaders,
what happens in Ukraine has little to do with their imperial ambitions being
thwarted; it is about dealing with what they regard as a direct threat to Russia’s
future. Mr Putin may have misjudged Russia’s military capabilities, the
effectiveness of the Ukrainian resistance and the scope and speed of the
Western response, but one should never underestimate how ruthless great
powers can be when they believe they are in dire straits. America and its allies,
however, are doubling down, hoping to inflict a humiliating defeat on Mr Putin
and to maybe even trigger his removal. They are increasing aid to Ukraine while
using economic sanctions to inflict massive punishment on Russia, a step that
Putin now sees as “akin to a declaration of war”.

America and its allies may be able to prevent a Russian victory in Ukraine, but
the country will be gravely damaged, if not dismembered. Moreover, there is a
serious threat of escalation beyond Ukraine, not to mention the danger of
nuclear war. If the West not only thwarts Moscow on Ukraine’s battlefields, but
also does serious, lasting damage to Russia’s economy, it is in effect pushing a
great power to the brink. Mr Putin might then turn to nuclear weapons.
At this point it is impossible to know the terms on which this conflict will be
settled. But, if we do not understand its deep cause, we will be unable to end it
before Ukraine is wrecked and NATO ends up in a war with Russia.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of
Political Science at the University of Chicago.