Comments by "Sean Cidy" (@seancidy6008) on "Why did experts fail to predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine?" video.

  1. In 1994 Mearsheimer published an article in which he opined that Ukraine would need their own nuclear deterrent to Russia. You can judge for yourself how 'pro Russian' his' nonsense' analyses was
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  2.  @duncansmith7576  Nah, Russia lacks the technology to even properly exploit its own oil and shale reserves. The massive investment required to develop a lithium mining industry is completely beyond Russia
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  3.  @antimatters6283  Almost three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later RUSSIA is doubling down and it seems to me the considerations Mearsheimer has been talking about for decades explain why. How does Anders explain what Russia is doing?
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  4. Halford Mackinder was irrational? Zbigniew Brzezinski was irrational? They thought control of Ukraine was vital.
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  5.  @worldpeace1822  No, the US has VAST stocks of Abrams tanks and every other sort of thing Ukraine wants. An order of magnitude more that Ukraine has been given would be no problem if Washington really wanted to defeat Russia in Ukraine. But it doesn't..
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  6.  @Pnaraasi94  Mearsheimer has an explanation why almost three years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, Russia is going for broke in Ukraine. Not clear that Anders can explain that.
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  7. An event is best characterized by how it ends. Ukraine started well ....
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  8.  @BellaMcMill  Anders has a point about 2022, but now two years later Russia's effort in Ukraine is almost total. I think there is more than some caprice of Putin driving it.
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  9.  @Luke-pp2lw  No, he just thinks they are too big for Ukraine and says so.
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  10. He is a naval guy and this is a Makinder war
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  11. Mearsheimer would say that be they fascst or democratic arrangements of domestic politics do not matter much for a state's foreign policy . The attitude of Russia toward Ukraine has not changed in hundreds of years
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  12.  @antimatters6283  Which country's leaders ignored Mearsheimer, took money from the West and put it in their personal Swiss bank accounts to leave their country dependent on empty promises from Nato? Not Russia. If the Ukrainians had listened to Professor Mearsheimer there would not have been an invasion of Ukraine. It really is a bit much to BLAME him for a war he tried to prevent.
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  13.  @williamrobin2638  I don't think that Mearsheimer failing to predict the decision of Putin as an individual to go ahead with the invasion he had prepared invalidates Mearshemer's theory about states.
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  14.  @morongovalley940  Mearsheimer has not influenced Russian policy. Or US policy. He has tried to explain Russian actions in Ukraine and the Kremlins determination to not lose there as something other than a outbreak of mass insanity. Russia has came in handy for fighting Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. In all likelihood they could be an ally against a future mega power China, as long as Russians don't see the West as the enemy that defeated them in Ukraine. Using Ukraine to indirectly inflict a total defeat on the Russian invasion and force their withdrawal would be great for Ukraine, but not so great for Europe in the final analysis. Europe is a fading backwater in the eyes of America you know; yet Europe is still a very valuable ally.
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  15.  @magikclown  I don't think Washington wants Russia to really lose in Ukraine.
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  16.  @pRahvi0  Mearsheimer is extremely controversial among international relations academics. He always has been.
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  17. Mistakes have been made by everyone. But the biggest one of all was made by Zelensky, who did not believe Putin would go through with it until Russian tanks were revving up across the border.
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  18.  @namesurname2205  Could you expand on that please?
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  19.  @arildsther2626  Mearsheimer's military analysis is basically the big battalions win, and the invasion force was small for a full on invasion. Every military expert said the force was too small. So Mearsheimer may have been influenced by that. He apparently thought it was a bluff ploy build up to exert pressure. (as did Zelensky). One thing that ought to have been considered by Mearshiemer is the the preceding Russian build up amassed huge artillery ammunition dumps near Ukraine, which remained in place and were added to. So if you looked at artillery there was a logistical basis.
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  20. Not much geopolitical analysis of how Putin saw Ukraine as anything but a victim:. 'Putin assumed Ukraine was a politically weak state that would give in under pressure from great power Russia and when it didn't he underestimated it militarily and attacked it'. The use of force had nothing to do with the fact that Ukraine had an official NATO decision that it was at some point in the future going to become a full member of NATO, which was reiterated ever year since 2008? As a Russian leader Putin was wrong to believe the NATO announcements and act to permanently forestall them? Putin had tried pressure, hybrid war/ annexation/ undercover invasion by whole battalion tactical groups by 2015 and still failed to achieve his key objective of ensuring Ukraine could never join NATO. We don't actually know that Putin was certain an invasion of Ukraine would be easy by 2022, when Ukraine had improved its capabilities and had already got some military understandings with and support from the US and other Nato countries. We do know he ordered a full scale invasion in 2022 and it did not work at all well. Prediction requires understanding of the motivation of possible actions, not assuming they were some sort of caprice.
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  21. ​ @thomasbaader6629  Hodges was so right at the very begining about the invasion not working, but since then he has been completely unrealistic about the big picture. Like all these guys he has been conditioned to see the Russians as the main threat. They are not and moreover will be needed as allies against a future mega power China. Trouncing Russia using Ukraine as a cat's paw would be relatively easy, but counterproductive in the long term
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  22. Hodges was uniquely prescient about the invasion, but Washington is thinking a few moves ahead.
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  23.  @maritaschweizer1117  In 1994 Mearsheimer published an article told the Ukrainians the would need their own nuclear deterrent to Russian bullying. So the Ukrainians ignored him and you can judge for yourself how good his analyses was . Putin is now using an army three times large to take a fraction of Ukraine.
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  24. He was extremely controversial on Israel long before Ukraine hit the headlines.
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  25. My impression is he is saying Russia will win and the Washington establishment have come to understand that now although it is still a publicly unspoken understanding. The forces Putin had poised on the border in 2022 were totally inadequate for what Putin seemed to expect them to achieve. Now he is using mass effect for lesser objectives
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  26. The original invasion was a mistake by Putin, and badly organised in keeping with that supreme leadership without delegating style. But in 2024 you have to say the Russian effort is quite methodical and coordinated. This is the Russians as a group we are seeing now, not a capacious individual. The Russian Federation as a state is what Mearsheimer's theory would try to explain foreign policy continuities in
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  27. Professor Jonathan Haslam, author of a large book on the subject says Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were the main NATO members insisting peace would be secured by Ukraine becoming a full member of NATO, but Denmark was the foremost advocate for Ukrainian membership of NAT0 among West European countries, and it pushed hard for military cooperation with Ukraine in peacekeeping operations all over the globe to qualify it as a NATO partner. What the Russians might think was behind all this was not much considered. The suspicion was mutual nevertheless; as Mearsheimer says countries can never be certain of each others intentions, or of what those intentions might become.
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  28.  @oliversissonphone6143  Zelensky didn't think Russia was actually going to do it.
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  29. There had been a war in Donbass since Russia invaded in 2014.
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  30. Mearsheimer had no influence on the diplomacy and knew less than Biden; US intel very successfully predicted the Russian invasion before it happened. The problem was that America could warn the Kremlin not to, but not prevent the Russians from following through with putting their invasion plan into action regardless. Mearsheimer has an explanation why the Russians were so determined in early 2022. And almost three years and hundreds of thousands of dead Russians later they still are determined, for reasons that are nothing to do with Mearsheimer trying to explain and comment on the war..
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  31.  @evgeniya7853  Mearsheimer said if Ukraine had been admitted to NATO as a full member then Putin would not have invaded Ukraine. But Mearsheimer is not infallible, he may have been proved wrong about that too
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  32. He told them in 1994 they needed a nuclear deterrent against Russia. Wasn't wrong.
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  33.  @olenmees9150  It was not Mearsheimer who told Ukrainian politicians to renounce nuclear weapons, quite the opposite. The Germans and Americans paid Ukrainian officials off in 1994.
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  34.  @StunBuns  It was not mrely giving back Siviet nukes to Russia. Ukraine renounced building their own nukes, which they had the expertise and resources to do. In 1994 Mearshimer said it was was terrible idea for Ukraine to not have an independent nuclear deterrent to a Russian invasion and Mearsheimer was right. The West paid off Ukrainian politicians to agree Ukraine would never have its own nukes.
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  35.  @steemlenn8797  He, and virtually only he, already has the credit for saying Ukraine needed its own nuclear weapons. He said that thirty years ago.
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  36. I think we ought to remember that Zelensky won election with a platform that gave Putin hope he could attain all his objectives. Zelensky seemed about to give the Donbass a veto over whether Ukraine could join NATO. Then he did a U turn, got and used more advanced weapons, then ordered the arrest of a Ukrainian oligarch who was a major Russian language media magnate in Ukraine and who Putin was a personal friend of Putin. Yet Zelensky did not realise Putin was serious about the invasion: up until a week or so before it he was telling the US to stop warning about it because it was affecting tourism.
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  37. Published in Feb 2022 is different to written then. I think we ought to remember that Zelensky won election with a platform that gave Putin hope he could attain all his objectives. Zelensky seemed about to give the Donbass a veto over whether Ukraine could join NATO. Then he did a U turn, got and used more advanced weapons, then ordered the arrest of a Ukrainian oligarch who was a major Russian language media magnate in Ukraine and who Putin was a personal friend of . Yet even Zelesnsky did not relies Putin was serious about the invasion up until a week or so before it he was telling the US to stop warning about it because it was affecting tourism. Mearsheimer has been right about the trouble Russia would have invading Ukraine. What neither Zelensky or Mearsheimer or those who for the last two years thought Putin might order a withdrawal failed to understand is how intent Putin is on wrecking Ukraine irrespective of the cost. People say the Ukrainians care more than the Russians about the war. I think they both, in a great many cases, care enough to die.
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  38. The thing is Putin is following through with his initial decision. Russia is going to go right on to the bitter end, come what may. So what does Anders think is the explanation for the war having lasted getting on for thee years and Russia still showing no signs of stopping?
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  39.  @MN092krjsj  Yes. And getting on for three years later Russia is still fighting harder and herder in Ukraine despite hundreds of thousands of casualties. Why?
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  40.  @ericp1139  Anders is a member of the Danish Armed Forces, not the RusFed's.
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  41. Putin does seem to have greatly underestimated Ukrainian resistance in 2022, but Zelensky greatly underestimated the degree to which Putin was serious about an invasion. Anyway we are now in 2024 and it is clear Putin ain't bouncin' cause he's a GANGSTA
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  42. Yes, yet he is still at it and amping ever more up to fight it. Maybe he thinks it is worth any price.
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  43. Anders is right that Ukraine would win if only the West gave them proper backing but the strategists in Washington are not trying to really defeat Russia in Ukraine, They want the Kremlin to become discouraged and quit Ukraine. Russia has to stand alone after this war ends because it is going to be needed as part of a US led alliance of Germany Britain Japan India over against a future mega power China as predicted by Mearsheimer. Russia getting trounced in Ukraine might make it permanently alienated from the West.
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  44. Mearsheimer is getting on for eighty years old, and his theories are about states and as he himself always cautions are simplifications of reality, yet I think he has been remarkably prescient about the geopolitical realities. He predicted over thirty years ago, that Russia would bully Ukraine unless Ukraine had an independent nuclear deterrent (to any invasion by Russia obviously).No one not even Putin could have predicted in 1994 what Russia would be doing 30 years later but Mearsheimer did. He also assumed in 2022 that Putin would not invade Ukraine because surely Putin understood his forces would incur very heavy losses trying to hold Ukraine down. The 2022 invasion was a failure of comprehension by Mearsheimer about another individual's assessment of the feasibility of conquering and holding down Ukraine, yet his analysis of the Russian state's policy toward Ukraine was not wrong. The current amped up Russia offensive in Ukraine is being done despite the heavy cost being understood. So the Russian effort in 2024 is not just a mistaken personal belief by Putin that Ukraine is low hanging fruit. The Kremlin now understand the cost is huge and still climbing but thinks it is worth it for Russia's strategic security. The Kaiser vetoed an attack on Russia in 1905, which Mearsheimer admits is out f line with his theory.
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  45. But there is a continuity in Russian policy toward Ukraine going back to the Tsarist regieme. The Kremlin was shocked at the losses initially but persisted and currently is not being put off by huge and mounting casualties beyond anything they dreamt of at the start of the invasion. There is an ineluctable logic behind Russian policy that surely stems from geostrategic considerations rather than Putin's particular psychology. Germany fought two world wars against almost exactly the same opponents, even though in WW2 the systems were totally different in both Germany and Russia that they had been in WW1. Hitler single handedly ordered WW1, but the Kaiser was hardly informed of the decision to go to war in 1914. Ukraine is a bit like the FinnoRussia war in which Britain and French were aiding the Finns and nearly directly fighting, Russia. But the real war was to come and Russia was needed to win it. Russia will be needed to deal with China down the road.
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