Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "China is a Greater Threat than Russia | Prof. John Mearsheimer" video.

Mearsheimer is not a great geopolitical analyst. He's an ivory tower academic who disregards whatever doesn't fit in his realist school of international relations. He's also a putinist who moves in RT circles, either too dumb to realize he's being played, or simply paid off to low-key speak for Russian interests. The suffering of the poor Ukrainians is caused by Putin's imperial dreams and his ambition to be remembered as a great Russian Tsar. The war over Taiwan will similarly be launched by China due to president Xi's ambition to be remembered as a great Chinese emperor. In both cases, the West will have unsuccessfully tried to be unprovocative and kick the can down the road in the hope that Russia/China wouldn't be so callous and cruel as to devastate countless lives and even their own countries to grab the land of neighbors who don't want to belong to their empires. Again, the west will be unprepared, naive, with too little deterrence and too little weaponry to handle the conflicts. But regardless, guys like you will be convinced by your own propaganda that the war is the fault of the West.
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@jean-marcducommun8185 no, he's right. You can check what Mearsheimer says and who he collabs with. He's openly working with RT shoot-offs (The Duran and similar).
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@jakedee4117 they're not the same thing, but here they coincide. He's a traitor to both.
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@hansu7474 Russian propagandists obviously wants to be on reputable shows as well, as much as possible, but that he stoops to Russian propaganda channels and clearly plays along with their narratives is very telling. You don't have to accept as a fact that Mearsheimer is a Russian asset, but anyone with any sense would agree that it's fairly plausible that he is! Saying it's the most silly comment in 2023 that Mearsheimer is in the pay of Russia, like Jean-Marc Ducommun did above, that's just plain nonsense. It's not silly, it's at least plausible.
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@yaoliang1580 if you do your own research, you have had a lot of bad luck when doing it. Better luck in 2024!
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South Korean, German and Japanese democracies seem pretty good and prosperous. But Russia, Iran et al has become increasingly adept in thwarting US ambitions to help other nations. Also, I guess muslim countries are especially difficult to civilize as a lot of them are religiously and tribally opposed to democracy.
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We didn't understand either, that's why we failed to deter its latest aggression. But sadly, the Russian Empire still is what it is.
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@henrylicious Russia is hurting quite a bit economically, but they pretend not to. "The U.S. supplying arms to Ukraine" It didn't. "and welching on the Minsk accords was seen as aggression by Putin." Putin himself welched on the Minsk accords. That was the primary blocker. "Much as when the USSR put nukes in Cuba it was seen as aggression by the u.s." No, that's nowhere near close to this situation. The US hadn't put squat in Ukraine and wasn't going to. The US had withdrawn extreme amounts of forces from Europe since the end of the cold war. "No matter the outcome of this war Ukraine will unfortunately be wrecked." And fortunately Russia too. But Ukraine's national identity and ambitions to join the west is now being forged in blood. "This will also make other countries think twice about cooperation with the U.S." You mean like Finland and Sweden? Stop being delusional.
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@jurgeeen you're at least interesting compared to the vanilla pro-Russian voices I meet, but quite a bit more extreme. So it seems you're an anti-democrat, anti-western ultra-nationalist from Donbass, but you've fled to Japan to avoid being mobilized for Russia's meat wave assaults? You posted your first of the last two comment 16 minutes after mine, so either you cut-n-pasted that from an earlier discussion or you're far faster than I am. I now need to make up my mind if I'm going to spend hours contesting your points in detail, or what. I think I'll have to try to be a bit more brief and abstract to keep it under one hour: First of all, I fully agree that Putin "has done for the advancement of American imperialism and elimination of Russian influence more than any other world's top politician in the last 2 decades". His invasion in 2022 was the strategic mistake of the century. Yet I stand by my comments on imperial ambitions and Tsar, and it seems to me that you're dismissing that from the position of various grievances regarding Putin based on your own extremism. It's true that Putin is very careful, which is why it took him 8 years to build up to massive advantages before he felt confident in his ability to capture Ukraine and get away with it. It's also true that he seems influenced by e.g. Dugin, it's true that he has annexed the contested territories including Kherson and Zaporozhia that he doesn't control. His various remarks and speeches do indicate that he wants the Russian Empire to reassert itself. His negotiation bids before the war included a full rollback of NATO to 1992 borders, leaving e.g. the Baltics open for attack. I will just briefly mention that I don't think your characterizations of the 2014-2015 Donbass war are correct; although you know many details, you forge them into an overall picture of ultranationalist self-promotion and grievances, but in reality, the war was Russia-led and did what it could given Putin's perception of his strength at the time (military and geopolitical). Also, Zelensky was elected to make peace with Russia, so if Putin had wanted what you claim he wanted - neutrality, a recognized Russian Crimea but Donbass given back, then he could have achieved exactly that by just sitting down with Zelensky. But Putin had prepared for this war for 7 years and he had far bigger ambitions, so he basically ignored Zelensky. Putin not only wanted to control Ukraine, he also wanted to shatter NATO. The 2014 Revolution of Dignity as the culmination of Euromaidan was not US-organized. Yes, of course the US helped coach it a bit, anything else would've been dereliction of duty, but it wasn't something the US set up. Regarding what happened in Feb 2022, it seems to me that you have much of the info but draw the wrong conclusions. The inclusion of Rosgvardia is evidence that Putin expected to occupy Kiev and police it. You claim that he "deliberately did not eliminate" the Ukrainian government, but the fact is that several assassination squads had been planted and tried to get to e.g. Zelensky, and Putin's security apparatus had tried to bribe lots of Ukrainian officials to give up (but ironically, Russia is so corrupt that a lot of the bribery money was embezzled before reaching Ukrainian officials). He expected top Ukraine leaders to fold, be assassinated or flee the country. He expected Kiev to fall. Your assumption that he wanted to give back LDPR seems like an ultranationalist distrust fantasy to me - he annexed these territories and very likely planned to do that all along, and he planned to install a Russian viceroy in Ukraine, similar in vassal status (or even weaker) to Lukashenko. And he planned to get this Ukrainian vassal state to agree to the annexation of Donbass and Crimea into Russia, so as to make their status recognized by international law.
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@Kavala76 he's delusional or traitorious when he e.g. claims that Russia and Putin are honest about their intentions and motivations.
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So you're a traitor and you don't care at all for democracy?
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Are you a muslim?
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@Ye_fan. it seems the enlightenment values and the capitalism/democracy combo provide the best outcomes, but the jury is still out if China has a viable or better alternative. The arab world doesn't and that's why its not ahead any more. Communism was clearly worse, and Russia's FSB-ruled oligarchy is also worse. Regardless, I responded to the claim "USA has been leaving behind death, poverty, and decay wherever it intervenes" and that was clearly not true. Where countries have accepted US intervention, it's resulted in prosperity and progress.
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@Ye_fan. you sound like a pretty fervent nationalist, and usually part of that is viewing ones own history in a very positive light. But what you say may well be true, and I have no problem with that. I don't think any region should have a monopoly on neither enlightenment values, nor democracy, nor capitalism, rather it's good if they spread organically across the world from whatever sources it can. Sadly China is now authoritarian and seems to be preparing to lash out militarily under its aging president who, like Putin, abolished the limited terms so that he can rule for life. This is worrying, obviously. Unlike Mearsheimer, I think democratic peace theory has a lot going for it.
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@Ye_fan. good for you. So what's the better system, mainland China or Taiwan? Is a one-China policy important and if so, why?
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@Ye_fan. I'm asking you, what do you think? Is democracy or a one-party state with a strong leader better? Does the mainland suffer from not controlling "the entire Western Pacific" today? What are you lacking?
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No, he doesn't. He's an ivory tower academic who disregards the parts of reality that doesn't fit with the realist school of international relations. At best. At worst he's a paid putinist.
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@timmysmith9991 no, he's right. It seems Mearsheimer really is paid by Russia.
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@jakedee4117 the conclusion is informative and valuable as it saves considerable time and effort to identify frauds and stop listening to them, and instead put the limited time into listening to decent people.
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@hansu7474 you can't take a random narrow viewpoint of Mearsheimer and say others have agreed, so therefore Mearsheimer is not a Russian asset. Mearsheimer is a plausible Russian asset because he broadly validates Russian narratives, says Putin is a straight shooter, tries to trick us that Ukraine doesn't mean much to us and so forth. Plus his regular participation on Russian propaganda outlets.
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@jean-marcducommun8185 Russia isn't a superpower and the US isn't an adversary if you behave reasonably. Also NATO is already in the Baltics which is super close to both St Petersburg and Moscow. Stop making excuses for the Russian Empire and its genocidal expansionism.
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@henrylicious its funny how the only thing you putinists have to cry about is a cute legend of a flying ace from the very early days of the war. Meanwhile, the Russian propaganda channels and their staff, including your favorite Kremlin actors, Donbass Doug and Ritter the Diddler, are part of a firehose of falsehood.
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@jean-marcducommun8185 I don't refuse the logic. On a very high level of abstraction, I'm in agreement with Mearsheimer: Russia wanted to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, and when it could not, it started a war to force it back into that sphere. I agree that Ukraine exiting Russia's sphere of influence was a red line for Putin. I agree that if the West had shunned Ukraine and managed to push it back into the arms of Russia, Putin wouldn't have started this war. However, I don't agree with many particulars of Mearsheimer's analysis. The NATO framing is designed to justify Russia's actions by painting it as a victim of a military threat that it just had to handle. That's simply not true. It's not NATO membership but EU membership that was the problem. The Revolution of Dignity in 2014 was the culmination of Euromaidan, not of NATOmaidan. There was never a military threat to Russia from Ukraine. The threat was existential because Russia and Ukraine had such strong ties through families and language that if Ukraine democratized successfully, de-corrupted its institutions and business environment witn EU assistance, and its economy started expanding like Poland's, then Russians would notice! They would realize that they deserve the same! I could argue at length for why Russia didn't consider the West, nor Ukraine, a military threat, mostly due to the extremely lowered force posture of US and NATO, partly due to Russia wielding extreme amounts of nukes and artillery, and partly due to Putin's obvious disdain for the weakness of the West. So, the Kremlin simply wanted Ukraine to stay a poor vassal state like Belarus. It wants to keep 44 million foreigners oppressed, poor and corrupt to keep funneling power and glory to the centre of the Russian Empire, and even more importantly, to not outshine it in any way. The Soviet elite, Gorbachev et al, were ideologues but when they realized their system was inferior, they said "enough" and let it fall. The current siloviki, however, they aren't ideologues, they also realize their system is inferior, but they're mafia, so they don't say "enough", rather they double down and try to corrupt whatever they can. Now, the US and the West saw the issues and understood the Kremlin to some degree in 2014, but when 44 million Europeans want to go democratic and want to join, do you say no? Of course not, you say "welcome" and see where it leads. Obviously the West was naive in not preparing for this conflict, but in no way did the US want this war, and the putinist claim that there would have been a peace deal but for Boris Johnson's interference is baseless. You believe the US saw an opportunity to weaken Russia, but at the same time you think the US has made a cardinal strategic error and you claim that you couldn't imagine a dumber foreign policy. This indicates that you think you're far smarter than western governments' geostrategic planners. Isn't that a bit of hubris?
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@jean-marcducommun8185 sadly, it's very hard for people to see the underlying motives and mechanics of global affairs. The information environment is polluted by Russian and other dictators' propaganda, reinforced and primed by both leftist anti-americanism a la Chomsky and rightist distrust and conspiracy theories regarding the deep state and similar. Thus what "most countries on Earth" think isn't compelling. It's important to be flexible and able to change your mind even at an advanced age. Beware of ingrained biases making you pick up on reasons to distrust, and ask yourself who is served by such distrust in our democratic institutions. When the Western democratic politicians more or less unanimously support Ukraine and even Sweden and Finland opt to join NATO, could you be a bit off the mark? Please consider if it's not better to err on the side of supporting democracies rather than on the side of supporting dictatorships.
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@YTStopCensoringFreedomOfspeech Putin wasn't ready to grab Ukraine in 2014-2015, so he froze the conflict with the Minsk accords that he then refused to implement. Putin also wanted far more than Ukraine not to join NATO, he wanted NATO to roll back to 1992 borders. Putin also already had his wish, because Ukraine couldn't join NATO, and NATO refused to give Ukraine any serious offensive weaponry. Russia's invasion of Ukraine was disastrous for both economies, yet Putin did it, and Xi will do the same in the case of Taiwan. China is very much preparing for conflict. It's constantly building up its forces with capabilities to grab Taiwan, and it infringes on the sovereign rights of all countries around the South China sea, essentially pretending all of it is China's. Of course disrupting the growth of China doesn't benefit the US economically. The US would keep on trading fully with China if China just played by the rules and didn't threaten Taiwan and keep North Korea as a strategic ally against South Korea. "But because US is misbehaving. Sanctions, arresting corporate CFOs, using the US Dollar as a weapon." This is not misbehaving, this is policing in an anarchic system that needs the hegemon to police things. Corporate CFOs who doesn't misbehave won't be arrested. "These are all mafia like business moves." It's not, it's justified. US interference heavily reduced e.g. global corruption as it forces companies to adhere to rules. "Nobody wants to do business with the mafia. This is common sense." Dictatorships that run mafia states don't want to do business with the police, that's right. "The rise of BRICS is not to overthrow the US." There's no "rise of" BRICS. BRICS is pathetic and there's little cohesion. NATO alone comprises close to 50% of global GDP and then we could add Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and more. "It's to allow business to continue as usual because the US defense industry is out of control." In no way it's out of control. Investments in the US defense industry and e.g. US ammo stockpiles have clearly been too low as we can't adequately supply Ukraine. "It's a war industry that has too much power in the US and doesn't understand anything other than to attack." That's nonsense. The US since Obama forward tries to avoid conflict and really tried to avoid the Ukraine conflict and when Putin launched it, the US was unprepared to handle it and still doesn't have enough ammo production. E.g. fairly many HIMARS launchers but precious little ammo for them.
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@yaoliang1580 sure, but which propaganda goes best with peanuts? Would you say that you get your views from Russian propaganda or from Chinese propaganda? In what country do you live?
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@andrewwotherspoona5722 Russia is governed by the FSB which is a hybrid brutal security service and mafia. How do we get the FSB to relinquish power to such a democratic project?
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@finishingsolutions2851 such a pointless ad hominem, just adding random noise with no value. Make a case for how I'm wrong instead.
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@@razmaz yeah, he got scolded by the Russian establishment, because their best bet is to try to move US focus to China. He risked losing the sponsorship of the Kremlin.
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@yaoliang1580 you completely misread western intentions, probably because you want to. Democracies really, really want to avoid major wars like the current Ukraine war. They always try to kick the can down the road and they really tried to avoid provoking Putin. The invasion of Taiwan will happen on Xi's timetable and the US will again only try to stall and buy time.
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@jurgeeen another pointless remark, just adding random noise with no value. Make a case for how I'm wrong instead.
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@henrylicious not always, but there's no comparison between the firehose of lies that is the Russian propaganda and a democratic nation's statements.
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@Kavala76 I've seen a lot of Mearsheimer interviews and won't try to find the right ones now, but he's claimed Putin is a straight shooter and often claims that the Russians "made very clear" this and that, and that this is somehow proof of what motivated them to start this horrible war of imperialist expansion. He essentially seems to take Putin's word for it, again and again.
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Today, China has 4.5x the working-age population of the US. In 2050, it'll be 3.5x. In 2100, it will be close to 1x (yes, really). China is facing a demographic collapse of epic proportions. The US doesn't particularly need to pivot to Asia, it needs to both re-contain Russia and deter China from starting a WW3. The primary danger is Xi's intention to re-annex Taiwan, but if he can be dissuaded, then time works in favor of the US. Mearsheimer is a putinist that speaks for the interests of Russia.
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@spartanthe300ththermopylae4 it has tried to support and safeguard democracy and freedom in all those regions, plus e.g. Europe and Japan.
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