Ukraine/Russia and "offensive realists" like John Mearsheimer

[Zinneke]

Academic tunnel vision, believing that states act in international models to the tune of "laws of IR" in the same way planets obey the laws of physics in the solar system. This is why any IR "grand theory" that proclaims itself to hold the keys to understand how a system as complex, and crucially as open, as that of International Relations, needs to be retired. That's not to say we shouldn't look for frameworks of undestanding - but it does mean that we should recognize they evolve.

Incidentally (and Al put the following into better words than I can on AAD), it is becoming tiresome this way some people are now justifying Russia's actions as part of the laws of geopolitics and that that somehow makes it acceptable. Values do matter. What the Ukrainian people think does matter. Denying this enters Putin's world view, which we are fast seeing is nigh-on apocalyptic.