Why did Putin invade Ukraine? It's not what you think.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Ah so this war was caused by NATO. So NATO is why Putin put out on the eve of the war an 800 worded bowel movement going on about how Russians and Ukrainians are actually one ethnicity. NATO is why Russia kidnapped Ukrainian children and deported them to Russia and those who got returned reported that they’re sent to foster homes that tell them that the Ukrainian language and identity is fake and beat them into submission. NATO is why there are over a hundred cases of Ukrainian rescued pows who were found to of been castrated so “they couldn’t reproduce”. All this time I thought these and other examples showed this war was about a Russia pan-Slavic version of blood and soil. It turns out it’s actually because the nation with one of the world’s biggest nuclear deterrents legitimately thought an alliance made of nations with many who were economically dependent on Russian gas was going to invade them

[Hindsight was 2020]

You can tell how upset Russia is about NATO by the fact they never mention it to their domestic audience when they’re trying to justify the war.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Russia was the one actually shelling the Donbas for 8 years as seen by Russia’s own propaganda that highlighted how safe the Russia controlled parts of the Donbas was but don’t let facts get in the way of your narrative Serg

[Hindsight was 2020]

Guys did you know Serg knows people from the Donbas that are totally not made up and validate all here fascist pro Russia takes?

[Hindsight was 2020]

I think Mearsheimer isn’t deranged - he’s just trying to protect his legacy. Academics who reach a certain age can no longer afford to be wrong and maintain credibility, so he has to defend his earlier theses to the death (even disingenuously) or risk massive loss of relevance. Like many before him, he’s chosen influence over dignity.

Most academics/intellectuals are no better than the average person on the street at predicting future political events:

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” (Princeton; $35), that people who make prediction their business—people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no better than the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just because they made a mistake. No one is paying you for your gratuitous opinions about other people, but the experts are being paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/12/05/everybodys-an-expert

Mearsheimer just can't admit, "yeah, Russia has an irrational genocidal bloodlust against Ukraine"...must be muh intellectual reasons for it

I think you’re even giving Mearsheimer too much credit. His fans love to say the reason his Russian/NATO arguments are hated by DC geopolitical insiders is due to speaking hard truths to the system but it’s actually because after Euromaidan the Obama administration reached out to Mearsheimer on suggestions on what to do and implemented his ideas about placating Putin’s interests in the region and all it resulted in was taking Crimea and then the Donbas. An funny enough Mearsheimer completely omits these facts whenever he writes about his NATO theories

[Hindsight was 2020]

No one is falling for this fake bit Hermit

[Hindsight was 2020]

For anyone interested this is a great vid I found months ago that does a great job going into the NATO argument and debunking it’s flaws

[Hindsight was 2020]

No one is falling for this fake bit Hermit

Well, it's my opinion after reading the posts here (and other information elsewhere.) You can call it fake all you want, doesn't change a thing.

Kinda hard to take the claims of legitimacy seriously when you never engage in any of the legitimate criticisms of Mearsheimer‘s claims or any pro-Ukraine arguments despite you acting like you’re independently minded on the issue