John Mearsheimer on Putin’s Ambitions After Nine Months of War

“What motivates him is fear of Ukraine becoming a part of NATO,” John Mearsheimer says, of Vladimir Putin.Photograph by Grigory Sysoyev / Sputnik / AFP / Getty

Back in February, a few days after Russia launched its war in Ukraine, I spoke with the political scientist John Mearsheimer. A longtime observer of U.S. foreign policy—on which he has tended to cast a skeptical eye—Mearsheimer largely blamed Putin’s invasion on the West, arguing that, by expanding nato, the West had cornered Russia, and made a conflict with Ukraine much more likely. Mearsheimer, a dedicated realist, had been making a version of this argument for some time. In 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea and offered support to separatists in Eastern Ukraine, Mearsheimer said that it was predominantly the fault of Europe and the United States. This June, a couple of months after our first conversation, against the backdrop of a war that was dragging on with increasing brutality, Mearsheimer said in a speech, “The United States is principally responsible for causing the Ukraine crisis.”

Recently, Mearsheimer and I spoke by phone again. He had just returned from a trip to Hungary, where he met with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, an ally of Putin. (Mearsheimer is the author of multiple books, perhaps most famously “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” which he co-wrote with Stephen Walt.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why he thinks Putin told the truth about his motives for invading Ukraine, why he doesn’t believe Putin is trying to recreate the Russian imperial era, and why he doesn’t want to discuss his meeting with Orbán.

How was the Hungary trip?

It was actually fascinating. I learned a great deal. I was there for five days, Monday to Friday. I had a three-hour meeting with Viktor Orbán.

I’ve heard of him.

Yeah. And I had a one-hour meeting with the President of Hungary.

Let’s just start with other stuff, and then I can ask you about that. Since the last time we talked, what in your view has changed or stayed the same about the way you see the war in Ukraine?

It has become clear that the Russians are having difficulties defeating the Ukrainians, in ways that most people didn’t anticipate back when we first talked. What also changed is that the war has escalated and the Russians are behaving more ruthlessly towards the Ukrainians than they were initially. That the Russians are now tearing apart the electric grid, which is causing immense human suffering and doing grave economic damage to Ukraine, is evidence of this.

Why do you think the Russians are being so brutal?

I think the Russians want to win the war, and to win the war you invariably look for ways to escalate, to gain advantage over the other side.

What do you think a Russian victory looks like to the Russians at this point?

I think their goal is to conquer and control those four oblasts that they have annexed, and to make sure that the Ukrainian rump state that is left is neutral and is not associated with nato in any formal or informal way.

When we last talked, you told me, “My argument is that [Putin is] not going to re-create the Soviet Union or try to build a greater Russia, that he’s not interested in conquering and integrating Ukraine into Russia. It’s very important to understand that we invented this story that Putin is highly aggressive and he’s principally responsible for this crisis in Ukraine.” How do you think that argument holds up?

I think it’s still true. What we were talking about back in February was whether or not he was interested in conquering all of Ukraine, occupying it, and then integrating into a greater Russia. And I do not think he’s interested in doing that now. What he is interested in doing now that he was not interested in doing when we talked is integrating those four oblasts in the eastern part of Ukraine into Russia. I think there’s no question that his goals have escalated since the war started on February 24th, but not to the point where he’s interested in conquering all of Ukraine. But he is interested for sure in conquering a part of Ukraine and incorporating that part into Russia.

Given that he is interested in integrating into Russia the parts of Ukraine that he’s conquered successfully, does that suggest that if the war had gone better for him and he’d been able to conquer more of Ukraine that he would’ve been interested in integrating those parts too?

It’s possible. It’s hard to say. I think he probably would’ve gone to Odesa and incorporated all of Ukraine that runs along the Black Sea up to Odesa into Russia. Whether he would’ve gone beyond that, it’s hard to say.

There was a recent article in the Times about the liberation of Kherson. In occupied Kherson, students were forced to sing the Russian national anthem. Bills had to be paid in rubles. You could be arrested for speaking Ukrainian. Students were even told that they were Russian, not Ukrainian. It seems that he is very interested in incorporating these areas.

I think that’s true. He said that Kherson is one of the four oblasts that is now part of Russia. The Russians, in fact, have annexed it. They don’t control all of it. They certainly don’t control the city of Kherson today, but they have said that they’re going to come back and take it.

You also said to me, back in February, “The argument that the foreign-policy establishment in the United States, and in the West more generally, has invented revolves around the claim that [Putin] is interested in creating a greater Russia.” Do you think that that’s something he’s more interested in now?

No, I’ve thought from the beginning that this conflict is all about balance-of-power politics. The conventional wisdom in the United States is that it’s not about balance-of-power politics, and, in fact, Putin is an imperialist who is interested in conquering Ukraine for the purpose of making it part of a greater Russia. I don’t think that is the case. I don’t think he had or has imperial ambitions. What motivates him is fear of Ukraine becoming a part of nato.

Do you think there’s a reason Putin himself has been talking about this in terms of imperial ambitions? He talked about Peter the Great. “What was [Peter] doing?” Putin asked. “Taking back and reinforcing. That’s what he did.” He then said, “And it looks like it fell on us to take back and reinforce as well,” in terms of returning land to Russia. How do you view those comments?

He did not make any comments of those sorts before February 24th. And the only such comment he has made since February 24th is the Peter the Great comment. I don’t think that’s indicative that he is interested in conquering all of Ukraine and making it part of the greater Russia. He has never said that. What he’s interested in doing is conquering those four oblasts in the eastern part of Ukraine. And he was not interested in conquering those four oblasts before the war started. It was only after the war started.

We know that?

Yes.

Oh, O.K.

There’s no evidence that he was interested in conquering those four oblasts. The war started on February 24th. On February 21st, he gave a famous speech—this is three days before the war started—where he recognized the two oblasts in the Donbas. This is Donetsk and Lugansk. He recognized them as independent republics. So he was not interested in conquering that territory.

He was forced into invading them?

Well, I think that what happened was, on February 24th, they invaded Ukraine. And what invariably happens when a war starts is that not only do goals escalate but the means of waging the war escalate. In terms of the goals escalating, what happened here was he decided at some point that these four oblasts would become part of Russia.

There was an argument about what Putin’s aims were, whether they were primarily imperial—about taking more land and integrating it into Russia—or whether they were about nato expansion. And then the war starts, and, at least in the areas that he’s conquered, he seems to be pursuing the former goal. It feels a little unprovable to say, well, he’s only doing that now, not because the people saying so initially were right.

Well, first of all, there’s no evidence that he had imperial ambitions before the war. He would have had to say that it was desirable. There would have to be evidence that he had said that it was desirable to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. There would have to be evidence that he had said it was feasible. And there would have to be evidence that he had said that that was what he was doing. And there is no evidence to support any of those.

Why would him saying one thing or the other before the war count as evidence necessarily?

Well—

Russia meddled in the 2016 Presidential election, but Putin says they didn’t. So what does that prove or not?

All we can do is base our judgment on what his intentions were on the available evidence.

So, not on what happened but what he said before the war?

Yes. It may be that thirty years from now we unlock the archives and discover that there is massive evidence that he was an imperialist at heart. That is possible, but we do not have any evidence of that sort at this point in time. We have a huge amount of evidence that it was nato expansion and the more general policy of making Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia’s border that motivated him to attack on February 24th.

He has said that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. He said that before the war.

He said that in a famous article that he wrote on July 12, 2021. But in that same article, he made it very clear that he recognized Ukrainian nationalism, that he recognized that Ukraine was a sovereign state. There is no evidence in there that he was bent on conquering Ukraine and incorporating it into a greater Russia.

Before he violated Ukrainian sovereignty, he respected Ukrainian sovereignty, because he said he did?

I’m just telling you what he said in the July 12, 2021, article that he wrote, the famous article.

I just meant that if he’s saying that he respects Ukrainian sovereignty and then he invades Ukraine, it makes me wonder if we should believe him when he says he respects its sovereignty. I don’t know.

I have another point to make that’s really important. What we’ve been talking about are Russian intentions, and in particular, Putin’s intentions. What did he intend to do? We also have to look at capabilities. The Russians did not have the military capability to conquer all of Ukraine. At most, a hundred and ninety thousand Russian troops went into Ukraine. There is no way a hundred and ninety thousand Russian troops could come close to conquering and occupying all of Ukraine.

You could say that Donald Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq in 2003 with a force that wasn’t big enough to control Iraq. But that doesn’t mean that Donald Rumsfeld wasn’t leading a military that wanted to take Iraq from Saddam Hussein and subdue it, right? Just because he turned out to be wrong doesn’t necessarily say anything about his intentions, right?

The United States was not interested in conquering, occupying, and integrating Iraq into a greater United States.

I wasn’t making that point. I was just saying that you can’t necessarily tell intent by erroneous military strategy. That’s all.

I think you can look at the capabilities of a particular state, the military capabilities of a particular state, and that tells you a lot about what they can and cannot do. And I do not think that a Russian army of approximately a hundred and ninety thousand soldiers is capable of conquering all of Ukraine. If you look at the operation itself on February 24th, they made no attempt to conquer all of Ukraine. Nothing close to that, because they didn’t have the capability.

So, it was to take the capital, but not the whole country?

Absolutely. I mean, there’s no question that he went after Kyiv. It doesn’t look like he was interested in conquering Kyiv. It looks like he was interested in threatening Kyiv for the purpose of coercing the government to change its policy on membership in nato.

You gave a speech about all this and said, “One might argue that Putin was lying about his motives, that he was attempting to disguise his imperial ambitions. As it turns out, I have written a book about lying in international politics—‘Why Leaders Lie: The Truth about Lying in International Politics’—and it is clear to me that Putin was not lying.” What is it about your study of leaders and lying that makes you think Putin was not lying?

Well, first of all, leaders don’t lie to each other very often. One of the central findings in my book is that leaders lie more often to their domestic audiences than they do to international audiences, or to other foreign leaders. And the idea that Putin would have devised this massive deception campaign where he consistently lied about what the reason was for going to war would’ve been unprecedented in history. There’s just simply no other case that even comes close to any leader lying time after time for purposes of fooling the other side.

Would Munich be an example of a leader lying?

Munich was a single case. I mean, there’s no question that Hitler lied at Munich, and one can point to one or two other instances where Hitler lied.

Maybe more than one or two.

For Putin to have said time after time that nato, that Ukraine in nato, was an existential threat to Russia, when in fact it wasn’t, and this was all done to disguise the real motive, which was to incorporate Ukraine into a greater Russia for the purposes of satisfying his imperial ambitions is an argument that is just not supported by the historical record. Putin was very clear, as were all his lieutenants, that their great fear was that Ukraine was becoming a Western bulwark on Russia’s borders. For them, that was an existential threat. It was simply unacceptable.

What about something like election interference, where Putin apparently told both Obama and Trump that he did not interfere in the election? How would we understand that?

Well, I don’t know whether the Russians interfered in the election in a serious way.

We don’t know that?

This is a highly disputed issue.

I didn’t realize it was highly disputed still. That’s why I was asking.

Well, there’s the whole question of whether the Russians broke into the D.N.C. computers and gave that information to Julian Assange.

Who broke into the D.N.C.? I haven’t been following the latest on who it was.

Look, I don’t know about this issue. I mean, you wanted to talk about Ukraine. You know what I mean? I would appreciate if you’d not use any of this discussion about the D.N.C. and so forth and so on. I mean, this is not my area of expertise.

So let’s turn to your trip to Hungary, which you mentioned at the beginning. You said you were there for five days.

I didn’t think we were going to talk about Hungary. I thought we were going to talk Ukraine and nuclear—

I’ll ask you about nuclear weapons. How concerned are you about the risk of a nuclear war, and what do you think the United States should be doing to make sure that we don’t escalate into one?

Well, I’m very concerned about the possibility of a nuclear war. It’s impossible to say how likely it is that nuclear weapons will be used in this conflict, but there is a non-trivial chance. And of course the Biden Administration, to its credit, recognizes this and it has gone to great lengths to pursue policies that don’t put the Russians in a position where they might think about using nuclear weapons. And that’s all for the good.

And why, strategically, would they use nuclear weapons?

I think that, if they feel that their survival is at risk, they will at least countenance using nuclear weapons—and might very well use them. I can think of two scenarios where that’s possible. One is where they’re facing defeat at the hands of the Ukrainian Army inside of Ukraine. The other scenario is if the United States comes in. If you’re losing a war and losing is viewed as a threat to your survival, you are likely to think about using nuclear weapons, and maybe even use them.

Right, although nuclear weapons have never been used by a power who was about to lose a war. They have only been used once in wartime, and it was by America, which was winning.

The reason the United States used those nuclear weapons was that it was desperate to avoid having to invade the Japanese home islands. If you fast forward to the Ukraine situation, assuming that the Ukrainians are rolling up the Russian forces inside Ukraine and they’re pushing the Russian forces out of Ukraine, it’s easy to imagine the Russians using nuclear weapons in Ukraine because they would not have to fear nuclear retaliation. Ukraine has no nuclear weapon, and the United States is certainly not going to use nuclear weapons if the Russians only use them in Ukraine.

I am curious about your meeting with Orbán, because it seems like he is maybe trying to play somewhat of a mediating role. What can you tell me about your trip? You said you were there for five days.

I think the Hungarians are deeply interested in ending this war as soon as possible. The Hungarians, as opposed to the Poles, are not interested in further escalation. They want to de-escalate the war. And, in fact, the Orbán government is not happy at all about sanctions, and it’s not happy about nato’s efforts to try to defeat Russia inside of Ukraine. The basic belief in Hungary is that this is just making the bad situation worse, and instead of escalating, what we should be doing is everything possible to de-escalate.

I know Orbán said that the “hope for peace is named Donald Trump,” and suggested him as a mediator in terms of bringing the war to an end.

I don’t know that.

Orbán tweeted, “The #liberals have got it all wrong - that’s the bottom-line of our great conversation with Prof Mearsheimer today. We–”

Look, I don’t want to talk about Orbán. You told me that we were going to talk about Ukraine.

We did talk about Ukraine.

Right, but I don’t want to talk about my visit to Hungary and my talk with Orbán. I really don’t. I mean, I answered that one question, yes, but I just don’t want to get into that. I really don’t want you quoting me on anything other than what I just said a minute ago. I mean, you should tell me what you want to talk about. Because you know that I’m in a very delicate position when I talk to you.

No, tell me why. I don’t know that.

This is off the record.

This conversation’s on the record, so can we keep it on the record?

I don’t want to talk about this. I actually think this is unfair to me. I think you’re being unfair. You wanted to talk about Ukraine and you wanted to talk about mainly nuclear issues.

Right. I told you over e-mail that I wanted to talk about Ukraine. You e-mailed me back and said you were in Hungary. I noticed that Orbán had tweeted about you, and I thought we could talk about that.

You did not say that. You did not say that. You said you wanted to talk about Ukraine. And you said you wanted to talk about nuclear issues.

Well, you did talk about both those things. If you don’t want to talk about Hungary, then you absolutely don’t have to. No one’s forcing you to talk about Hungary.

I don’t want to. I told you. I don’t want to talk about Hungary.

When the head of a country tweets a photo of you and him, I think it’s fair to ask you about it.

I just told you I didn’t want to talk about Hungary. ♦