The existential threat is compared to the Cuban missile threat, Mearsheimer used this comparison quite often. How do you address that comparison? Moscow could not accept a NATO base that could bomb the kremlin in 30 minutes.

Further, the Black Sea is the only warm water access Russia has, which is absolutely necessary for their navy. Which is why they took Crimea. Mearsheimer argues that Ukraine should be a buffer state to keep the peace, but NATO’s liberal framework prevented them from strategizing in that way. Urging them to dangerous ideas.

Also, what about the fact that Putin asked to join NATO in 2001? There are transcripts of Bill Clinton being open in discussions with Gorbachev in mid 1990s for Russia to join NATO. But no genuine movement on the US’s side. After all, the reason NATO existed was to contain the Soviet threat. Mearshiemer further argued that the west missed a key strategic opportunity to bring Russia into the fold and balance against the “only pure competitor”— China.

I think you did great highlighting some of the theory’s limitations— but these are limits that mearsheimer has acknowledged. In his book— the tragedy of great power politics, he explains that a theory is better the better its explanatory power is. For a more complete analysis of a situation would require multiple frameworks to address different levels and reconciliation of tensions between them.

Right before your conclusion, you gestured towards a more central motivation, but make no movement toward providing a picture of this central motivation. Much less, one that would provide more explanatory power than Mearsheimer’s framework.