uncommon core lecture uh the causes and consequences of the ukraine crisis my name is michael volchak

i attended the university from 1986 to 1991 i got a bachelor's in political science and

a masters in international relations Professor Mearsheimer was a tremendous influence on

my life um completely revolutionizing my worldview changed how i looked at international relations

politics just everything in fact he was such a big influence on my life that

whoops

that when i went home for the summer between one of the school years leaving my college

girlfriend here she gave me a little keepsake picture book and she said here to remember

the people you love and inside was a picture of her on the right and a picture of professor

mearsheimer on the left

that's true story um uh when i was here the two biggest things that for me were uh military

affairs and the model united nations of the university of chicago the student organization

that i co-founded in 1988 and at that time i discovered that you need a faculty advisor

in order to have a registered student organization um so of course i thought for about two seconds

and then i went to see professor mirsheimer and i'm not sure if he remembers this but

i asked him will you be our faculty advisor and he said i will sign the piece of paper

if i never have to do anything else after that so i had found my faculty advisor so

uh without further ado i would like to introduce the r wendell harrison distinguished professor

of political science Professor John J. Mearsheimer

Thank you very much for that kind introduction thanks all for coming out to hear me talk

uh the subject i want to talk about is the causes and consequences of the ukraine crisis

which of course has been in the news in a really big way since uh february 2014 and

indeed there was a big story uh on the civil war in eastern ukraine in the newspapers this

morning the outline i'd like to follow is i'd just like to make a number of preliminary

comments to give you some background on this crisis then i'd like to give you my thinking

on what caused the crisis then tell you why i think the conventional wisdom is wrong talk

a little bit about the west's response so far to the crisis which is just in my opinion

making a bad situation worse and tell you what i think should be done and then finally

wrap up with some discussion of the consequences so let me start with some preliminary comments

first with regard to america's core strategic interests for me core strategic interests

are areas of the world where you're willing to fight and die and in my opinion outside

of the western hemisphere which is of enormous strategic importance to us there are only

three areas of the world that really matter one is europe two is northeast asia and three

is the persian gulf and it's very important to understand that since this country got

its independence in 1783 europe has been the most important area of the world even though

the japanese attacked us at pearl harbor we had a europe first policy going into the war

and we had a europe first policy throughout the war and it's in large part because the

great powers in europe are more important than the great powers in northeast asia over

time of course the persian gulf was an important area because that's where the oil is and oil

is a critical resource that matters greatly in the international system so those are the

three most important areas outside the western hemisphere and again since the beginning of

this country europe has been number one you want to understand that we're undergoing a

fundamental shift shift of great importance asia because of the rise of china is going

to be the most important area of the world for the united states the persian gulf because

it's inextricably linked with asia oil flowing to india oil flowing to china the persian

gulf will be number two and europe will be a distant three we're basically leaving europe

in the rear view mirror and of course you want to keep this in mind because the ukraine

crisis is in europe and it involves nato

just had to think about the geography of europe this is a simple if not simplistic way of

thinking about it but here's a map you can see where ukraine is let's see where poland

is you can see where russia is the way i think about european security is there's france

germany poland ukraine and russia of course we're moving from west to east these are the

big kahunas these are the big countries that matter and of course the two countries that

matter the most historically are germany and russia or for most of the 20th century germany

and the soviet union and i put them in red because as you well know both germany and

the soviet union fought bitter wars in poland in ukraine and we could add in belarus as

well if need be but as we go along here you want to keep in mind that ukraine is right

next to russia and poland is right next to ukraine and then out further west is germany

and france take this a step further this is the ethnic breakdown of ukraine i'm going

to show you a number of maps all of which are designed to show you that ukraine is a

badly divided country and what's taking place inside ukraine today is in good part a civil

war and to that extent it doesn't have that much to do with what the russians or the west

are doing there and as you can see in red uh are mostly ukrainian-speaking people and

then as you move further east you're talking about lots of russians and certainly lots

of russian speakers uh this is the ukraine election of 2004. this is the election in

the wake of the famous orange revolution which i'll talk more about uh as you can see the

country is badly divided between the east and the west the russian speakers in the east

and ukrainian speakers in the west this is the 2010 election which resulted in yanukovych

getting elected i'll talk about president yanukovych as we go along he was elected in

2010 and you can see there the voting patterns in the 2010 election look a lot like the voting

patterns in the 2004 election and then these are two recent surveys that came out from

the international republican institute that's here in the united states this one says if

ukraine could enter only one international economic union which of the following should

it be and of course the blue is the eu and the light blue is the customs union or actually

the red is the customs union of russia belarus and kazakhstan and the cities up at the top

are in western ukraine and the cities down the bottom are in eastern ukraine so you can

see very clearly that people in the west would like to join the eu people in the east have

little interest in joining the eu those are the eu numbers hear the nato numbers i mean

these two charts look virtually the same but all of this tells you that you have a badly

divided country and the conflict between the west and russia over ukraine is played out

in the context of this situation this is a simple little view graph that shows europe's

dependent on russian gas it's quite clear from that view graph that many of the countries

in eastern europe and even countries like germany are heavily dependent on russian natural

gas and of course that gives the russians lots of political leverage in this crisis

and it makes it very difficult for us to put pressure on the russians okay those are just

a number of preliminary comments i wanted to throw out just to set this up let's talk

about the causes of the conflict i think if you're going to talk about the causes of the

conflict you have to come at it from three different perspectives first of all you have

to ask what are the deep causes of the crisis what are the structural factors that underpin

this conflict then you have to talk about the precipitating causes because the crisis

broke out on february 22nd 2014. things were not terrible until february 22 2014 and that's

when everything went to hell in a hand basket and the question is what caused it then if

you focus on deep causes it can't tell you why something happened in february 2014 but

the precipitating causes are designed to get at that and then what we want to talk about

is the russian reaction why the russians did what they did with regard to crimea with regard

to eastern ukraine we want to talk about exactly what they did and then why they did it so

let's start with the deep causes my argument is that the west is principally responsible

for this mess not the russians this of course is not the conventional wisdom in the united

states and in fact except for steve cohen who's now at princeton i mean now at nyu he

used to be at princeton henry kissinger and maybe a handful of other people there are

not many people who agree with me but i i think the facts are quite clear on this that

the west is responsible and my aim is that the main deep causes the aim of the united

states and its european allies to peel ukraine away from russia's orbit and incorporate it

into the west our basic goal has been to make ukraine a western bulwark on russia's border

and russia says this ain't happening period end the story and we will do everything we

can to make sure it does not happen that's the deep cause now take it a step further

there are three key elements in our strategy the first is nato expansion and in many ways

the most important and i'll talk in some detail about that in a second but as you all know

since the cold war ended starting with the clinton administration we have been moving

nato eastward toward russia's border and the russians have said this is an absolute no-no

and i'll walk you through the story in a minute second is eu expansion eu expansion is all

about integrating ukraine economically into the west the way we are in the process of

integrating polling the czech republic slovakia the baltic states into the west and of course

we're doing that with nato as well these are two sets of institutions nato military institution

the eu and economic institution and the idea again is to take ukraine peel it away from

russia make it part of the west the third part of the story is fostering an orange revolution

this is all about promoting democracy in ukraine and in other places as you all know the united

states runs around the world trying to topple regimes and put in their place democratically

elected regimes and for almost all of you me included it's hard to be against promoting

democracy we all love democracy but if you're vladimir putin or if you're part of the leadership

in beijing when the united states talks about democracy promotion that means toppling your

regime and you won't be surprised to hear this they don't like that in beijing and they

don't like that in moscow right they do not like that

the chinese believe that we're behind the protests in hong kong you go to beijing you

talk to chinese elites the idea that we're promoting democracy around the world and especially

in east asia just drives them crazy because they think they're in the crosshairs and you

know what they are in the crosshairs because our basic strategy is to topple regimes all

over the world not simply because we like democracy but because we believe that whoever

gets elected will be pro-western so we're killing two birds with one stone we're promoting

democracy and getting leaders who are pro-american but again you can see the strategy here nato

expansion eu expansion and promoting democracy say a bit more about nato expansion because

it's so important uh nato expansion took place in two tranches the first one was in 1999

that's when you get poland the czech republic and hungary incorporated into nato the second

big tranche was in 2004 and that's when the baltic states you can see estonia latvia and

lithuania up top romania bulgaria these are the light brown countries that's the second

tranche of nato expansion now the soviets made it clear from the mid-1990s they were

adamantly opposed to nato expansion but number one they were too weak to do anything about

it and two it didn't involve the states that were right on their border i mean there's

no question as you can see from the map that latvia and estonia are on russia's border

and lithuania as well if you want to include that little enclave between poland and lithuania

but but the fact is these were very small states it was early in the game and the russians

were willing to live with it but then the big trouble starts and it comes in the famous

bucharest summit uh nato's bucharest summer in summit in april 2008 where at the end of

the summit a declaration is issued which says nato welcomes ukraine's and georgia's euro-atlantic

aspirations for membership in nato we agreed today that these countries will become members

of nato so the soviets the russians made this perfectly clear this was unacceptable russia's

deputy foreign minister said george's and ukraine's membership in the alliance is a

huge strategic mistake which will have most serious consequences for pan-european security

putin himself said georgia and ukraine becoming part of nato is a direct threat to russia

you all remember that there was a war between russia and georgia in august 2008 that war

was a consequence of this because the georgians thought we were sending them a signal that

they could get uppity with the russians and we would back them because they were going

to become part of nato that's not what and you know what happened the russians clobbered

the georgians and georgia is in deep trouble today because it thought it beca it could

become part of nato so you want to remember that april 2008 summit very important that

declaration very important and then what happens is you have a war so those are the deep causes

those three strategies nato expansion eu expansion and promoting democracy what about the precipitating

cause

key events leading up to the coup it's the coup of february 22nd 2014 that's of enormous

importance that's what really throws the crisis into gear just think about that word coup

orange revolution promoting democracy the coup february 22nd 2014. so the question is

what causes the code it all starts in november of 2013. at that point yanukovych president

yanukovych who's the head of ukraine is negotiating with e with the eu to form an association

agreement that brings the eu and ukraine much closer together it's a step in the direction

of incorporating ukraine into the european union or to put it in slightly different terms