There seems to be a dominant view among those public intellectuals whom I admire that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was due to the United States’ project of trying to install Ukraine into NATO. This view is spearheaded on Youtube by John Mearsheimer, but it has as supporters such prominent intellectual as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Chris Hedges, and Stephen Kinzer — to name a few.
Why this proclivity to blame the U.S.? I think it is due to their acute awareness of U.S. imperialism — in its invasions and coups, which all of them have written about. It seems, therefore, reasonable to look for the U.S. involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian affair as well. These intellectuals also think that the flight of Yanukovych was a U.S. orchestrated coup!
Contrary to their view, I believe that there was no coup; Yanukovich simply ran aways from everyone’s hostility. And this fact coincided with U.S. interests, but it was not caused by the U.S.
As to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is best descibed by an analogy used by Johnny Harris as the refusal of a boyfriend to let his ex-girlfriend go. Putin is the boyfriend and Ukraine is his ex-girlfriend.
I’ll let you decide which narrative is more suitable: the threat of NATO or the ex-girlfriend analogy after watching the following videos:
The first video is a debate beteen John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, for the NATO narrative, and Michael McFaul and Radislaw Sikorski, opposed.
The second video is a debate between John Mearsheimer and Carl Bildt.
The third video is a criticism of John Mearsheimer by Alexander Stubb.
The fourth is a series of videos by Johnny Harris. In the first video he comments on the pre-invasion plans of Russia. In the second and third videos he makes his comments after the invasion.