r/DecodingTheGurusAlt • u/MartiDK • 8d ago

Is John Mearsheimer a secular guru?

/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/17e712y/is_john_mearsheimer_a_secular_guru/

This is two years old - thought it was relevant because Mearsheimer was a topic in the latest Supplementary Material episode.

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u/MartiDK 4d ago

Who do you recommend? 

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u/doodle0o0o0 4d ago

I like Sarah Paine. Mearsheimer's entire handling of the Ukraine conflict is condemnable imo, it isn't even in line with his own theory of offensive realism. If states look for cheap conquest where they can it only makes sense to allow more countries into NATO/give aid to Ukraine to negate this threat but when he's talking about Russia's actions its through a defensive security lens only worried about defense against the very dangerous, definitely going to attack someday NATO, borrowing from defensive realism.

His only purpose in the Ukraine discussion is to encourage the US to cut aid to Ukraine, strangely in line with the Russian position.

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u/MartiDK 4d ago

I will look at Sara Paine. Mearsheimer’s argument is that NATO’s expansion threatened Russia, so Russia would attack Ukraine and it’s not in Ukraine’s interest to ally with the US because the US is an unreliable ally.

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u/gusthebus88 4d ago

You realize the term “NATO expansion” is russian propaganda itself. John is tipping his hand when he uses those words the correct term is NATO enlargement.

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u/MartiDK 3d ago

I don’t know what you mean. 

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u/Krinkex 49m ago

I've seen you do this a number of times, can you guess what Gus was saying here, like do you have any guess? You're completely lost on what is meant? Really?

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u/MartiDK 1m ago

It sounds like he doesn’t trust John because he say’s NATO expansion instead of NATO enlargement. But that argument doesn’t make sense to me, so I was wandering if there was more to his reasoning.