In a lecture he gave on the long-running conflict between Ukraine and Russia, University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer said something that was quite instructive. He told the audience that he feels at home when he is China because the Chinese are “19th century people” just like he is. That perhaps explains his thinking on spheres of influence.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, I have heard many of the views Mearsheimer has expressed on the war. He is seen by many people as an authoritative voice on that geopolitical conflict. I disagree with pretty much everything he says.

Mearsheimer’s lecture had crucially important omissions. It also contained information that was divorced from reality. He frequently says that Ukraine is not a core strategic interest of the U.S. and so America shouldn’t get involved in that conflict. What he never mentions is that the U.S. does in fact have an obligation to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. That commitment was spelled out in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine agreed to relinquish its vast nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from the U.S.

At the time of that agreement, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. The size of Ukraine’s store of nuclear weapons then was about three times what China has now. The Russians would certainly not be fooling around in Ukraine today if the U.S. hadn’t pressured the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear deterrent. The next time Mearsheimer speaks somewhere, someone should ask him whether he thinks that commitment is worth honoring.

Mearsheimer said in his lecture that Ukraine has always been a deeply divided country, and was more so in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. He pointed to the population of western Ukraine that is seen as pro-European, and that of the eastern part that is supposedly more closely aligned with Russia. I don’t have a PhD in political science, but I have lived experience. Sometimes real-world knowledge trumps any that is gleaned from being in an ivory tower.

During my time in the Soviet Union, I lived for a year in Kyiv, one year in Kharkiv, and four years in Donetsk. Kharkiv and Donetsk lie in the easternmost part of Ukraine. I had close friends from Ghana who attended university in Lviv, which is on the western edge of Ukraine. I spent lots of time there. In those six years, I traveled the length and breadth of Ukraine and talked to thousands of Ukrainians. I therefore know Ukraine and its people like I do the back of my hand. I saw none of the divisions that Mearsheimer claims existed.

My biggest beef with Mearsheimer is that to him, it is the West that has harmed Ukraine by attempting to pry it away from Russia and bring it into NATO and the EU. It is unimportant to him that it is the Ukrainians who are making the choice to apply to join those blocs. Mearsheimer constantly implies that the Ukrainians have no agency, and cannot decide for themselves what is best for them and their future. He doesn’t realize how arrogant he seems, and how insulting his statements are to the Ukrainians.

One of Mearsheimer’s favorite lines is that Vladimir Putin repeatedly warned the West against trying to admit Ukraine into NATO, and that the West and the Ukrainians foolishly ignored him. The question is this: Why is it up to Putin how everyone around him lives? Mearsheimer surely must know the reason the Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Poles and everyone else in that neighborhood has been running away from Russia.

I have likened likened Russia to an abusive husband whose wife is trying desperately to escape from. Who are we to tell such a woman to stay in the relationship, no matter what?

We all have to earn whatever privileges we want to have in life. The U.S. has enjoyed the exorbitant privilege of the dollar for decades. It wasn’t handed on a silver platter. It was earned.

When Mearsheimer says that America wouldn’t allow China or Russia to form an alliance with Mexico or Canada that would result in those adversaries placing weapons at America’s doorstep, he falsely characterizes NATO as an offensive organization. NATO was set up for defensive purposes. The professor should ask himself why Mexico and Canada haven’t found it necessary to join some military alliance to protect themselves against their large neighbor.

The one thing I could perhaps agree with Mearsheimer on is his claim that there is precedent for pushback against such encroachment. He consistently points to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as one example. But my view is that the world we live in today is completely different from that of 1962. The Soviet Union, which placed the missiles in Cuba, is no longer in existence. Mearsheimer also likes to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to argue that the U.S. maintains a sphere of influence for itself and so major powers like Russia and China should have their own entitlements. Notwithstanding what our current president says sometimes, does the professor seriously think that President James Monroe’s 1823 thinking applies in today’s world?

It is fascinating how people like Mearsheimer apply historical events to present-day life. To them, history is both permanent and static. They make it sound as if we are supposed to be captives of history, incapable of jettisoning unsavory behaviors of the past and making efforts to operate in more enlightened ways. Francis Fukuyama was a bit too quick to proclaim the end of history, but I like his way of thinking.

Mearsheimer mentioned a couple of times in his lecture that he, Henry Kissinger, political scientist Stephen Cohen and one or two others were the only people in America who held views on the Russia-Ukraine conflict that contradicted those in the mainstream narrative. I hope the next time Mearsheimer makes a public speech on the subject, he will acknowledge that by the time of his death in 2023, Dr. Kissinger had come around to the view that Ukraine’s membership in NATO would be “appropriate” after the war ends.

Mearsheimer also mentioned that Putin approached the EU and the IMF at the end of 2013 with a deal to respond to the Euromaidan protests that were taking place in Kyiv at the time. According to Mearsheimer, Putin’s deal would have placated the protesters, but the West pressured Ukraine not to take it. In the question-and-answer session after the lecture, an audience member asked Mearsheimer what the terms of that deal were. He admitted that he didn’t know. I was stunned. The professor certainly wouldn’t tolerate any of his students making such an assertion without supporting evidence. I wonder why he felt comfortable doing that in a public lecture.

The simple fact is that Putin doesn’t want any free, open and prosperous society anywhere near Russia’s border because that would threaten his tyrannical and kleptocratic regime. The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement that Ukraine was about to sign in 2014 was the event that precipitated Russia’s takeover of Crimea. The purpose of that agreement was to deepen economic ties between Ukraine and the EU. Putin had to do whatever it took to scuttle it. This whole saga has never really been about NATO expansion as much as people like Mearsheimer make it sound.

There are people around the world who have benefited tremendously from the ugliness of history. Such people and their ancestors will always move heaven and earth to preserve the ancient systems and old ways of doing things that favored and continue to favor them. I much prefer to live in a world that evolves, one in which we all have to earn our privileges.