John J. Mearsheimer

But the problem is, Tucker, you end up with a frozen conflict.

And the Ukrainians will never accept the fact that Russia has annexed this territory.

They will not see it as Russian territory.

They will believe that this is sacred Ukrainian territory that has been illegally taken away from them and that they need to get back.

So what this tells you is you will have poisonous relations between Russia

Russia on one hand and Ukraine on the other.

And given that the Ukrainians are joined at the hip with the Europeans, this will mean that you are likely to have poisonous relations between Russia

and Ukraine and the Europeans for the foreseeable future.

This is a disastrous situation because it's easy to imagine how that frozen conflict turns into a hot conflict once again.

I'm not saying that's likely, but there's one other very important dimension to this that we don't want to lose sight of, and that is that superimposed on the Ukraine-Russia conflict,

are six other potential flashpoints.

One is Belarus, two is Kaliningrad, three is the Baltic Sea, four is the melting Arctic, five is Moldova, and six is the Black Sea.

These are all potential flashpoints where you could get conflict

between Russia on one side and the Europeans on the other side, or the Ukrainians on the other side.

So Eastern Europe is going to be a very dangerous place for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely.

And the Ukrainians will go to great lengths over time to get more and more weaponry.

I mean, you have to understand that from Ukraine's point of view, Russia is an existential threat.

You and I have paid a lot of attention in the previous conversation to the fact that from Russia's point of view, what's happening in Ukraine is an existential threat, which it certainly is.

But if you're a Ukrainian leader and you see what's just happened and the Russians are closer than ever to you and they've taken territory of yours that you want back, you're going to see the Russians as an existential threat.