John Mearsheimer

Here in the United States, we have, as you well know, what's called the Monroe Doctrine.

And that basically says no great powers from Europe or Asia are allowed to come into our neighborhood and form a military alliance with anybody in this neighborhood.

When I was young, there was this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Soviets had the audacity to put nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.

We told them in no uncertain terms that that was not acceptable and that those missiles had to be removed.

This is our backyard, and we do not tolerate distant great powers coming into our neighborhood.

Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

And if we don't like...

Great powers coming into our neighborhood.

It's hardly surprising that the Russians did not want NATO on their doorstep.

They made that manifestly clear when the Cold War ended and they

exacted a promise from us that we would not expand NATO.

And then when we started expanding NATO, they made it clear after the first tranche in 1999 that they were profoundly unhappy with that.

They made it clear in 2004 after the second tranche that they were profoundly unhappy with that expansion.

And then in April 2008, when NATO announced that Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO, they made it unequivocally clear, not just Putin, that that was not going to happen.

They were drawing a red line in the sand.

And it is no accident that in August 2008—

Remember, the Bucharest summit is April 2008, and August 2008, you had a war between Georgia and Russia, and that involved, at its core, NATO expansion.

So the Americans and their allies should have understood by at least August 2008 that continuing to push to bring Ukraine into NATO...

was going to lead to disaster.