According to the renowned professor, the current crisis has sparked regional instability and significantly strained relations between the EU and the US.
According to American international relations expert John Mearsheimer, Western Europe’s future looks “bleak” due to the Ukraine conflict, which he claims was incited by the West, particularly the US.
In a conversation with political scientist Glenn Diesen, Mearsheimer stated that the conflict has caused major insecurity in Europe and has led to “huge problems” in the relationship between Washington and Western Europe.
Mearsheimer noted that cooperation on political, military, and economic matters has become more challenging, citing recent discussions as proof that Western Europeans are “battling against the United States on how to deal with Ukraine.”
Mearsheimer, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, asserted that Europe is “in deep trouble” for two primary reasons related to the diminishing American influence on the continent, arguing that it “is largely a function of the presence of a substantial US military force in Europe.”
Mearsheimer explained that the US and Western European governments expanded NATO after the Cold War to “put the American security umbrella over the heads of the East Europeans as well as the West Europeans.”
Mearsheimer argues that this system is now strained due to a “deep change in the distribution of power” in the global order. He said that while the US could easily maintain large troop deployments in Europe during the 1990s and early 2000s, the rise of multipolarity has now pushed Washington “to pivot to Asia.”
These comments align with Mearsheimer’s address at the European Parliament earlier in the month, where he stated that the unipolar era ended with the emergence of China and Russia as major powers. He said in Brussels that, “The US was no longer the only great power in the world.”
According to Mearsheimer this shift gave Washington “further incentive to leave Europe and let Europe provide for its own security.” He cautioned that the Ukraine conflict would likely be frozen rather than resolved, resulting in “poisonous relations” between Western Europe and Russia and generating “lots of instability” in the region.
He also contended that the US and Western Europe had a significant role in provoking the conflict, arguing that the root cause was NATO’s effort to incorporate Ukraine into the alliance, which he said Russian leaders perceived as an existential threat.
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