I watched his videos, but I find it hard to agree with everything that he said. To “avoid” provoking Putin means granting Putin rights to veto Ukraine’s foreign policies. How in the world would the West agree to that or even has rights to agree to that over the will of the Ukrainian people?
In the end, Putin is justifying his invasion by the West’s denying his outrageous demands. Demands Putin knew full well no one could agree to. The only way to avoid the war would be for Russian to continue successfully meddle with Ukrainian elections and place Pro-Russian politicians into key positions.
I actually find TLDR’s take on Mearsheimer’s paper much more balanced.
