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Frank Visser, graduated as a psychologist of culture and religion, founded IntegralWorld in 1997. He worked as production manager for various publishing houses and as service manager for various internet companies and lives in Amsterdam. Books: Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion (SUNY, 2003), and The Corona Conspiracy: Combatting Disinformation about the Coronavirus (Kindle, 2020).

Could the Ukraine War Have Been Prevented?

A Critical Look at Mearsheimer's Thesis

Frank Visser / ChatGPT

Few geopolitical arguments have gained as much visibility—and controversy—as John Mearsheimer's claim that the war in Ukraine was ultimately caused by NATO expansion. According to Mearsheimer, Russia responded rationally to a perceived encroachment into its traditional sphere of influence, and the tragedy could have been avoided if Ukraine had remained neutral and never been promised NATO membership.

This argument is elegant, simple, and morally unsettling. It also raises a deeper philosophical question: Does realism describe the world as it must be—or as authoritarian powers want it to be?

Mearsheimer's Claim in Brief

Mearsheimer's position rests on three linked assertions:

• Great powers always resist rival military alliances near their borders.
• The 2008 NATO promise that Ukraine “will become a member” was a fatal provocation.
• Had the West guaranteed Ukrainian neutrality, Russia would not have invaded.

For Mearsheimer, Ukraine's tragedy is that it sits geographically and historically between two blocs: the West and Russia. From this vantage, the war was not about Putin's ideology or imperial ambition, but about cold strategic logic shared by all great powers—including the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Realism's lesson is blunt: sovereignty is aspirational, not guaranteed. Power, not international law, determines a small state's fate.

The Counterargument: Realism Without Moral Blindness

The rebuttal to Mearsheimer does not deny that Russia perceived NATO expansion as threatening. It questions what follows from that perception.

The core critique is simple:

If a country can be coerced into neutrality only because it is threatened by invasion, then neutrality is not a diplomatic settlement—it is submission.

This leads to three problems in Mearsheimer's logic:

It treats Russia's fear as legitimate while treating Ukraine's fear as naïve. Ukrainians were not seeking NATO protection for symbolic reasons—they sought it because they already had evidence of Russian aggression: Crimea (2014), Donbas (2014-).

It ignores that Russia rejected security guarantees that did not include territorial control over Ukraine. Putin did not simply demand neutrality. He demanded:

• regime influence,
• rollback of Western ties,
• and recognition of a Russian sphere of cultural-civilizational dominance.

Neutrality in this model meant vassalage.

It assumes that great power insecurity is immutable and morally unquestionable. But this transforms realism from an analytical framework into an apologetic one.

Realism explains the world. It does not morally justify it.

A Philosophical Lens: Is Realism Descriptive or Prescriptive?

Realists like Mearsheimer insist they merely describe power dynamics. Yet the public and political effect of their framework is often normative:

• If Russia fears NATO, then NATO must step back.
• If Ukraine wants sovereignty, wanting is irrelevant.
• If international law promises territorial integrity, power overrides it.

This framing turns realism into a kind of secular fatalism: geopolitics as natural law, dissent as wishful thinking.

But international relations history also offers counterexamples: Finland, Taiwan, South Korea, and multiple Eastern European states transitioned from “zones of influence” to sovereign democracies—not because great powers allowed it, but because history moved forward.

Putin is not resisting NATO. He is resisting the post-Cold War European principle that borders are not changed by force.

The Tragic Symmetry That Isn't Symmetry

Mearsheimer argues that Russia sees Ukraine the way the US sees Latin America.

But there is a missing component in that analogy:

Ukraine is not Cuba. It is Poland in 1939—caught between a former empire and a future identity.

Ukraine does not want neutrality. Ukraine does not want to be a buffer state. Ukraine does not want to be Russian.

No model of realism can erase this without transforming prudence into paternalism.

What Mearsheimer Gets Right—and Wrong

Conclusion: The War Was Not Inevitable

Mearsheimer offers a compelling narrative. It appeals because it simplifies responsibility and fits a deterministic worldview: great powers act, small powers suffer, and history follows predictable rules.

But the evidence suggests something more troubling:

The war was not caused by NATO expansion alone but by Putin's ideological project of restoring Russia as a civilizational empire.

Neutrality would not have prevented the invasion, because neutrality was never what Putin demanded. Control was.

In that sense, Ukraine is not a pawn in a realist chess game—it is a test case of whether sovereignty, democracy, and self-determination remain meaningful in the 21st century.

And that is why the war continues.