Mearsheimer started off, noting the “significant deterioration in US-Russian foreign relations.” He argued this situation is “fundamentally wrong.”

He gave background to what’s going on. Basically, US-Russian relations were ok until February 22, 2014. Since then, things have gone “down the toilet bowl.” (On February 22, 2014, there was a coup in Kiev, Ukraine, where protestors—which the support of the US Government—overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych.)

Before February 22, there was no evidence of American or European policy makers being concerned with Ukraine. US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, stated there was “no reason to contain Russia,” and said that the US did not see [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as an “aggressor.” There was no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Since the coup, Russia has encouraged the citizens of Crimea—a Russian speaking area that had been given to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954—to reunite with Russia, which they did via a local referendum in March 2014. At the same time, there’s been a war “by virtually all accounts” in the Eastern Ukraine between the Ukrainian government on one side, and Russia-supporting rebels on the other.

The US blames Putin for all of the turmoil. According to Mearsheimer, the US is acting “like kids who never understand what they’ve done wrong.” Some commentators have called Putin “a new Hitler,” which Mearsheimer says such arguments are “ludicrous in the extreme”: nothing that Putin has done has ever put him in the category of Hitler.