If anything, I feel as though the propaganda is strongly flowing the other way. I'm blown away by how quickly popular media snapped back into war mode. Just like the early days of the Iraq war, it's a bombardment of war memes, the good guys are amazing, "did you hear about the Ghost of Kyiv?", "Russia is surrendering!", "One Ukrainian soldier dismantled a tank with his bare hands", "A sniper killed a top general."
The war is heartbreaking to see in real time. It's also frustrating to see all the simplified, good/bad hot-takes that perpetuates the US' "I'm not responsible for any of this" attitude. Meanwhile, we continue our own regime change wars, arming of states hostile to others, and then feign surprise and outrage when people call out the west's meddling when things go tits up.
Countries which weren't enthusiastic enough about joining the west (Ukraine, Republic of Moldova, Georgia) are occupied by Russians.
Russians are the orcs. It is literally as simple as that.
What about the wee little snotlings and the goblins?
Has it ever been as easy as that?...
'the west' was reluctant, especially on NATO membership. The messaging might have been wrong. Because they don't want to dilute the open door policy.
But they specifically said not right now and that nothing was being discussed.
Not to mention NATO is self defensive and that both sides have been proliferating weapons.
...
Mearsheimer's books include Conventional Deterrence (1983), which won the Edgar S. Furniss Jr. Book Award; Nuclear Deterrence: Ethics and Strategy (co-editor, 1985); Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (1988); The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), which won the Lepgold Book Prize; The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007); and Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics (2011). His articles have appeared in academic journals like International Security and popular magazines like the London Review of Books. He has written op-ed pieces for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chicago Tribune.[9]
Mearsheimer has won several teaching awards. He received the Clark Award for Distinguished Teaching when he was a graduate student at Cornell in 1977, and he won the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago in 1985. In addition, he was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 1993–1994 academic year. In that capacity, he gave a series of talks at eight colleges and universities. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[9] He is the recipient of the American Political Science Association's 2020 James Madison Award, which is presented every three years to an American political scientist who has made distinguished scholarly contributions. The Award Committee noted that Mearsheimer is "one of the most cited International Relations scholars in the discipline, but his works are read well beyond the academy as well."[10]
Mearsheimer's works are widely read and debated by 21st-century students of international relations. A 2017 survey of US international relations faculty ranks him third among "scholars whose work has had the greatest influence on the field of IR in the past 20 years."[11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mearsheimer
I very much do not agree with Mearsheimer's point of view, but describing his lectures as "Russian propaganda" suggests that you are the one in the grip of an extreme form of propaganda. Rethink where you're getting your information.
How can someone be proven so wrong about their life's work and still be called "one of your best thinkers in international politics."?
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
The article you linked was written after Russia had already invaded and annexed part of Ukraine, so it's not a very impressive prediction.
Putin's argument that Nato was a threat is just a distraction. There's nothing Nato could do if Ukraine joined Nato that Nato couldn't already do without Ukraine.
Mearsheimer's argument that Russia should be left alone to violate the sovereignty of her neighbours is just bonkers. Thank goodness he was ignored.
I would be cautious. On both sides.
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10563487/Snake-Isla...
John Mearsheimer is one of the few voices trying to shield us from the risk of a nuclear war that the arms and energy industries are happy to encourage for their own bottom lines. You are being fed propaganda, but it's not from John Mearsheimer.
You can't claim to be able to distinguish truth from falsehood if what you believe to be true is chosen before you even have the chance to form a rational thought. You're just proving it after the fact.