Ukraine: Realist vs Idealist

UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers brings together two starkly opposed voices on the Ukraine war and the future of world order: John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago professor and leading realist, and Matthew Syed, Sunday Times columnist, broadcaster and author.

Mearsheimer has long argued that NATO expansion and Western policy blunders set the stage for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. From a realist standpoint, he warns that Russia’s position is essentially non-negotiable and that Ukraine must cut a deal now if it is to avoid further devastation. For Mearsheimer, ignoring the hard facts of great-power politics and clinging to Western rhetoric risks only catastrophic escalation.

Syed sees things very differently. In a recent Sunday Times column, he criticised the West’s handling of Ukraine, from the failed Alaska summit. He accused Western governments of failing Ukraine and directly attacked Mearsheimer’s realist position as “morally deranged” and fatally weak. For Syed, only moral clarity and Western resolve — not accommodation with Putin — can change the course of the war.

In this debate, Freddie Sayers asks: Is realism just disguised defeatism? Is idealism dangerously naïve in the age of Trump, Putin and Xi? And, after the White House summit with Zelensky, does the West finally have a coherent strategy — or is Ukraine still being left to fight alone?

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