US Ambassador to Soviet Union agrees with John Mearsheimer's Assessment of Ukraine-Russia War

Jack Matlock has a talk on April 6th, 2022 with American Committee for US-Russia Accord on War in Ukraine, with Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Nicolai Petro, Marlene Laruelle, and James W. Carden.

Jack Foust Matlock Jr. (born October 1, 1929) is an American former ambassador, career Foreign Service Officer, a teacher, a historian, and a linguist. He was a specialist in Soviet affairs during some of the most tumultuous years of the Cold War, and served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022. war, in the popular sense, is a conflict between political groups involving hostilities of considerable duration and magnitude. Internationally considered an act of aggression, the invasion has triggered Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 4.3 million Ukrainians leaving the country and a quarter of the population displaced.

John Joseph Mearsheimer is an American political scientist and international relations scholar, who belongs to the realist school of thought. He is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. He has been described as the most influential realist of his generation.

Mearsheimer is the leading proponent of offensive realism. The structural theory, unlike the classical realism of Hans Morgenthau, places the principal emphasis on security competition among great powers within the anarchy of the international system, not on the human nature of statesmen and diplomats.

On the one hand, offensive realism seeks power and influence to achieve security through domination and hegemony. On the other hand, defensive realism argues that the anarchical structure of the international system encourages states to maintain moderate and reserved policies to attain security.