If we had the current leadership in the west during the '50s, we'd never have made it out of the '50s alive.

— John Robb (@johnrobb) March 4, 2022

Wir haben den Zusammenprall von „21st century people“ (Politikern?) (wir, die Westler, bspw. mit Identitätspolitik) mit „19th century people“ (die Russen, mit Gleichgewicht der Kräfte-Politik), wie es Mearsheimer bei ca. 25 Minuten erklärt:

i can tell from looking at the audience that most of you are old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis like i am. you remember how we went stark raving crazy at the idea of the soviets putting military forces in cuba. „this is unacceptable! nobody puts military forces in the western hemisphere!“ that’s what the monroe doctrine is all about.

can you imagine 20 years from now a powerful china forming a military alliance with canada and mexico and moving chinese military forces onto canadian and mexican soil and us just standing there and saying this is no problem?

we’re all 20th 21st century people. worrying about chinese forces that is what 19th century people like vladimir putin worry about.

of course that’s not going to happen we’re going to maintain the monroe doctrine with regard to china just as we did with the soviet union during the cold war. so nobody should be surprised that the russians were apoplectic about the idea of us putting ukraine on the western side of the ledger.

Ich finde Mearsheimers Hypothese sehr spannend, bin nun aber auf der Suche nach einer Definition von 19th century people und 21st century people.

Nachtrag: Gefunden, ich Depp! Mearsheimer definiert die Begriffe erst danach, bei etwa 27 und 31 Minuten:

There is no evidence that we were talking about expanding NATO because we had to contain the Russians, because, again, NATO expansion was driven by 21st Century men and women. They believe balance of power politics is dead. That’s what happened here.

Do you understand?

Putin is a 19th Century man. He does view the world in terms of balance of power politics.

Quelle: Mearsheimer: Ukraine Is A Vital Strategic Interest To Russia, It Is Not To The United States