How Ukraine conflict might affect the Middle East
John Mearsheimer, the founder of offensive realism — a subdivision of the neorealism/structural realism school of thought within international relations theory — argued in his 2014 Foreign Affairs article on the Ukraine crisis that the prevailing Western view of Russian action is of aggression. However, he instead positioned Russia’s actions as a response to the security threat posed by NATO enlargement, which is the central element of a perceived larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. I believe this view is central…