Arrogant and power-worshipping pricks like Mearsheimer always think they’re smart enough to avoid getting Chotinered, until suddenly there they are getting Chotinered.
The funniest part about that excerpt is that Mearsheimer starts out the interview by taking a small opening to show how important he is by bragging about meeting Orban. Did he think a pitbull like Chotiner was going to leave it there?
His job as a so-called foreign policy realist is to twist himself into knots and dynamically shift goalposts to “prove” that it isn’t imperialism. For him, everything is a great-powers conflict. Somehow all of the twisted historical interpretation by Putin’s dancing bear is really an expression of Russia’s centuries-long anxiety about NATO, or the U.S., or … (yeah, that’s better) the West.
