Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has placed direct responsibility for Ukraine’s current predicament on Western governments, arguing that NATO’s strategic misjudgments set the stage for the crisis. Speaking on Andrew Napolitano’s YouTube channel, he said that the push to bring Ukraine into the alliance was a profound strategic error that ultimately produced disastrous consequences for Kiev.

According to Mearsheimer, those who championed NATO expansion and later supported escalating the confrontation now try to claim moral authority, despite having contributed to the very outcome they condemn. He stressed that the conflict has reached a point where diplomatic leverage has been exhausted, leaving no realistic political tools to achieve a settlement.

The professor noted that the United States and European states now face severe security challenges of their own-difficulties he believes were triggered largely by their own miscalculations. In his view, developments will be determined on the battlefield, and even the end of active fighting would not yield a comprehensive peace agreement.

Instead, Mearsheimer predicted that the most probable outcome is a frozen conflict, one that would preserve the possibility of renewed hostilities not only in Ukraine but across other parts of Eastern Europe. He concluded that the situation has evolved into a much broader and more serious problem for the West than its architects anticipated.