Russia-Ukraine War | Munk Debates

John Mearsheimer

"We in effect poked the Russian bear in the eye and then we left Ukraine defenceless. We have led the Ukrainians down the primrose path."

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point (1970), has a PhD in political science from Cornell University (1981), and has written extensively about security issues and international politics. Among his six books, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001, 2014) won the Joseph Lepgold Book Prize; and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (with Stephen M. Walt, 2007), made the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into twenty-four languages. His latest book is The Great Delusion: Liberal Ideals and International Realities (2018), which won the 2019 Best Book of the Year Award from the Valdai Discussion Conference, Moscow.  He has written numerous articles and op-eds that have appeared in International Security, London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, and The New York Times. In 2003, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2020, he won the James Madison Award, which is given once every three years by the American Political Science Association to “an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science.”

Stephen Walt

"If you want to bring this to an end, as quickly as possible, you have to start by recognizing Russia's security interests, the reasons they went to war."

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. He previously taught at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, where he served as Master of the Social Science Collegiate Division and Deputy Dean of Social Sciences. He has been a Resident Associate of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, and he has also served as a consultant for the Institute of Defense Analyses, the Center for Naval Analyses, and the National Defense University. He presently serves on the editorial boards of Foreign Policy, Security Studies, International Relations, and Journal of Cold War Studies, and he also serves as Co-Editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, published by Cornell University Press. Additionally, he was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 2005.

His book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with John J. Mearsheimer) was a New York Times best seller and has been translated into more than twenty foreign languages. His most recent book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy.

Michael McFaul

"The US, NATO and the West have recognized Russia's security interests for three decades. Yet, that did not prevent Putin from invading Ukraine."

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014). He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller,  “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.”  Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations between China, Russia, and the United States, and the relationship between democracy and development.

Radosław Sikorski

"This is not a war about NATO membership, which is a hypothetical possibility. This is the last gasp of Russian imperialism."

The Hon. Radosław Sikorski is a member of the European Parliament where he serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defense (SEDE). He also chairs the Delegation for relations with the United States. At Harvard University, he is a senior fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.
 
Prior to his election to the European Parliament in 2019, Sikorski served as minister of national defense of Poland from 2005 to 2007, minister of foreign affairs from 2007 to 2014, and marshal of the Sejm (speaker of Poland’s parliament) from September 2014 to June 2015. Sikorski is the author of several books, including Dust of the Saints and The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland. In 2012 he was named one of the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine “for telling the truth, even when it’s not diplomatic.”
 
Sikorski was a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola in 1986-89. In 1987, Sikorski won the World Press Photo award for a photograph taken in Afghanistan. As deputy minister of national defense in 1992, Radosław Sikorski initiated Poland’s NATO accession campaign. In 1998-2001 he served as deputy minister of foreign affairs of Poland and honorary chairman of the Foundation for Assistance to Poles in the East. From 2002 to 2005, he was resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.