Why do all these countries keep getting invaded by my troops?

Chotiner has round 2 with John Mearshimer, and while there’s plenty of wack stuff here allow me to present this remarkable exchange:

There was an argument about what Putin’s aims were, whether they were primarily imperial—about taking more land and integrating it into Russia—or whether they were about NATO expansion. And then the war starts, and, at least in the areas that he’s conquered, he seems to be pursuing the former goal. It feels a little unprovable to say, well, he’s only doing that now, not because the people saying so initially were right.

Well, first of all, there’s no evidence that he had imperial ambitions before the war. He would have had to say that it was desirable. There would have to be evidence that he had said that it was desirable to conquer Ukraine and incorporate it into Russia. There would have to be evidence that he had said it was feasible. And there would have to be evidence that he had said that that was what he was doing. And there is no evidence to support any of those.

Why would him saying one thing or the other before the war count as evidence necessarily?

Well—

Russia meddled in the 2016 Presidential election, but Putin says they didn’t. So what does that prove or not?

All we can do is base our judgment on what his intentions were on the available evidence.

See, a country invading another country without meaningful provocation and attempting to seize its territory is only “imperialism” if the leader gives a speech ex ante saying “I am doing an imperialism.” CHECKMATE LIBS!

And never, never go full Greenwald:

What about something like election interference, where Putin apparently told both Obama and Trump that he did not interfere in the election? How would we understand that?

Well, I don’t know whether the Russians interfered in the election in a serious way.

We don’t know that?

This is a highly disputed issue.

I didn’t realize it was highly disputed still. That’s why I was asking.

Well, there’s the whole question of whether the Russians broke into the D.N.C. computers and gave that information to Julian Assange.

Who broke into the D.N.C.? I haven’t been following the latest on who it was.

Look, I don’t know about this issue. I mean, you wanted to talk about Ukraine. You know what I mean? I would appreciate if you’d not use any of this discussion about the D.N.C. and so forth and so on. I mean, this is not my area of expertise.

Well, at least he realized too late that he was just regurgitating bullshit he absorbed from the anti-anti-Trump dark web, but he better time to realize he was better off keeping his mouth shut would probably have been when he saw Chotiner’s number on the caller ID.