He’s acting rationally in his own interests. Not those of Russia. He intends this war to consolidate his control and that of his faction over Russia.
Did you know Navalny’s court case has started? It should be front page news, but now it’s barely mentioned. That’s not directly why the invasion happened, the court case is probably timed by the invasion not the other way around, but there is a connection. Now anyone protesting against Putin will be anti war and therefore traitors. Sanctions will also consolidate his factions grip over the domestic economy, and provide an excuse to do away with the already flimsy rule of law in the economic arena.
Putin will install a pro Russian client government, like that in Belarus, and make allowing Ukraine to become ‘independent’ in name alone conditional on easing sanctions on Russia. The west will play along because there are no votes in not doing so.
May just be he's getting bad advice. He wouldn't be the first leader to end up surrounded by yes-men nodding in vehement agreement with everything he proposes. The usefulness of rationality depends a lot on your ability to see things as they are.
If he believes he will win this war, he may either do so on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel.
If he does not believe he will win this war, he may think he must on grounds of something we do not know, possibly bad intel. It could also be he doesn't want to win the war, for some reason we do not know.
That’s one of the main tenets of the realist school of IR theory that Mearsheimer is a major proponent of. States act in their own rational self-interest.
He’s also said that America shouldn’t have gotten involved in as many wars as they have. So clearly both the US and Russia have acted irrationally according to him.
Maybe he was overconfident. Surely he is more risk prone than his western counterparts which are extremely risk averse but that does not make A less rational than B, it's a different dimension
With the information we have at hand this invasion is nonsensical and a fiasco but Russia and China are information black boxes. The world is slowly opening eyes to China and Russia tyranny and now that the US left Iraq/Afghanistan and the West defeated Covid, the future is not so favorably for those that are cultural antagonists (democracy enemies). US economy is facing high inflation but there are rumors of China economy collapsing. It might be that Putin and Xi decided to escalate and show hands sooner than later.
I wouldn't be surprised by China invading Taiwan in the next weeks. Specially after NATO committing assets to deal with an ongoing humanitarian crisis far from the Pacific. As the Fallout franchise summarize: war never changes.
That’s exactly what Mearsheimer has been saying. He has said that it would be a terrible mistake for Russia to invade Ukraine.