{"title": "The Realism of War and Mearsheimer | Mika Aaltola | Negotiator 170", "titleOriginal": "Sodan realismi Mearsheimer | Mika Aaltola | Neuvottelija 170", "episodeNumber": "170", "guest": "Mika Aaltola", "publishedAt": "2023-01-15", "duration": "54:30", "durationIso": "PT54M30S", "youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7JClr3pHnQ", "fiCanonical": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/249-sodan-realismi-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola-neuvottelija-170", "originalLanguage": "fi", "format": "full", "topics": ["geopolitics"], "description": "Mika Aaltola, director of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, goes through the first year of the war in Ukraine in diary form and marks where his own forecasts held and where they missed. The spine of the conversation is structural realism and Mearsheimer's sphere-of-influence thinking, which from a small state's vantage point is bleak and, historically, a poor predictor of stability. Aaltola also opens up the dynamics of Finland's NATO process, how Washington's signals should be read, and why public opinion turned before the political leadership did. He treats Russia's strategic culture as a durable structure and expects the war to end in a frozen conflict rather than a peace treaty.", "chapters": [], "sourceTranscriptType": "none", "subtitleMethod": "none", "provenance": "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. No chapter marks are published here: the publisher's list holds only two marks, at 0:00 and 0:80, and the second one's own text quotes a timestamp of 54:31 — it is a split of the show-note text rather than a chapter list, so republishing it would assert timestamps that do not hold. No transcript is published either — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. The episode is a running assessment recorded a year into the war; several of the forecasts in it have since been settled by events, and the long-form write-up in the Neuvottelija AI editions says which.", "coreTheses": ["Sphere-of-influence realism is a poor predictor of stability, and from a small state's position it is also a prescription for being traded away.", "Russia's strategic culture is a durable structure rather than one leader's preference, which is why its behaviour is more predictable than its rhetoric.", "In Finland's NATO process public opinion moved first and the political leadership followed, not the other way round.", "The likely end state is a frozen conflict, not a negotiated peace — which is a forecast about the shape of the settlement, not about who wins."], "slug": "ep170-sodan-realismi-ja-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola", "guestsCanonical": ["Mika Aaltola"], "guestPages": ["https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/guests/mika-aaltola/"], "page": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep170-sodan-realismi-ja-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola/", "markdown": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep170-sodan-realismi-ja-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola/index.md", "captions": null, "transcript": null, "videoId": "k7JClr3pHnQ", "dbId": null, "qaCoveragePct": 0.0, "qaSemanticVerdict": "metadata_only", "aiArticleEn": "https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep170-sodan-realismi-ja-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola/", "aiArticleFi": "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/yhteiskunta/ep170-sodan-realismi-ja-mearsheimer-mika-aaltola/"}