of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a “coup”—was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Mearsheimer thinks that those who believe that Russia has only been waiting for opportunities to annex Ukraine are mistaken. The U.S. and European political elites had been caught unprepared by the events "because they attach little importance to the logic of realism in the 21st century and assume that European unity and freedom can be guaranteed by means of liberal principles such as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy." Mearsheimer also thinks that in spite of being aware of Russia's rejectionist stance, a stance which is understandable given Russia's security interests, the U.S. would have pushed for the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO and supported the democratization of Ukraine anyway. Mearsheimer considers Putin's reaction understandable because Ukraine (as a non-aligned state) is "indispensable" as a buffer for Russia's security needs. Mearsheimer compared NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, led by NATO, and the planned inclusion of Ukraine into that alliance to a hypothetical scenario of there being a Chinese military alliance that planned to include countries in North America: "Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico." Mearsheimer argued in a piece for Foreign Affairs that Russia's annexation of the Crimea was fueled by concerns that it would lose access to its Black Sea Fleet naval base at Sevastopol if Ukraine continued to move towards NATO and European integration. Mearsheimer concluded that US policy should shift to recognize Ukraine as a buffer state between NATO and Russia, rather than attempt to absorb Ukraine into NATO. Mearsheimer's article provoked Michael McFaul and Stephen Sestanovich to publish their response in the November/December 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs. Mearsheimer sees NATO's eastward expansion as a dangerous provocation of Russia. He invokes George F. Kennan as one of the first critical admonishers who warned in 1998 of the danger of war as a result of eastward enlargement. Mearsheimer attributes the political mistakes to the lack of political realism or the great influence of the "liberal hegemony" school of thought in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The only sensible way out of the crisis, he