claim: "First, you cannot establish a causal connection between liberalism and imprudent foreign policy by looking at only liberalism and imprudent foreign policy. Because Mearsheimer subjects no other ideology to the same scrutiny to which he subjects liberalism, there is no way to know whether liberalism stands out this regard.... Second, you cannot establish that a permissive systemic environment is a necessary condition by looking only at cases that occur in a permissive strategic environment." Wohlforth also argues that The Great Delusion is inconsistent with Mearsheimer's Tragedy of Great Power Politics: "Given that other great powers were destined to come back, and the theory’s stipulation that their preferences (i.e., revisionism) are independent of anything the U.S. does (because nothing the U.S. does can reduce their uncertainty about U.S. intentions, and vice-versa), why would a unipolar U.S. not seek to expand and lock in gains when it had the opportunity to do so?" Mearsheimer makes important reference to Laurence Lampert's nihilistic Strauss interpretation in his book "The Great Delusion". Ukraine Nuclear weapons and Ukraine After the end of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Ukraine had a large arsenal of nuclear weapons on its territory. However, in 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up nuclear arms and become a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; within two years, it had removed all atomic weapons. Almost alone among observers, Mearsheimer was opposed to that decision because he saw that Ukraine without a nuclear deterrent would likely be subjected to aggression by Russia. As early as 1993, he suggested that Ukraine should retain its nuclear weapons as a deterrent. 2014 Crimean crisis Mearsheimer had warned in 1993 that a nuclear-free Ukraine would remain exposed to the danger of Russian attempts at reconquest. In 2014, he retrospectively criticized the geopolitical reorientation of the United States under Bill Clinton since 1995 due to its monopolistic and hegemonic orientation. With the intention of weakening the government of Russia, he said, NATO was planned to be extended to Russia's borders. Accordingly, in an article in Foreign Affairs in August 2014, he assigned the main blame for the outbreak of the conflict to the United States and its Western allies.Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow