Professor John Mearsheimer, ardent realist - especially about the war in Ukraine - has recently lectured the EU Parliament on its 'bleak future'.
[https://www.theamericanconservative.com/mearsheimer-europes-bleak-future]
This address was delivered to the European Parliament in Brussels on November 11, 2025.
Europe is in deep trouble today, mainly because of the Ukraine war, which has played a key role in undermining what had been a largely peaceful region. Unfortunately, the situation is not likely to improve in the years ahead. In fact, Europe is likely to be less stable moving forward than it is today.
His conclusion is worth quoting at length here:
I would like to close now with a few general observations. For starters, the Ukraine war has been a disaster. Indeed, it is a disaster that is almost certain to keep giving in the years ahead. It has had catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. It has poisoned relations between Europe and Russia for the foreseeable future, and it has made Europe a more dangerous place. It has also caused serious economic and political harm inside Europe and badly damaged trans-Atlantic relations.
This calamity raises the inevitable question: Who is responsible for this war? This question will not go away anytime soon, and if anything is likely to become more prominent over time as the extent of the damage becomes more apparent to more people.
The answer, of course, is that the U.S. and its European allies are principally responsible. The April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine into NATO, which the West has relentlessly pursued since then, doubling down on that commitment time after time, is the main driving force behind the Ukraine war.
Most European leaders, however, will blame Putin for causing the war, and thus for its terrible consequences. But they are wrong. The war could have been avoided if the West had not decided to bring Ukraine into NATO or even if it had backed off from that commitment once the Russians made their opposition clear. Had that happened, Ukraine would almost certainly be intact today within its pre-2014 borders, and Europe would be more stable and more prosperous. But that ship has sailed, and Europe must now deal with the disastrous results of a series of avoidable blunders.
Of course the EU parliament knows all this already and will take as much notice of it as a duck takes of water on its back.
In reality the war has been cleverly turned into an opportunity by desperate politicians as Europe and the UK now use it as an excuse to remilitarize and boost their economies with the production and sale of weapons while prancing around discussing their role as 'peacemakers' and ignoring growing tensions and problems at home.
Lots of European nations remilitarized in the 1930s and look what happened then.
Bleak is probably not the right word. Bust seems more like it.