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Russia, Ukraine and the Eastern Partnership: From common neighborhood to spheres of influence?
Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of the most recent changes in Russian foreign policy that became a matter of global concern in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis. The author advocates for a discourse-based approach to comprehend the new shifts in Russia’s international posture. First, Russia has launched its own normative policies that incorporate a set of conceptual arguments, such as portraying Ukraine and Russia as allegedly bound by civilizational ties. Second, Russia is not only unilaterally imposing its power; it is also exploiting the opportunities for raising its role, which are embedded in the structure of its relations with post-Soviet states. Third, Russia’s policies are largely inconclusive and inconsistent, which is conducive to the dispersal of hegemonic discourse and its potential fragmentation.
... East Germany. Indeed, the prevailing view in the Putin regime-and one which is more intensively selffulfilling since the Maidan revolution-is that Ukraine is a failed state (Makarychev 2014). Ionita highlights that "hybrid warfare theory" is a new form of warfare that encompasses "a unique combination of hybrid threats" in the shape of "failed states and non-state actors sponsored by states " (2014, 61). ...
... The question of ultimate motivation is germane regarding the potential for preventing an escalatory conflict spiral. Russia's motivation is a topic of debate; Markarychev, for example, argues that Moscow's actions in Ukraine since 2014 are ultimately defensive reactions to Western influence expansion (Makarychev 2014). The thesis of this essay is that what the international community calls hybrid warfare is partly an accommodation of intensely competitive state actors in the nuclear era to the challenge of national mobilization and self-determination. ...
Conceptualization of soft power as influence deriving from attraction benefits from an application of a theoretical framework that accommodates the importance of nationalism. The drive for self-determination of national minorities often arbitrarily placed within state borders receives support from competing great power actors, intensifying conflict. External powers are more likely to respond to local client solicitations for backing against the latter's adversary as the local contestants strive for supremacy or separation. This pattern has intensified in the nuclear era as direct great power conflict has become too dangerous to accommodate. Ukraine is a scene for this competitive interference in the post-Cold War era. Lay media and academic publications today label this familiar pattern of intervention hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare is an attempt at a smart power strategy, i.e., the effective application of both hard and soft power instruments to achieve state actor objectives. Pan-Slavism is an idealized symbol set that elites in Slavic polities use in transnational appeals to public opinion in justifying pursuit of policy objectives in other Slavic, targeted polities. This appeal lacks a politically significant response regarding impact on target polity foreign policy trends. Pan-Slavism is today an indicator of the decaying legacy networks of pan-Communist-era control systems. © 2017 Common Ground Research Networks, Benedict E. DeDominicis, All Rights Reserved.
... From one point of view, studies show that Ukrainians tend to avoid political choices based on ethnicity or language (Erlich & Garner, 2021), being accommodated to an existing difference (Wanner, 2014). However, the current foreign policy implemented by Russia tends to reunite the "fragmented world of Russian-speakers" (Makarychev, 2014), and to protect the Russian language (Tsygankov, 2015). At present, we can see that the Russian government sees the ethnic and linguistic diaspora as a potential supporting force for its foreign policy (Lange-Ionatamišvili, 2015). ...
... However, the decline of violence in Yugoslavia eased tension between the US and Soviet states. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US and Russia found themselves closely tied on a common critical issue, as they both perceived Islamic extremist violence as an immediate danger (Makarychev, 2014). In response, NATO established a new NATO-Russia Council (NRC), offering Russia more cooperation in NATO policies (Åtland, 2016). ...
NATO and the Warsaw Pact designate the US's and Soviet's spheres of influence by depicting how they have worked toward maintaining and expanding their spheres of influence. US uses collective security measures in NATO served to situate the European nations, both Western and Eastern, to expand its sphere of influence under the US nuclear umbrella. However, Russia continues to utilise various non-state and state levers of authority to enlarge its sphere of influence and cause damage to former Warsaw Pact members who are opting to join NATO, such as Ukraine and Georgia. Notably, Russia’s attack on Ukraine demonstrates the former’s unwillingness to cooperate with other NATO member states in promoting peace. Therefore, geopolitics are central in understanding US and Soviet spheres of influence.
... However, what Russia must acknowledge is that Turkey, China, the EU, and NATO also have legitimate roles to play in the post-Soviet arena. 32 The EU, instead of pushing Turkey into the arms of the Eurasian Union and Shangai Five, must increase foreign policy coordination with Turkey especially in a crisis like the Crimean one. Coordinating Turkey-EU policy can only truly be facilitated by meaningful progress in Turkey's process of accession to the EU. ...
Throughout history, the Crimean Tatars have challenged Russian aggression by utilizing two main strategies: engaging and confronting. Since its annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Russia has left no room for engagement and has demanded the complete submission of the Crimean Tatar population. This article argues that the Crimean Tatars should not yield to Russian demands, but rather pursue an integrated policy aimed at rallying potential allies such as Turkey, Ukraine, and the EU around their cause, lobbying through their diaspora organizations, and advocating for their human rights through non-violent means. In addressing Turkey's conflicting allegiances to the EU and the Crimean Tatars on the one hand and a burgeoning strategic and economic partnership with Russia on the other, the author argues that Turkey has the capacity to address this challenge creatively, rather than reacting to involved actors.
Kafkasya ve Karadeniz doğudan batıya uzanan enerji hatları açısından önemli bölgelerdir. Gürcistan ve Ukrayna ise bu bölgelerin hem NATO’nun hem de AB’nin güvenlik güvenlik politikalarında kritik bir konuma sahip ülkelerindendir. Söz konusu ülkeler gerek Batının enerji güvenliğini sağlamak gerekse Asya’nın batıya açılımını kontrol etmek için kilit noktalardan biridir. Bu noktalar aynı zamanda Rusya’nın yakın çevresinde yer almaktadır. 2008 Rusya–Gürcistan Savaşı ve 2014 Ukrayna Krizi, Rusya’nın Kafkasya, Karadeniz ve Doğu Avrupa gibi bölgelerde Sovyetler’in dağılmasından sonra meydana gelen güç boşluğunun kendisi dışında bir aktör tarafından doldurulmasına müsaade etmeyeceğini göstermiştir. Her ne kadar ABD ve AB günümüze kadar yumuşak güç kullanarak bölgede varlık göstemeye çalışmışsa da Rusya bunun karşılığında sert güç kullanmaktan çekinmemiştir. Bu izlenim dünyada Rusya ile ABD arasında yeni bir soğuk savaşın başladığını düşündürmüştür. Bu araştırma, somut veriler ışığında Rusya ile ABD arasında yaşananların mevcut uluslararası statükoyu bozma ve yeni bir soğuk savaşa yol açma potansiyelini incelemeyi hedeflemektedir. Bu kapsamda Rusya’nın süper güç statüsüne yükselme ihtimali ve AB’nin muhtemel tepkileri de araştırılan konular arasındadır.
Can residents of Ukraine discern between pro-Kremlin disinformation and true statements? Moreover, which pro-Kremlin disinformation claims are more likely to be believed, and by which audiences? We present the results from two surveys carried out in 2019—one online and the other face-to-face—that address these questions in Ukraine, where the Russian government and its supporters have heavily targeted disinformation campaigns. We find that, on average, respondents can distinguish between true stories and disinformation. However, many Ukrainians remain uncertain about a variety of disinformation claims’ truthfulness. We show that the topic of the disinformation claim matters. Disinformation about the economy is more likely to be believed than disinformation about politics, historical experience, or the military. Additionally, Ukrainians with partisan and ethnolinguistic ties to Russia are more likely to believe pro-Kremlin disinformation across topics. Our findings underscore the importance of evaluating multiple types of disinformation claims present in a country and examining these claims’ target audiences.
Case study 2 investigates the representation of national identities and the reporting of the Ukrainian conflict over the time span covered by the AVNews Corpus. It focuses on one of the most dramatic moments of the war in Eastern Ukraine, that is the ceasefire deal reached in February 2015, paying attention to the conflict and the collective identities involved in it. This corpus-based analysis tries to triangulate the results from each sub-corpus, alternating quantitative and qualitative fine-grained analysis, in order to identify who are the actors of this conflict and how broadcasters reveal their stance on the conflict itself by simply giving names to it. By focusing on how this conflict has been labelled by Western Media, case study 2 intends to show how translation can be used to support or dismiss views and claims on either side of the conflict. Indeed, being a form of “relayed communication” (M. Baker in Translation and conflict: A narrative account. Routledge, London, 2006), translation also “appears as the arena par excellence to reconfigure and ‘reframe’ existing discourse through more or less subtle shifts” (Spiessens & Van Poucke in The Translator 22:319–339, 2016, p. 322).
The category of a national interest is one of the most popular notions used in international relations. It has a polysemic character and is differently interpreted by various scientific perspectives. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief analysis of selected approaches of the theory of international relations to defining interests and correlating the interpretations of national interests of the Russian Federation performed on their bases. The choice of case study concerning the foreign policy of the Russian Federation is not accidental because in countries aspiring to gain world power the concept of national interest is raised while explaining the motives of decisions taken by their leaders exceptionally often. In this article, Russia’s interests will be discussed in reference to the annexation of the Crimea and Russia’s actions towards Ukraine. Those events vividly show the specificity of defining the national interests, based on one hand on the pursue to being a powerhouse and understanding the interests in the category of power and, on the other hand, resulting from the political identity of Russian elites. As a result, an assessment of the scientific utility of selected theoretical paradigms and their use in the analyses of Russia’s foreign policy will be outlined.
The acceptable fact is that the relationship between the EU and Russia is famously characterized with conflict and cooperation. In a real life situation, conflict may engender cooperation, while cooperation also has the potential to degenerate into conflict. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union heralded the beginning of a new form of relationship between the EU and Russia, on the one hand, and between the United States and Moscow, on the other hand. In this conflict-cooperation paradigm of the EU-Russia relations, trust plays an important role. It is improbable to expect that a robust relationship would exist between Brussels and Moscow in a diplomatic atmosphere characterized with distrust and clash of foreign policy. In this regard, however, Brussels and Moscow seem to possess and pursue policies that are equidistant from each other. While Moscow tends to press for political relevance in Europe, Brussels attempts to confine Moscow to its Eastern borderlines. The article, therefore, describes the not-entirely-new but less-explore dimension of the EU-Russia relations: soft-containment vs. politics of relevance by tracing the process of engagement between the two actors (the EU and Russia) since the collapse of the Soviet Union using a qualitative method of research.
Key words: soft-containment, politics of relevance, post-Soviet space, EU, Russia
In traditional power analysis, 'the international' is a characteristic of the states system - an anarchic realm, qualitatively different from the domestic. To traditional norms analysis, the international is increasingly a realm of shared value allocation, akin to other political realms. Given this bifurcation in the literature, privileging power incurs the cost of not being able to study systemic change of the international, whereas privileging norms incurs the cost of not being able to study power. We argue that extant conceptualisations of the international hail from Weber via Morgenthau, for whom international politics was an ideal type applied to the realm between states. Building on Mike Williams's work, we perform a new reading of these two scholars. We find that Morgenthau's identification of the political as an ideal-typical sphere has room for social theoretical insights as found in constructivist theory. Indeed, by his own Weberian lights, Morgenthau's specific ideal type of international politics is in need of updating. We try to rise to the challenge by drawing on Michel Foucault's work in order to forge an understanding of the international as governmentality. The result is a conceptualisation of the international as a socially embedded realm of governmentality. It is a structure (defined by relations of power) that generates different and changing practices of political rule (defined as governmental rationality) and agencies (for example, polities).
Foucault's critique of early modern political theory aimed at displacing sovereignty as the principle of intelligibility of power. In the genealogical literature since Foucault, sovereignty has become a residual category lacking analytic specificity, largely displaced by governance, in turn equated with politics. We argue that Foucault and the Foucauldians have not understood that the flourishing of governance has presupposed a symbolic regime with a division of knowledge-power-law characteristic of the democratic sovereign. The conflation of governance with politics, together with the sliding of sovereignty under governance, has left Foucauldians unable to diagnose the dangers present in varying possible sovereignty-governance configurations.
The discourse on EU–Russia relations amongst practitioners, think-tank experts, journalists and academics has congealed around a postmodern–modern binary. It is frequently argued that whereas Russia is caught up in a ‘modern’ framework of fixed territory, national identity and traditional geopolitics, the European Union is driven by a ‘postmodern’ spatial mindset that transcends these ‘backward’ values. This article argues that the EU's supposed postmodern geopolitics remains enmeshed in a very modern temporality—a consciousness of time that valorises the present over the past. It also detects a problematic disillusion with the postmodern and questions its implicit normativity.
Outlining the century-old debates about 'What is Russia?', this article - by drawing on a variety of sources such as fiction, culture, cartoons and identity - shows how Russian and Western answers to this question have impacted on each other. To do so, the article first examines the extent to which Russian society - ever since the Mongolian Yoke - has been culturally torn between Westerniser and anti-Westerniser positions. It then complements the insights into Russia's self-reflective identity formation in two ways: by illustrating how Russia, in the West, has become portrayed as a caricature of the Western consciousness and by demonstrating how the Russian 'Self', in return, has been defined through the prism of Western expectations. The Author(s), 2010.