1st Edition

Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine

Edited By Andrey Makarychev, Alexandra Yatsyk Copyright 2017
    184 Pages
    by Routledge

    184 Pages
    by Routledge

    The conflict in Ukraine and Russia's annexation of Crimea has undoubtedly been a pivotal moment for policy makers and military planners in Europe and beyond. Many analysts see an unexpected character in the conflict and expect negative reverberations and a long-lasting period of turbulence and uncertainty, the de-legitimation of international institutions and a declining role for global norms and rules. Did these events bring substantial correctives and modifications to the extant conceptualization of International Relations? Does the conflict significantly alter previous assumptions and foster a new academic vocabulary, or, does it confirm the validity of well-established schools of thought in international relations? Has the crisis in Ukraine confirmed the vitality and academic vigour of conventional concepts?



    These questions are the starting points for this book covering conceptualisations from rationalist to reflectivist, and from quantitative to qualitative. Most contributors agree that many of the old concepts, such as multi-polarity, spheres of influence, sovereignty, or even containment, are still cognitively valid, yet believe the eruption of the crisis means that they are now used in different contexts and thus infused with different meanings. It is these multiple, conceptual languages that the volume puts at the centre of its analysis.



    This text will be of great interest to students and scholars studying international relations, politics, and Russian and Ukrainian studies.

    Introduction

    Andrey Makarychev and Alexandra Yatsyk

    1. ‘There are More Important Things than Where the Border Runs’: The Other Side of George Kennan’s Containment Theory

    Alexander Astrov

    2. The Crisis of Spheres of Influence in the EU-Russia Relationship

    Iain Andrew Ferguson

    3. Borderline strategies: calibrated territorial expansionism in the game theory searchlight

    Mikhail Alexseev

    4. From ‘colony’ to ‘failing state’? Ukrainian sovereignty in the gaze of Russian foreign policy discourses

    Aliaksei Kazharski

    5. Reconsidering Western concepts of the Ukrainian conflict: The rise to prominence of Russia’s "soft Power" policy

    Stephen G F Hall

    6. Rising powers in the Contemporary World: Sources of Sustainability

    Irina Busygina

    7. Governmentality Beyond the West: (post)political machineries in Ukraine and Russia

    Alexandra Yatsyk

    8. Managing national ressentiment: morality politics in Putin’s Russia

    Gulnaz Sharafutdinova

    9. Stabilizing dispersed identities, or Why politics defines EU-Russia disconnections

    Andrey Makarychev

    Biography

    Andrey Makarychev is Guest Professor at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Science, University of Tartu, Estonia. He has published many books and research articles on a variety of topics related to Russian foreign policy.



    Alexandra Yatsyk is Visiting Researcher at the Centre Russian and Eurasian Studies, University of Uppsala, Sweden, and Head of the Centre for Cultural Studies of Post-Socialism, Kazan Federal University, Russia.

    "An exceedingly timely volume critically rethinking the most substantial concepts of international political theories and giving valuable insights for a better understanding of current EU’s and Russia’s policies after the Ukraine crisis." - Javier Solana, former Secretary General of NATO, the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy, Secretary General of the Council of the EU and Secretary-General of the Western European Union.