The book establishes marriage as a pervasive idiom for the construction of collective identity in Syria, which is appropriated by individuals, sects, states and intergovernmental organizations alike. ...Its conclusions are relevant to scholars of Middle East studies, sectarianism, anthropology and politics.”
The unravelling of the post-Cold War security order in Europe was both cause and consequence of the crisis in Ukraine. The crisis was a symptom of the three-fold failure to achieve the aspirations to ...create a 'Europe whole and free' enunciated by the Charter of Paris in 1990, the drift in the European Union's behaviour from normative to geopolitical concerns, and the failure to institutionalize some form of pan-continental unity. The structural failure to create a framework for normative and geopolitical pluralism on the continent meant that Russia was excluded from the new European order. No mode of reconciliation was found between the Brussels-centred wider Europe and various ideas for greater European continental unification. Russia's relations with the EU became increasingly tense in the context of the Eastern Partnership and the Association Agreement with Ukraine. The EU and the Atlantic alliance moved towards a more hermetic and universal form of Atlanticism. Although there remain profound differences between the EU and its trans-Atlantic partner and tensions between member states, the new Atlanticism threatens to subvert the EU's own normative principles. At the same time, Russia moved from a relatively complaisant approach to Atlanticism towards a more critical neo-revisionism, although it does not challenge the legal or normative intellectual foundations of international order. This raises the question of whether we can speak of the 'death of Europe' as a project intended to transcend the logic of conflict on the continent.
East vs. west: A new cold war? Sakwa, Richard
Transatlantic policy quarterly,
01/2022, Letnik:
21, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Cold War has returned to dominate international politics. Expectations that the
end of the Cold War in 1989 would lead to a more inclusive and comprehensive
peace seems to be practically failed, and ...instead, by 2014, the centenary of the
start of the First World War, Europe was once again wracked by conflict. On the
one side, the U.S.-led Political West shaped by the Cold War remained the main
protagonist. In contrast, on the other hand, a much-weakened Russia took the
place of the former Soviet Union, now accompanied by a China intent on restoring
its status as a great power. The article examines why a new cold war emerges
again, and analyses how such a ‘Cold War II’ differs from the original
The end of the Cold War was accompanied by the idea that the fall of the Berlin Wall represented the beginning of the unification of Europe. Mikhail Gorbachev talked in terms of a “Common European ...Home,” an idea that continues in the guise of the project for a “Greater Europe.” However, right from the start, the transformative idea of Greater Europe was countered by the notion of “Europe whole and free,” whose fundamental dynamic was the enlargement of the existing West European order to encompass the rest of the continent. This was a program for the enlargement of the Atlantic system. After some prevarication, the enlargement agenda proved unacceptable to Moscow, and while it continues to argue in favor of transformation its main efforts are now devoted to creating some sort of “greater Eurasia.” There remains a fundamental tension between Atlanticist and pan-continental version of the post-–Cold War international order in the region. This tension gave rise to conflict and war: in 2008 (the Russo-Georgian War) and again from 2014 (Ukraine), and to what some call the Second Cold War. The continent is once again divided. However, pan-continentalism is far from dead, and although Greater Eurasian ideas have thrived, some sort of Greater European continentalism remains on the agenda. Is this, though, no more than a “sad delusion” or a genuine possibility?
Europe and Models of Global Order Sakwa, Richard
Analele Universitatii din Oradea. Relatii internationale si Studii europene,
12/2020, Letnik:
2022
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
the collapse of the Soviet challenge and the victory of the Atlantic power system radicalised what came to be known as the „liberal international order‟, which effectively claimed to be synonymous ...with order itself. This resulted in a two-fold return swing of the pendulum: rethinking forms of national and social solidarity; and the shift towards more pluralist (multipolar) forms of international politics.
The Putin system is based on control and the ‘manual’ management of political processes. In part this was a response to what was perceived to be the ‘anarcho-democracy’ of the 1990s, but it was also ...an attempt to find a way of dealing with more immediate challenges of societal and political management. The regime devised a whole series of strategies for dealing with opposition, ranging from cooptation to coercion. The ideological framework was a distinctive form of neo-Soviet depoliticisation based on an inclusive ‘centrism’. This model of political management was challenged during the 2011–2012 electoral cycle by a mass protest movement and a degree of intra-elite political contestation. This was accompanied by the radicalisation of a traditionalist counter-movement accompanied by a revanchist spirit at the heart of Putin's centrist coalition, which spawned a range of restrictive legislation in the Sixth Duma from 2012. This essay examines the classic mode of Putinite political management and the challenges it has faced since Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. Both the Putin system and its opponents have become locked into a type of politics in which they feed off each other, reducing the potential for a breakthrough into a genuinely pluralistic and competitive system. At the same time, the very diversity of the new era of contentious politics has generated political pluralism in society, while the multifaceted regime response has combined coercion with elements of decompression. Contestation has taken place both within and between the regime and oppositional forces, creating opportunities for cross-cutting alliances and hostilities.
One Europe or None Sakwa, Richard
Debater a Europa,
01/2018
18
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The European post-Cold War order assumed monist forms. Instead of the geopolitical and ideological diversity sought by Mikhail Gorbachev as he brought the Cold War to an end in the late 1980s, a type ...of monist cold peace was imposed in which Atlantic security institutions and ideas were consolidated. The monism was both institutional and ideational, and the two reinforced each other in a hermetic order that sought to insulate itself from critique and transformation. Russia was excluded as anything but subaltern. The post-Cold War European peace order was thus built on weak foundations, provoking a cycle of mimetic rivalry. In Russia the fateful dialectic of external challenge and domestic stultification once again operated, heightening the Kremlin’s threat perceptions. Russia’s relations with the European Union (EU) and Washington veered between the cooperative and the confrontational, until settling into a conflictual mode in 2014, as it is argued in the article.
Over two decades have passed since the dissolution of the communist system and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 yet there is still no consensus over the causes and consequences of these ...epochal (and distinct) events. As for the causes, it is easy to assume that the fall was ‘over-determined’, with an endless array of factors. It behoves the scholar to try to establish a hierarchy of causality, which is itself a methodological exercise in heuristics. However, the arbitrary prioritisation of one factor over another is equally a hermeneutic trap that needs to be avoided. Following an examination of the various ‘why’ factors, we focus on ‘what’ exactly happened at the end of the Soviet period. We examine the issue through the prism of reformulated theories of modernisation. The Soviet system was a sui generis approach to modernisation, but the great paradox was that the system did not apply this ideology to itself. By attempting to stand outside the processes which it unleashed, both society and system entered a cycle of stagnation. The idea of neo-modernisation, above all the idea that societies are challenged to come to terms with the ‘civilisation of modernity’, each in their own way, provides a key to developments. In the end the Soviet approach to this challenge failed, and the reasons for this need to be examined, but the challenge overall remains for post-communist Russia.
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