Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine

Andrey Makarychev, Alexandra Yatsyk, Andrey Makarychev, Alexandra Yatsyk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315457314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

1 ‘There are more important things than where the border runs’

The other side of George Kennan’s containment theory

Alexander Astrov

‘Containment’ is in fashion again, and for a good reason, it seems. Russian annexation of Crimea prompted a flurry of references to George Kennan and the strategy he proposed back in the 1940s. But long before that, in February of 2014, ‘containment’ was mentioned by Russian President Putin, as an ‘atavism’ of the Cold War still present in international relations.¹ In both cases, the meaning of ‘containment’ itself seems to be straightforward: Russian power is posing a threat to the West and has to be kept in check. In itself, the idea is so straightforward and simple that it hardly deserves the name ‘theory’ or even ‘doctrine’. After all, theories offer explanations while doctrines provide more-or-less detailed practical recommendations. Yet, references to Kennan and his brainchild acquire a different connotation once we recall what differentiated him from other policy-makers and theorists of his time.

As is well-known, Kennan’s article grew out of the ‘long telegram’ sent to Washington DC from the US Embassy in Moscow. The telegram, in turn, resulted from Kennan’s frustration with American policy-makers who still took the Soviet Union for an ally. As a result, a significant part of the article was focused on providing a detailed explanation of why Stalin’s Russia should be seen as a potential enemy. This is what both Putin and current advocates of containment in the West have in mind: The world as we thought – or at least spoke – of it since 1989 has changed; and in this new world Russia is playing a different role, that of a potential enemy. Attitudes towards this realization may differ radically from Moscow to Washington DC, but the realization itself is certainly in line with the original idea of ‘containment’.

In this manner, although containment is explicitly paired with the notion of change, it implicitly signals a possibility of finding a still point amid the flux of changes. After all, some things, Russia’s confrontation with the West among them, never change. Consequently, the Ukrainian crisis is presented as a continuation of a long-standing trend visible to the initiated at least since the Russo-Georgian war of 2008. References to Kennan are then meant not as a lesson in political analysis capable of uncovering processes hidden from a less attentive and experienced observer, but as a sign of membership in a club of ‘wise men’ who know what is afoot before even looking. Meanwhile a closer look only at Russian official rhetoric and only during the brief period between the Georgian and Ukrainian crises reveals concepts that are indeed in flux, dispelling any illusion of straightforward continuity. Most of the Russian statements during the Georgian war may be read as a demand for recognition; recognition that Russia, even when resorting to military force, is following the rules of the current international system; the same rules that led to the independence of Kosovo, for example. Since the annexation of Crimea, the rhetorical game played by the Kremlin has changed dramatically. Its main theme now is the collapse of any recognized set of rules governing the international system. In his speech on 18 March 2014, Putin claims that Russia’s

Western partners, led by the United States of America, prefer not to be guided by international law in their practical policies, but by the rule of the gun. They have come to believe in the exclusivity and exceptionalism, that they can decide the destinies of the world, that only they can ever be right.²

This view was echoed a year later by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Munich Security Conference: ‘it is impossible to agree with the arguments of some of our colleagues that there was a sudden and rapid collapse of the world order that had existed for decades’; instead, already for some time, ‘the world is…facing a drastic shift connected with the change of historical eras’.³ And during this interregnum there are no readily available rules by reference to which state-actions can be judged. Especially so when the state in question is a great power. The latter point has been prominent in Russian foreign-policy debates since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Even liberal reformers of Yeltsin’s era agreed that Russia cannot simply follow the rules imposed by others and has to devise a unique modus operandi appropriate for a ‘normal great power’.⁴

In fact, Russia’s own claim to exceptionalism is related to another side of containment, the one which is not so easy to identify, but also the one which throws into question current references to Kennan. Simply put: the world has changed indeed, and these changes, well under way already in Kennan’s times, go much deeper than the renewed hostility between Russia and the West. Kennan himself, it seems, was not particularly open to these changes; his position remained conservative in a rather orthodox way. This conservatism has certain emotional and intellectual appeal even now. Its practical relevance, however, is a different matter. So, in what follows, I shall briefly outline one aspect of Kennan’s original formulation of ‘containment’, and then move in a different, although not entirely unrelated, direction.

The direction I intend to take will move the argument not closer to today’s conflicts but back to the nineteenth century where, I believe, some of the important origins of Kennan’s own thinking about Russia are to be found. I will focus on three aphorisms by the Russian foreign minister Aleksandr Gorchakov. All three are related to Russia’s vision of itself as a great European power; a theme which has clear relevance at least for today’s Russian rhetoric, but some would claim – policies as well. I will then argue that Gorchakov’s aphorisms are seriously misunderstood if read anachronistically, and could have a different meaning for a nineteenth-century intellectual. Whether Gorchakov himself belonged to this group is questionable, but as Pushkin’s dedication to him in a famous poem attests, he was certainly well-attuned to the ‘spirit of the age’, at least as far as self-presentation was concerned. And self-presentation was not a trifling matter in the age in question. In fact, self-presentation, the central theme of one of Gorchakov’s aphorisms, will be my next point of discussion, this time drawing on the writings of Hegel. In putting Gorchakov and Hegel together I am following Martin Wight who did so in his discussion of great powers. However, in my reading, such pairing leads to conclusions radically different from Wight’s. If reconstructed, Hegelian discussion of recognition and greatness suggests a different reading of Gorchakov’s witticisms. On this reading, as Kennan argued, there are indeed ‘more important things’ in international politics, than containing potential enemies within clearly delineated borders.

A tiny flame of hope

There are a number of problems with recent appropriations of Kennan’s idea of containment. The most practically relevant and theoretically interesting of these concerns Russia’s status as a great power. Kennan’s original idea is premised on the resolute recognition of this status. Current proponents of containment are equally determined to resist Russia’s great-power ambitions and, perhaps, the very idea of great powerhood.⁵ Kennan’s insistence on Russia’s great power status, however, has to be distinguished from other, more recent, attempts to blame Russian intervention in Ukraine on the failings of the current international system. The most notable of such attempts is that of John Mearsheimer who argues, in line with his general neorealist outlook, that Russia’s actions were provoked by ‘liberal delusions’ rooted in the disregard of the balance of power, in turn measured in the distribution of material capabilities. Continuous enlargement of NATO and the EU was simply too much to swallow for any sensible great power left outside of these organizations. Consequently, first in Georgia and then in Ukraine, Russia reacted in accordance with what may be seen as a ‘covering law’ of international politics, trying to restore its systemic position through military action.⁶ Kennan, on the other hand, is deeply suspicious of the very existence of any covering laws of politics, stressing instead specific contextual configurations of power which can be only appreciated historically. In this, he is closer to another ‘traditionalist’ realist, Henry Kissinger, for whom the main spring of the Ukrainian crisis is to be found not so much in the timeless configuration of the international system, as in the particularities of Ukrainian–Russian relations forged over centuries.⁷ Yet, here as well there are differences. In the original version of his article ‘America and the Russian Future’ published in 1951, Kennan writes:

There are peoples of non-Russian ethnological character on the borders of the Great Russian family whose economic existence is intimately bound with that of the Great Russians. The future should see a minimum of disruption of these economic ties, and that in itself would normally warrant a close political connection.⁸

He singles out the Baltic states and Ukraine as ‘fully deserving’ international recognition as separate political entities, but then adds: ‘Ukraine is economically as much a part of Russia as Pennsylvania is a part of the United States. Who can say what the final status of the Ukraine should be unless he knows the character of the Russia to which the adjustment will have to be made?’⁹ In other words, historical connections and sentiments in themselves, no matter how strong or deeply ingrained, are no more powerful in determining the shape of international politics than systemic distribution of material capabilities. What matters is responsible political judgment, while ability to exercise such judgment for the benefit of global order as a whole is what distinguishes great powers from ‘bewildered linguistic groups’ preoccupied with ‘dreary and profitless manipulations with so-called national boundaries’:

There are more important things than where the border runs, and the first of these is that on both sides of it there should be tolerance and maturity, humility in the face of sufferings of the past and the problems of the future, and a realization that none of the important problems of the future for any of the peoples of Europe is going to be solved entirely, or even primarily, within the country’s national boundaries.¹⁰

According to Kennan, Soviet leadership was trained to think beyond its national borders – in fact, any national boundaries – by its Marxist ideology. However, just as the nascent economic elites of the late Russian empire, it lacked the tradition of responsibility and self-restraint; a deficiency further exacerbated by the expansionist drive of the ruling ideology. But then, again, ideology was not the only ‘source of Soviet conduct’. Already the title of Kennan’s most celebrated essay refers to such sources in the plural.¹¹ The other notable ‘source of Soviet conduct’ is Russian imperial legacy, surviving in the foreign policy of the USSR on its southern and eastern borders where traditional considerations of security effectively trump ideological crusading. Clearly distinguishing between these two different sources is crucial not only for the formulation of practical responses to Soviet exertions in different parts of the world – fighting back ideology by removing social conditions that make it attractive and using military force where territorial expansion is more likely to be at stake – it is also central for a comprehensive understanding of containment. Had Russia no experience of balancing the power of other states, it would have been impossible to play the balancing game with the Soviet Union; just like it would have been vain to hope for the emergence of political freedom in the Soviet Union, were there not a ‘tiny flame of faith and dignity and charity of man’ kept alight by Russian people ‘through their sacrifices and suffering’.¹²

Put differently, containment can only work with a powerful state like the Soviet Union if it is treated not merely as an object to be contained but, paradoxically, as an active subject of such strategy. To contain a great power is not to restrain it, but to induce it, if need be with the help of military force, to exercise self-restraint. This is why Kennan was repeatedly calling for the US to lead by example, setting as an example to be followed by others not its own political institutions or practices, but its willingness and ability to restrain itself.

Such understanding of containment, although far removed from the ‘strategy of containment’ as practiced by the US in the early stages of the Cold War, is clearly detectable in ‘traditionalist’ realism generally, although its specific formulations may differ significantly from one ‘traditionalist’ to another. One of its origins can be found in Max Weber’s ‘ethics of responsibility’.¹³ Interestingly, a version of it exists also in the Russian foreign-policy tradition exemplified by one of its most illustrious practitioners.

Greatness and power

It seems, Russian Chancellor Aleksandr Gorchakov was not interested in producing a body of ‘diplomatic theory’, limiting himself to a string of witty aphorisms. Still, even a quick perusal of the voluminous literature about him reveals the centrality of one notion: self-restraint. In its Russian version – sderzhannost’ – the word shares its root not only with ‘containment’ (sderzhivanie) but also with the ‘state’ (derzhava). The connection goes well beyond etymology; certainly so for Gorchakov.

His tenure as Russia’s foreign minister started under circumstances reminiscent of the recent episode in the Ukrainian crisis when Russian representative, Vladimir Lukin, was instrumental in reaching an agreement with embattled Ukrainian President Yanukovich but refused to sign it. Gorchakov was a member the Russian delegation at the Paris conference of 1856 but abstained from signing its final document; a gesture that resonated with the Emperor Nicholas I’s strong opposition to the treaty. It is possible to say that the rest of Gorchakov’s career was a single-minded effort at undoing the treaty that codified the outcome of the Crimean War. Gorchakov saw his task as not simply that of regaining the lost territories and access to the sea, but mostly returning Russia to the club of the European great powers. Yet, he realized, as did Nicholas I, that defeat in the Crimean War followed not so much from the inadequacies of Russian diplomacy but from the state’s relative lack of power. This lack of power was measured not in the amount of troops or munitions but in Russia’s technological and bureaucratic backwardness. In other words, just l...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. ‘There are more important things than where the border runs’: the other side of George Kennan’s containment theory
• 2. The crisis of spheres of influence in the EU–Russia relationship
• 3. Borderline strategies: Calibrated territorial expansionism in the game theory searchlight
• 4. From‘colony’ to ‘failing state’?: Ukrainian sovereignty in the gaze of Russian foreign policy discourses
• 5. Reconsidering western concepts of the Ukrainian conflict: the rise to prominence of Russia’s ‘soft force’ policy
• 6. Rising powers in the contemporary world: sources of sustainability
• 7. Governmentality beyond the West: (post)political machineries in Ukraine and Russia
• 8. Managing national ressentiment: morality politics in Putin’s Russia
• 9. Stabilizing dispersed identities, or why politics defines EU–Russia disconnections
• Index