Post-Soviet Conflict Potentials

Cindy Wittke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032304014
• eBook ISBN: 9781000641127
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Instead of resurrecting old images and nourishing new narratives about a 'New Cold War', Post-Soviet Conflict Potentials features politically and legally oriented critical investigations into conflict potentials and dynamics in the post-Soviet region and beyond.

Contributions coming from the disciplinary perspectives of international relations, international law, and comparative political science are linked to investigations dealing with international, transnational, regional and local levels of the dynamics between conflict and cooperation in the region. Despite the diversity of perspectives, the authors of this volume take a shared critical view on an alleged 'New Cold War' as their point of departure, observing that contemporary post-Soviet conflict potentials are produced through various discursive practices ranging from intentional choices of belligerent language to unintentional misinterpretations. The chapters in this volume seek to shed light on conflict potentials from different angles as well as on processes that increase or decrease the probability of political and violent conflicts in the post-Soviet region.

Together, the authors offer individual and shared outside-the-box approaches to the study of conflict dynamics and potentials in the post-Soviet space. The book draws connections to conflict potentials on the cross-regional and global levels, providing varied perspectives on what can be learned in and from the post-Soviet region.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

Conflict Over Peace? The United States’ and Russia’s Diverging Conceptual Approaches to Peace and Conflict Settlement

EVGENIYA BAKALOVA & KONSTANZE JÜNGLING

Abstract

Peace remains a highly contested analytical and political concept. Yet scholarly engagement with the empirical diversity of how states understand peace is strikingly rare. Following the constructivist view of peace as a subjective ontology, we investigate the peace conceptualisations of Russia and the United States as reflected in the contentious discourses at the United Nations Security Council. We seek to reveal whether the political debates reflect the plurality of analytical approaches to peace and study the conflict potentials that arise from clashes between conceptual subject positions. We find substantive divergence in the states’ basic understandings of peace and argue that the investigation of their respective conceptions opens an additional and much-needed perspective on the political discord between the two veto powers.

Half a century ago, Georg Picht wrote ‘it is a characteristic feature of peace—that it cannot be defined’, implying that the controversy over which type of societal order constitutes peace is itself the object of all political conflicts (Picht 1975, p. 46). The ongoing academic debates among scholars of peace research and international relations (IR) theory over the meaning and characteristics of peace confirm the validity of this quote. In his analysis of perspectives on peace in IR theory, Oliver P. Richmond noted that any discussion of peace is susceptible ‘to collapse under the weight of its own ontological subjectivity’ (Richmond 2008, p. 5). It is little wonder, then, that the academic literature has not come up with a uniform definition or approach. At the same time, the theoretical controversy has not been complemented by any systematic attempts to empirically investigate the subjective understandings of peace employed by different actors in specific conflict situations.¹ This research gap is surprising, since ‘the definition of the (peace) conflict term is ultimately a declaration of intent concerning the (peace) conflict strategy to be pursued’ (Bühl 1976, p. 136f, as cited in Schwerdtfeger 2001, p. 28). Examination of the ‘contested discourse’ on peace could, furthermore, provide insights into ‘how multiple and competing visions of peace may … give rise to conflict’ (Richmond 2007, p. 251). The identified research gap has received little attention in the literature to date, but it raises four important questions that we seek to address here. First, is the plurality of conceptual definitions of peace also reflected in the political debates on conflict settlement? Second, are these different understandings invoked consistently or on a situational basis? Third, what are the inter-linkages between the actors’ understandings of peace and their preferred conflict resolution approaches? Fourth, what conflict potentials arise from clashes of conceptual subject positions?

Almost two decades ago, James M. Skelly criticised the prevailing reliance on politicised paradigms in peace research and called for a constructivist approach that would move peace studies away from idealised normative conceptions and towards the study of political communication and discourses on peace (Skelly 2002). Richmond later questioned the seeming existence of a broad international political and academic ‘liberal peace’ consensus and called for examining peace as a ‘subjective ontology, as well as a subjective political and ideological framework’ (Richmond 2007, p. 251). Contemporary social constructivist approaches to peace and conflict proceed from the assumption that there is no single objective or normative view of peace, but many subjective, actor-specific ‘peaces’. Consequently, from the constructivist viewpoint, multiple ‘identity- and interest-based’ understandings of peace are ‘deployed for others, on a normative and interest base, which may well fluctuate over time’ (Richmond 2016, p. 60). These understandings are reflected within contentious political discourses that themselves play ‘an integral role in the outbreak, conduct, and disputation of armed political conflict’ (Hodges 2013, p. 3).

Adopting a constructivist approach, we aim to investigate understandings of peace that have been verbally invoked by official representatives of the Russian Federation and the United States at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). We focus primarily on the debates around four recent and/or ongoing violent conflicts: the Russian–Georgian Five-Day War of 2008, the crisis in Libya and the NATO intervention of 2011, the civil war in Syria in the years 2011–2014 and, lastly, the conflict in and over Ukraine shortly before and after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. We also draw evidence from the 2012–2016 UNSC discussions of the situations in Haiti, Mali, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo to assess the stability and consistency of specific ‘peace’ and ‘conflict narratives’. Much has already been written about the different positions of the United States and Russia, their possible underlying motivations, and their divergent interests and capabilities in relation to the aforementioned conflicts. This essay applies a different analytical lens, taking an initial step towards descriptive empirical analysis of the different actors’ diverging conceptual understandings of peace and investigating the resulting discursive conflict potentials.

The essay first summarises the theoretical debates on the concept of peace and outlines the diversity of conceptualisations existing within peace research and IR literature. The outlined analytical debate provides a basis for the conceptual framework of our content analysis, which is described in more detail in the section on methodology. Subsequently, we analyse the peace and war narratives of Russia and the United States, as represented in the actors’ speech acts at the UNSC. By examining the most salient issues raised during the debates, we outline the respective states’ basic conceptualisations of peace and peace strategies with a special focus on their dispositions regarding the use of force. In the second empirical section we contrast these subjective conceptualisations in each particular conflict and look at the consistency of and inter-linkages between the actors’ peace conceptions and their voiced preferences for appropriate peace strategies, as well as the resulting discursive discord. We conclude by summing up the main findings in view of our four research questions and reflecting on the broader implications of the conceptual disagreement over the basic understandings of peace.

Conceptual debates on peace: the basic dichotomy

It has been argued that mainstream IR theories, being preoccupied with state-centred concepts of power, status, control, domination and violence, tend to concentrate primarily on the problems of war (Richmond 2016, p. 57) and routinely ignore the question of peace, even though ‘peace, in a way, is more a norm in international relations than is war’ (Beyer 2018, p. 87). Critical studies ranging from post-structuralism to feminism have repeatedly explicated and addressed the omnipresence of war, violence and power struggles in theoretical and practical thinking on politics and international relations. However, despite multiple appeals and attempts to develop a unifying and inclusive vision or concept of peace (Richmond 2008, pp. 149–65; Beyer 2018), the academic controversy remains and—should one follow the discursive approach—will remain unresolved. The overall debate over the definition of peace largely revolves around one basic conceptual dichotomy: negative/narrow versus positive/broad. This dichotomy frames the more specific discussions about the temporal, geographical and referential dimensions of peace. There are broader, politically and ideologically laden and contextually rooted conceptualisations—such as ‘democratic peace’, ‘liberal peace’, ‘constitutional peace’, ‘institutional peace’, ‘civil peace’—but we have deliberately opted to concentrate on this basic formal distinction for the sake of generalisability, comparability and normative neutrality. We acknowledge that the multiplicity of approaches is not exhausted by this brief summary. Still, the analytical conceptualisations sketched out here provide the basis for the conceptual framework of our empirical investigation.

The negative versus positive dichotomy lies at the heart of the theoretical debate on peace and revolves around the question of whether it is defined via negation, that is, as the absence of war, or affirmatively, by outlining the specific characteristics of peace (Huber 1971, p. 40). Johan Galtung was one of the first scholars to elaborate the problem of the oversimplified war/peace binary, in which peace is conceptually subordinated to war (Hodges 2013, p. 12). He proposed a disaggregated view in which ‘negative peace is the absence of violence and war, and positive peace is the integration of human society’ (Galtung 1964, p. 2). The distinction might appear obvious and straightforward, yet it is not unproblematic: the negative conceptualisation lacks an integrating goal or vision perceived as desirable beyond the mere absence of war, while positive peace can be arbitrarily assigned whatever meaning one prefers (Meyers 1994, pp. 66, 68) and runs the risk of universalising particularistic worldviews through the premature specification of the positive contents of peace (Huber 1971, p. 43).

The narrow versus broad dichotomy is closely connected to the debate over positive and negative peace; indeed, the terms are often used synonymously. Here, however, the conceptual meaning of peace is inherently tied to the relevant understanding of violence. According to Galtung, who suggested that ‘an extended concept of violence leads to an extended concept of peace’ (Galtung 1969, p. 183), violence is present whenever human beings are influenced in such a way that their ‘actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations’ (Galtung 1975, p. 9). Consequently, peace can be defined through the absence of direct, collective violence, or of more indirect forms of oppression, namely, structural violence manifested in social injustices (Galtung 1975, p. 13). The broad understanding provides a holistic perspective on the phenomenon of peace, within which it becomes impossible to conceive of an unjust political regime as peaceful (Müller 2003, pp. 209–16). Yet precisely because of its broadness, this conceptualisation can quickly become imprecise and ‘meaningless’ (Brock 2002, p. 99; Müller 2003, pp. 209–16).

While the negative/narrow versus positive/broad dichotomy might appear oversimplified, it largely structures more specific conceptual debates pertaining to the characteristic features and dimensions of the ‘preferred’ definition of peace. One such debate concerns its temporal dimension, that is, whether peace is only conceivable in the long term, or whether short-term, temporarily limited peace can also be viewed as such. Under a positive and broad conception, peace is necessarily long term. However, proponents of a narrow understanding would likewise agree that peace has to be somewhat durable, since ‘peace presupposes a certain degree of stability; a “second-long peace” is absurd’ (Müller 2003, p. 219). Similarly, Ernst-Otto Czempiel argued that negative peace, if taken seriously, could be quite demanding because it ‘does not denominate the avoidance of war, as has been successfully pursued for forty years in the East–West Conflict, or the temporal absence of armed hostilities, but their permanent elimination’ (Czempiel 2002, p. 85).

As in the case of peace durability, the geographical scope of peace is mainly debated by proponents of a narrow and negative definition. Advocates of a positive and broad understanding would regard divisible, regional peace as a contradictio in adiecto, because peace can only be truly stable as a whole, that is, as world peace. By comparison, proponents of a narrow conception are divided on the issue. The source of contention is the question of interconnectedness and interdependency. Thus, Brock has argued that the existing ‘markets of violence’ (Gewaltmärkte), or spaces of commercialised violence, are making it increasingly difficult for OECD states to isolate themselves from conflicts on the periphery of the so-called ‘OECD peace’ (Brock 2002, p. 107). Müller, on the other hand, has insisted that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Post-Soviet Conflict Potentials
• 1 Conflict Over Peace? The United States’ and Russia’s Diverging Conceptual Approaches to Peace and Conflict Settlement
• 2 The Politics of International Law in the Post-Soviet Space: Do Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia ‘Speak’ International Law in International Politics Differently?
• 3 Evolving Dynamics of Societal Security and the Potential for Conflict in Eastern Ukraine
• 4 A Critical Political Cosmopolitanism for Conflict De-escalation: The Crimean Example
• 5 Accepting Alien Rule? State-Building Nationalism in Georgia’s Azeri Borderland
• Afterword
• Index