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2. IMperial or Colonial: The War is Fought Over The Soviet Past an A Broken Relationship
- Author:
- Li Bennich-Bjorkman
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
- Institution:
- Transatlantic Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
- Abstract:
- Russia is trying, through its bombs, attacks, and brutality, to erase what Ukraine was. Therefore, it is a war effort to keep remembering how Ukraine in peace looked like, how it smelled, tasted, and felt. And to never forget that this is a war against Ukraine, in its own right. Not as a representative of the West, and not as a representative of democracy. But because Ukraine is of such importance to Russia, that a break between the two is unthinkable for Putin. That was what Leonid Kravchuk, the Ukrainian president, realized already in 1991. He, and Ukrainian leaders after him, tried to protect their territory while at the same time reassuring Russia that relations could still be friendly. But Russia has never changed in a similar way
- Topic:
- Imperialism, Military Strategy, Colonialism, Conflict, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
3. Rebuilding "Greater Russia" and the Invasion of Ukraine
- Author:
- Roger E Kanet
- Publication Date:
- 06-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Turkish Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
- Institution:
- Transatlantic Policy Quarterly (TPQ)
- Abstract:
- This article examines Vladimir Putin's commitment to rebuilding "Greater Russia" and its implications in the context of the invasion of Ukraine. Putin's vision involves re-establishing the former Soviet Union and extending Russian dominance beyond its borders, fueled by a belief in the historical and cultural ties between Russians and Ukrainians. The article explores Russia's assertive and unilateralist approach to international politics, its military interventions in neighboring countries, and the justifications used to expand Moscow's control over former Soviet territories. Highlighting the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and its devastating consequences, the author raises questions about Putin's long-term goals and whether they involve recreating "Greater Russia" or countering perceived threats from the West and neighboring states. The author contends that despite other factors that might play a role in influencing Russian policy, the re-establishment of Moscow’s influence/ control over as much post-Soviet territory as possible – the recreation of “Greater Russia” -- is the most important role – not NATO expansion, although it no doubt was an issue. If the Russians are successful in dominating Ukraine, other former Soviet areas – for example, the Baltics – are likely to become targets of future expansion.
- Topic:
- Security, Imperialism, Hegemony, Power, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
4. Rhodes Must Fall: The Legacy of Cecil Rhodes in the University of Oxford
- Author:
- Emma Day
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Case Study
- Institution:
- Oxford Centre for Global History
- Abstract:
- On 9 June 2020, more than a thousand people gathered in central Oxford demanding that Oriel College remove the statue of imperialist and mining magnate, Cecil Rhodes. Congregating in defiance of the Covid-19 pandemic, protesters drew renewed attention to the long-standing struggle to decolonise education and tackle institutional racism at British and South African universities. They also knelt with fists raised for over nine minutes in tribute to George Floyd, a man whose recent murder at the hands of Minneapolis police marked only the latest atrocity in a long history of racialised violence in the United States. Amid the local and global reckonings over race and racism taking place in the wake of Covid-19 and Floyd’s murder, the 2020 Rhodes Must Fall protest marked the latest iteration in a fight to remove Rhodes from campuses that began over five years earlier.1 In 2014, after completing his master’s degree at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, Ntokozo Qwabe won a Rhodes scholarship to study a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) degree at Keble College, University of Oxford. Qwabe arrived in Oxford amid growing calls for the removal of the statue of Rhodes back home. UCT students argued that Rhodes’s monument embodied the pervasive white privilege at the university, and that tackling those problems required removing his oppressive figure from campus. On 9 March 2015, students accelerated their demands for change. Political science student Chumani Maxwele hurled excrement at Rhodes’s statue. Others occupied UCT offices and posted the hashtag #RhodesMustFall to publicise their campaign on Twitter. One month later, UCT removed Rhodes’s statue from campus, inaugurating the Rhodes Must Fall movement. Although Rhodes fell in Cape Town, he remained standing at the University of Oxford. The abundance of tributes to Rhodes at the university may have surprised South African students arriving in Oxford, left wondering why Cecil Rhodes still enjoyed such an outsized public representation at one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious universities. Moreover, with Oxford’s own issues of institutional racism rooted in colonialism and slavery, South African students questioned why the many monuments to Rhodes did not provoke anger among Oxford’s staff and student body. After demanding that Rhodes fall in Cape Town, and asking, why not in Oxford, Qwabe brought the anti-colonialist movement to his new university.
- Topic:
- Imperialism, Capitalism, History, and Cecil Rhodes
- Political Geography:
- Europe and England
5. Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine: Concept, Ideology, Objectives, Means, Consequences
- Author:
- Plamen Pantev
- Publication Date:
- 02-2023
- Content Type:
- Research Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Security and International Studies (ISIS)
- Abstract:
- The study tries to outline interim conclusions about the concept, the ideology, the objectives and the tools used by the Russian federation in this barbaric war of attrition against Ukraine – a war of a nuclear superpower against a smaller neighbouring country. The study does not aim to analyse the strange way the war is developing – Russians carry on military attacks in both a regular and terrorist manner 7 on the whole territory of Ukraine, while the Ukrainians are deterred to counter-attack the aggressor on the latter’s own territory and to fight with longer-range arms even on their own land. The author understands how many issues from the theoretic fields of international relations, foreign, security and defense studies need to be considered to understand in a holistic way the final result of the interaction of domestic Russian, international, political, economic, governance, psychological and other problems that led to launching an aggressive and devastating war in the European continent by Moscow. The purpose of the study is not to outline the avalanche of mistakes in the policy of the collective West towards a showing for decades signs of revenge imperialist Russia. Neither it aims to point to the multitude of military mistakes by the aggressor in the last year. The aim of the study is to outline and discuss the concept, the ideology, the objectives and the means of the Russian aggression. Revealing the Nazi-like behaviour of the Russian leadership and its armed forces could serve to construct the broader picture of the developing conflict and learn how to prevent a similar invasion by Moscow. The study aims to prove that the legal and moral consequences of the war will be the conviction of the aggressor for the genocide and the war crimes. This would be the only possibility for normalising the life of the Ukrainians and the Russians as well as of the broader international relations system.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, NATO, Imperialism, Sovereignty, European Union, Conflict, Ideology, and Russia-Ukraine War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
6. Plan Z: Reassessing Security-Based Accounts of Russia's Invasion of Ukraine
- Author:
- Alex Hughes
- Publication Date:
- 09-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Advanced Military Studies
- Institution:
- Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
- Abstract:
- The debate on the origins of the Russia-Ukraine War is at an impasse. Many prominent realist scholars argue that Russia’s government chose to invade Ukraine as a last resort to reverse Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration, which it viewed as a major or “existential” national security threat. Critics of this contend that Ukrainian accession did not seriously threaten Russian security, and that Putin launched the invasion in the hope of achieving one or more nonsecurity objectives. This article surveys the current debate, before evaluating one of Moscow’s key stated security concerns. It then identifies four empirical issues on which security and nonsecurity accounts make substantially different predictions. It concludes that in each case, the available evidence is difficult to reconcile with a primarily security-seeking interpretation of the Russian government’s war aims.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Imperialism, Realism, Russia-Ukraine War, and Preventive War
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Ukraine
7. Eurocentrism in Samuel P. Huntington’s Concept of the Clash of Civilisations
- Author:
- Mateusz Kuflinski
- Publication Date:
- 06-2022
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Polish Political Science Yearbook
- Institution:
- Polish Political Science Association (PPSA)
- Abstract:
- The article is dedicated to an issue of Eurocentrism in American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s concept of the clash of civilisations. The arguments presented indicate that Huntington’s concept is pure Eurocentric. I start by mentioning a few of Huntington’s critics (Noam Chomsky, Samir Amin, Arjun Appadurai, and John M. Hobson). The next step includes analysing in detail the “Eurocentrism anatomy” and presenting Eurocentrism as a phenomenon based on two axes, which I call “materialistic” and “epistemological”. In other words, Eurocentrism is a kind of spectrum. Thanks to that, I compare Huntington’s concept with facts from literature embedded in both axes. Apart from other arguments, Eurocentric factors in the clash of civilisations are 1) civilisations in the past, 2) origin of the West, 3) demographic argument, and 4) the downfall of the West. I argue that the clash of civilisations is based on false, Eurocentric assumptions and prejudices.
- Topic:
- Imperialism, Neoconservatism, and Eurocentrism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
8. Mission to Civilise: The French West African Federation
- Author:
- Christopher Zambakari
- Publication Date:
- 04-2021
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Conflict Trends
- Institution:
- The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
- Abstract:
- Imperial powers such as Rome, Persia, Japan and China have justified their conquests as a benefit to those that were conquered by virtue of bringing a superior civilisation to their world.[1] Among imperial powers, one of the most strident were the Second and Third French Republics.[2] The civilising mission – or what French historian Raoul Girardet refers to as “colonial humanism”[3] – came to define French colonial statecraft in the early 19th century crusade to improve the lives of people who France saw as backward in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. For intellectuals such as Leroy-Beaulieu, civilisation was to be spread through commerce, trade and exchanges between people, rather than through conquest.[4] By the early 1800s, the republican ideals that inspired the French Revolution were slowly abandoned for a more forceful assimilationist policy exemplified by colonial expansionist policies. According to Jules Brévié, governor-general of French West Africa from 1930 to 1936 and of French Indochina from 1936 to 1939, the most important task for the French was to bring about a cultural renaissance to the indigenous people.[5] Brévié called for a redefined mission with a focus on teaching colonised subjects to live according to “authentic African traditions”.[6] As with the British before them, French policy adapted to the local context and shifted towards a more “indirect mode of rule”,[7] casting foreign rule as the protectors of indigenous cultures. This article analyses the French imperial project in Africa, with a focus on the Federation of French West Africa (consisting of today’s Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal). It outlines differences and similarities between the French mode of direct rule and the British mode of indirect rule. To understand the methodology of rule, one must first understand the system of knowledge production that informed, shaped and guided the colonial project. A policy change occurred after the French experienced a crisis of empire, which ushered in fundamental transformations before World War I (1909 and 1912) and the interwar years between 1918 and 1939 (from “assimilation” to that of “association”). The new policy shifted the focus from antagonism towards Islam to collaboration with Islamic representatives, from civilisations to conservation, from a focus on progress to law and order, and a preoccupation with local customs while managing social and cultural differences (pluralism).[8] This article is offered as an important contribution to the political and intellectual history of the largest colonial state in Africa: the Federation of French West Africa.
- Topic:
- Imperialism, Intellectual History, Colonialism, Assimilation, and Customs
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, France, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Benin
9. Napoleon’s Bicentenary
- Author:
- Stephane Cohen
- Publication Date:
- 12-2021
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies
- Abstract:
- In 2021, events, expositions, ceremonies, and books commemorated 200 years since the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte himself spent one year in Egypt and what was then the Syrian vilayet (province) of the Ottoman Empire, winning remarkable victories on the battlefield, but failing in the end to achieve his goals and eventually returning to France.
- Topic:
- Imperialism, History, and Collective Memory
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Arab Countries, North Africa, and Egypt
10. Negotiating Security in Latin America, How Russia Regained a Foothold in the Western Hemisphere
- Author:
- Taylor Valley
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Council on International Policy (CIP)
- Abstract:
- What is Russia’s geopolitical game in Latin America? Since the early-2000s, we have witnessed bilateral trade spike by 44 percent, around 40 diplomatic visits by high-ranking Russian officials, and budding military cooperation through joint-naval exercises in Latin American ports. Some explain this growth as Russian efforts to create multipolarity in the western hemisphere and undermine U.S. influence in the region. This narrative of bilateral relations disregards a key element that may be driving Russia’s engagement— the role of Latin American leadership.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Imperialism
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and United States of America