[Viewpoint] Russian spatial imaginaries and the invasion of Ukraine: geopolitics and nationalist fantasies

As Alec Murphy (this forum) argues, Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlights the continuing relevance of the modernist territorial imagination – but this should not lead us to adopt simplistic explanations of Russia's actions. Linear geopolitical assumptions about the link between territory and great power behaviour continue to dominate Western debates about the invasion and underpin an excessive focus on Russian national security perceptions and the role of NATO (e.g. Mearsheimer, 2022; for a more critical perspective see Megoran, this forum). Ironically, such a focus fails to capture the full significance of the modernist territorial imagination in this war. As has been pointed out, foregrounding NATO cannot account for the role of Ukrainian agency (see Vorbrugg and Bluwstein, this forum). But it also brushes over the complex entanglement of spatial and statist imaginaries that exist on the Russian side, with implications not only for the ongoing debate about the reasons for the invasion but also for predictions about possible outcomes of the war. We need to pay more attention to variants of modernist territorial imaginaries, especially when moving beyond the ‘core West’ of Europe and the US – while also acknowledging that these imaginaries continue to have wide emotional appeal and are not simply a residual of the way the international system operates (Penrose, 2002). In this I argue, with Stuart Elden and others, for an understanding of ‘territory as a process, not an outcome, (…) continually made and remade’ (Elden, 2013, p. 35; cf. also Jackman et al., 2020). This does not mean that we should leave (nation-)statism behind when thinking about territory, but that we need to pay attention to the specifics of statist and spatial imaginaries and the way they co-produce geopolitical contexts. The invasion is both motivated by modernist territorial imaginaries and already changing them, including in an apparent re-territorialization of ‘Russia’ whose ultimate significance is not yet clear. Great power-ness (derzhavnost’) in current Kremlin discourse and practices is best understood as part of the visceral political affect of nationalism. To the Kremlin, Ukraine's relationship with NATO matters primarily for its affective and symbolic value, a geopolitics of identity that is co-produced at different scales between Russia, Ukraine and the West. Ultimately, what may be at stake is not so much Russian national security but regime security and the surprisingly fragile domestic (self-)legitimation of the Kremlin, which in recent years has increasingly relied on a set of narratives and conspiracy theories based on spatial imaginaries that resonate with ordinary Russians (Ortmann, 2017; Greene, 2022)

Re-imagining Westphalia: Identity in IR and the discursive construction of the Russian state.

This thesis examines assumptions about state and identity in constructivist IR theory and the analysis of Russian foreign policy through the looking glass of Russian representations of "state identity" - representations of the Russian state as "Russia" - in the political discourse of the Russian elite since the end of the Soviet Union, Drawing on empirical research into the discursive representation of the new Russian state, it shows that categories of statehood and identity are more variable in meaning and indeed more ambiguous than allowed for by current dominant conceptions of state identity in IR, which revolve around the categories of the Westphalian system. This becomes evident when studying Russia - a country which is at the same time outsider and insider, a constitutive part of the Westphalian system, defining the state in strongly Westphalian terms, and yet excluded from the West. In the case of Russia, instead of the clear-cut categories and binary distinctions of the Westphalian system there emerges a conceptual field in which inside and outside, identity and difference are inherently ambiguous and diffuse. It is argued that constructivist assumptions about identity face a problem of the relationship between theory and substantive research, insofar as theoretical commitments may obscure actual representations of identity in Russia, neglecting where and why categories of identity are actually produced, and equating categories of identity with identifications. They also face a normative problem, given that IR constructivism reinforces a problematic account of subjectivity inherent in the Westphalian narrative and is in danger of reifying a binary choice between identity and difference as the only possible relationship between the West and the non- Western world. The thesis develops a conceptualization of identity drawing on Gadamerian hermeneutics and a framework for empirical research based on conceptual history that allows for an investigation of the context-dependent meaning of categories of statehood and identity and can go some way to escaping the logic of binary oppositions that has characterized conceptions of identity in IR

Geopolitics and grand strategy

Geopolitics and grand strategy are modern concepts of statecraft associated with the rise and decline of Great Powers. This chapter looks at the concept of geopolitics and its significance for grand strategy. It does so by tracing the development of the concepts and showing how the meaning of the concepts evolved in response to changing world historical contexts. It explains why geopolitics and grand strategy are associated with the politics of Great Powers and why these concepts are currently making a comeback. The chapter then goes on to discuss the pitfalls and problems associated with formulating a grand strategy, and why geopolitics is as much about interpretation as it is about objective geographical factors

The Cold Peace: Russo-Western Relations as a Mimetic Cold War

In 1989–1991 the geo-ideological contestation between two blocs was swept away, together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant Cold War played out on the larger stage. Paradoxically, while the domestic sources of Cold War confrontation have been transcended, its external manifestations remain in the form of a ‘legacy’ geopolitical contest between the dominant hegemonic power (the United States) and a number of potential rising great powers, of which Russia is one. The post-revolutionary era is thus one of a ‘cold peace’. A cold peace is a mimetic cold war. In other words, while a cold war accepts the logic of conflict in the international system and between certain protagonists in particular, a cold peace reproduces the behavioural patterns of a cold war but suppresses acceptance of the logic of behaviour. A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived victim status of one set of actors provides the seedbed for renewed conflict, while the ‘victory’ of the others cannot be consolidated in some sort of relatively unchallenged post-conflict order. The ‘universalism’ of the victors is now challenged by Russia's neo-revisionist policy, including not so much the defence of Westphalian notions of sovereignty but the espousal of an international system with room for multiple systems (the Schmittean pluriverse)

Beyond spheres of influence: the myth of the state and Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan

This article questions the analytical value of “spheres of influence” for understanding power and the state in the post-Soviet region and beyond, based on a critical deconstruction of the ontological and epistemological assumptions inherent in the concept. It proposes an alternative reading of power and the state, drawing on the concept of “seductive power” at a distance and Timothy Mitchell’s “state effect.” Rather than the concept of a sphere of influence, a highly politicized concept that conveys an ontology that flattens and divides space, essentializes the state, and relies on an intentionalist account of power, we need an analytical framework that can help us make sense of the multiple, varied spatialities and historical legacies that produce the state and power. I demonstrate this through an extended discussion of Russian power in Kyrgyzstan, a country often described as a Russian client state. Mobilizing recent re-conceptualizations of state and power in anthropology and political geography, I present an analysis of Russia’s seductive power in Kyrgyzstan and the way it contributes to producing Kyrgyz state-ness. I also show how Russia’s Great Power myth is itself evolving and conclude that the differentiated, relational production of space and power in either Kyrgyz or Russian myths of the state is not captured by a the concept of a return to spheres of influence

Russlands Macht in Kirgistan: Mythos und Verführung

Der russische Einfluss in Kirgistan wird viel zu oft durch die Linse traditioneller geopolitischer Konzepte analysiert. Dies führt dazu, dass die Erfahrungen der kirgisischen Bevölkerung und die Eigenschaften kirgisischer Staatlichkeit ignoriert werden und damit ein wichtiger Teil des russischen Einflusses übersehen wird. Die Autorin zeigt in ihrer Analyse, wie gefühlte Nähe in Verbindung mit einem gemeinsamen Staatsmythos russische Macht in Kirgistan aufrechterhält, und diskutiert Reichweite und Grenzen russischer "verführerischer Macht"

The post-Soviet myth of the strong state in Russia

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Spheres of influence

However compelling the narrative of a ‘return of spheres of influence’ appears, it is both empirically limited and normatively problematic. The concept evokes assumptions about a world dominated by Great Powers, but also an ontology of space as fixed, bounded territory under the exclusive control of a powerful state actor. It denies local agency in depicting spheres of influence as territory that is essentially passive and empty, fought over by outside actors. These assumptions are misleading, unable to capture the complex entanglements of relations and processes that co-produce state, space and power at the present global juncture. They produce much more fluid spatialities, the result of both historical legacies and the transformation of state power over the past few decades. This is visible in Russia’s relations with the former Soviet Union, where forms of Russian power are ill-described by the ontological assumptions of ‘spheres of influence’

Diffusion as discourse of danger: Russian self-representations and the framing of the Tulip Revolution

The coloured revolutions, including the Tulip Revolution, have exerted influences on Russian self-representations. At the same time, Russian self-identifications provided the framework within which meaning was attributed to the colour revolutions - they shaped the way in which the 'wave', and the Tulip Revolution within it, was framed. In general, the Tulip Revolution did not have the same resonance in Russian public discourse as the Rose, and in particular, Orange Revolutions, mostly because Ukraine had a place in Russian self-representations that Kyrgyzstan did not. Nevertheless, it crucially enabled a reading of the 'wave' as a wave of disorder and extremism, something that again resonated with Russian self-representations, as it re-confirmed a discourse of 'Russia in danger' that has persisted in Russian self-representations since 1991

Russlands Macht in Kirgistan: Mythos und Verführung

Der russische Einfluss in Kirgistan wird viel zu oft durch die Linse traditioneller geopolitischer Konzepte analysiert. Dies führt dazu, dass die Erfahrungen der kirgisischen Bevölkerung und die Eigenschaften kir-gisischer Staatlichkeit ignoriert werden und damit ein wichtiger Teil des russischen Einflusses übersehen wird. Die Autorin zeigt in ihrer Analyse, wie gefühlte Nähe in Verbindung mit einem gemeinsamen Staats-mythos russische Macht in Kirgistan aufrechterhält, und diskutiert Reichweite und Grenzen russischer »ver-führerischer Mach