Abstract
The article raises three key questions: what explains Putin’s (mis)calculations in the field of security and Russia’s hard-power projection onto Ukraine, what prevented both Russian and international experts from taking seriously Putin’s resolve to launch the war prior to February 24, 2022, and what would be the long-term repercussions of the war for liberal international order? To answer these interconnected questions, we refer to the discipline of foreign-policy analysis and political theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Baudrillard, Jean. 1981. Simulacres et simulation. Paris: Éditions Galilée.
Beck, Ulrich. 2006. Risk society revisited. Theory, politics and research programmes. In The sociology of risk and gambling reader, ed. James Cosgrave. New York and London: Routledge, 61–90.
Bleiker, Roland. 2001. The aesthetic turn in international political theory. Millennium: J. Int. Stud. 30(3): 509–533.
Bleiker, Roland, and Emma Hutchinson. 2008. Fear no more: emotions and world politics. Rev. Int. Stud. 34: 115–135.
Boettcher, William. 2004. The prospects for prospect theory: an empirical evaluation of international relations applications of framing and loss aversion. Political Psychology 25(3): 331–362.
Debord, Guy. 2002. The society of the spectacle. Canberra: Hobgoblin Press.
Dörfler, Thomas, and Thomas Gehring. 2021. Analogy-based collective decision-making and incremental change in international organizations. Eur. J. Int. Relat. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120987889.
Fairclough, Norman. 2001. Critical discourse analysis. How to analyse talk in institutional settings: a casebook of methods. eds. A. McHoul, and M. Rapley 25–38. London: Continuum.
Fazendero, Bernardo. 2016. Rethinking roles: reflexive role ascription and performativity in international relations. Int. Stud. Rev. 18: 487–507.
Ganeshi, Jahan. 2022. No Grand Theory Can Explain the Ukraine Crisis. Financial Times. April 12
Kolesnikov, Andrei. 2019. Suverennaia demokratiia—ideologia gosudarstva ili partii vlasti? RIA Novosti, May 26. https://ria.ru/20060719/51553356.html. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Krastev, Ivan. 2015. The Imitation Games: Russia and the West. Geneva Graduate Institute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cy3D9p_8iQ&t=1877s. Accessed 15 June 2022
Kurnyshova, Yulia, and Andrey Makarychev. 2022. Paradoxes of Russia’s war against Ukraine: can political science help? Barcelona: CIDOB opinion, Vol. 715. https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/opinion/2022/paradoxes_of_Russia_s_war_against_Ukraine_can_political_science_help. Accessed 15 June, 2022.
Kurowska, Xymena, and Anatoly Reshetnikov. 2020. Trickstery: pluralizing stigma in international society. Eur. J. Int. Relat. 27(1): 232–257.
Laclau, Ernesto. 2007. The death and resurrection of the theory of ideology. J. Polit. Ideol. 1(3): 201–220.
Laffey, Mark. 2000. Locating identity: performativity, foreign policy and state action. Rev. Int. Stud. 26: 429–444.
Laruelle, Marlène, and Ivan Grek. 2022. Manosphere à la Russe: the ‘Male State’ as an Ideological and Financial Project. Journal of Illiberal Studies. April 18. https://www.illiberalism.org/manosphere-a-la-russe-the-male-state-as-an-ideological-and-financial-project/. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Levy, Jack. 1992. Prospect theory and international relations: theoretical applications and analytical problems. Political Psychology 13(2): 283–310.
Macagno, Fabrizio, Douglas Walton, and Christopher Tindale. 2017. Analogical arguments: inferential structures and defeasibility conditions. Argumentation 31: 221–243.
McKinlay, Alan. 2010. Performativity and the politics of identity: putting butler to work. Critical Perspectives on Accounting 21: 232–242.
Mearsheimer, John. 2015. Why Is Ukraine the West’s Fault. The University of Chicago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Medvedev, Sergei. 2021. Nas zhdët strashnaia i smeshnaia diktatura, Grani, July 25. https://graniru.org/Society/m.282183.html. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Mercer, Jonathan. 2005. Prospect theory and political science. Annual Review of Political Science 8: 1–21.
Minzarari, Dumitru. 2022. Failing to Deter Russia’s War against Ukraine: the Role of Misperceptions. Berlin: SWP Comment C33, April 29. https://www.swp-Berlin.org/en/publication/failing-to-deter-russias-war-against-Ukraine-the-role-of-misperceptions?fbclid=IwAR3udCA3AAlw3Pa_j_HYNj6NliSlsrjiSV70Fmm8YcaxEBdgamd9UTESBKk. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Pomerantsev, Peter, and Michael Weiss. 2014. The menace of unreality: how the kremlin weaponizes information, culture and money, New York: Institute of Modern Russia.
Schroeder, Jonathan E. 2006. 23 critical visual analysis. In Handbook of qualitative research methods in marketing, ed. Russell Belk, 303–321. Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
Surkov, Vladislav. 2006. Suverenitet—eto politicheskiy sinonim konkurentosposobnosti, March 19. https://m.pln24.ru/politics/29008.html?PageSpeed=noscript. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Sylvester, Christine. 2002. Feminist international relations: an unfinished journey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tooze, Adam. 2022. John Mearsheimer and the Dark Origins of Realism, New Stateman, March 8. https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2022/03/john-mearsheimer-and-the-dark-origins-of-realism. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Turner, M., and A. Pratkanis. 1998. Twenty-five years of groupthink theory and research: lessons from the evaluation of a theory. Organ. Behav. Human Res. Process. 73(2/3): 105–115, February–March.
Ukraine Invasion: Russian Foreign Policy Adviser ‘Depressed’ by Kremlin’s Actions. 2022. Sky News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8hC-b4tCT0&t=76s. Accessed 15 June, 2022
Walker, S. 1990. The evolution of operational code analysis. Political Psychology 11(2): 403–418.
Žižek, Slavoj. 2002. Welcome to the desert of the real. Five essays on September 11 and related dates. London and New York: Verso.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing Interests
On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Kurnyshova, Y., Makarychev, A. Explaining Russia’s war against Ukraine: How can foreign policy analysis and political theory be helpful?. Stud East Eur Thought 74, 507–519 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09494-x
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-022-09494-x