Identity, legitimacy, and the use of military force: Russia’s Great Power identities and military intervention in Abkhazia

2005 ◽  
Vol 31 (S1) ◽  
pp. 225-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
TED HOPF
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
International Norm ◽  
Territorial Claims

An action is legitimate if the pertinent community deems it so. Most would agree that Russia’s conduct in the 1990s in Georgia was illegitimate. Military intervention in another state, unless the other state is preparing an imminent attack on one’s own territory, or is engaged in the systematic abuse of one’s own citizens, is a violation of the international norm of sovereignty, at a minimum. Some have argued that European politics has gone beyond this ‘territorial integrity norm’ to something more expansive, to a consensual renunciation of any and all territorial claims on other states. This was first codified in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.

scholarly journals Statecraft in U.S.-Russia Relations: Meaning, Dilemmas, and Significance

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-25
Author(s):  
J. Jordan ◽  
A. Stulberg ◽  
M. Troitskiy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
New Technology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
International Trends ◽  
The Impact

The article introduces the special issue of International Trends dedicated to the current tendencies in the evolution of statecraft. It sets the analytical agenda for other special issue contributions by discussing the meaning of the term “statecraft” and illustrating the concept through several dilemmas that policymakers commonly face when choosing foreign policy toolkits. The authors posit that, at base, a meaningful definition of statecraft subsumes the ends, means, and ways embraced by a government in its attempt to exert influence over another state short of the resort to brute military force, either directly or via pressures on key non-state stakeholders. The article goes on to highlight how a clear-cut formulation of a country’s “national interests” may, on one hand, serve as lodestars for the national bureaucracy and draw “red lines” for the country’s adversaries, but on the other hand, entail a difficult and politically costly choice between mutually exclusive priorities for the country’s foreign policy goals. The authors also discuss the impact of technological innovation on the evolution of great power statecraft. They describe a variant of the security dilemma arising from the choice between immediate weaponization of new technology, on one hand, and refraining from such move with the aim of avoiding an arms race or escalation of existing conflicts, on the other. In its turn, developing a strong identity as a means of statecraft for an international player may increase that player’s power of commitment, but at the same time, foreclose attractive policy options that cannot be implemented because they could compromise the chosen identity. Pioneering the use of big data in the study of statecraft, the authors find that, notwithstanding very different power positions, traditions, and interests, U.S. and Russian discourse surrounding great power competition resemble each other more than commonly acknowledged. Keywords:

scholarly journals A resolvable frozen conflict? Designing a settlement for Transnistria

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 863-870 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Wolff
Keyword(s):  
Buffer Zone ◽  
The Other ◽  
Territorial Dispute ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
Boris Yeltsin ◽  
Frozen Conflict

The conflict over Transnistria is a territorial dispute in which one of the conflict parties (Transnistria) seeks independence while the other (Moldova) aims to restore its full sovereignty and territorial integrity. For close to two decades, the situation has been stagnant: a cease-fire agreement signed in 1992 in Moscow between the Russian and Moldovan presidents at the time – Boris Yeltsin and Mircea Snegur – established a trilateral peacekeeping mission (Russia, Moldova, Transnistria) and a buffer zone along the Dniestr/Nistru River. Protected by these arrangements and an additional Russian military presence, Transnistria has developed into a de facto state of its own, albeit without international recognition and heavily dependent on Russia.

scholarly journals Scarred souls, weary warriors, and military intervention: the emergence of the subject in the just war writings of Jean Bethke Elshtain

2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER LEE
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Just War ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Military Force ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
A Site

AbstractOver the past three decades Jean Bethke Elshtain has used her critique and application of just war as a means of engaging with multiple overlapping aspects of identity. Though Elshtain ostensibly writes about war and the justice, or lack of justice, therein, she also uses just war a site of analysis within which different strands of subjectivity are investigated and articulated as part of her broader political theory. This article explores the proposition that Elshtain's most important contribution to the just war tradition is not be found in her provision of codes or her analysis of ad bellum or in bello criteria, conformity to which adjudges war or military intervention to be just or otherwise. Rather, that she enriches just war debate because of the unique and sometimes provocative perspective she brings as political theorist and International Relations scholar who adopts, adapts, and deploys familiar but, for some, uncomfortable discursive artefacts from the history of the Christian West: suffused with her own Christian faith and theology. In so doing she continually reminds us that human lives, with all their attendant political, social, and religious complexities, should be the focus when military force is used, or even proposed, for political ends.

scholarly journals Territoriality Beyond the State: The EU’s Territorial Claims and the Search for Their Legitimacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 650-672
Author(s):  
Josef Weinzierl
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
European Level ◽  
Territorial Claims ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Eu

AbstractQuite a few recent ECJ judgments touch on various elements of territorial rule. Thereby, they raise the profile of the main question this Article asks: Which territorial claims does the EU make? To provide an answer, the present Article discusses and categorizes the individual elements of territoriality in the EU’s architecture. The influence of EU law on national territorial rule on the one hand and the emergence of territorial governance elements at the European level on the other provide the main pillars of the inquiry. Once combined, these features not only help to improve our understanding of the EU’s distinctly supranational conception of territoriality. What is more, the discussion raises several important legitimacy questions. As a consequence, the Article calls for the development of a theoretical model to evaluate and justify territoriality in a political community beyond the state.

Return to the ancestral land: The semiotic map of the Mapuche people

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-269
Author(s):  
Camila Pérez ◽  
Giuseppina Marsico
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
The Other ◽  
Indigenous Group ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Claim ◽  
Mapuche People ◽  
Territorial Claims ◽  
Von Uexküll ◽  
Over Time

Indigenous territorial claims are a long-standing concern in the history of Latin America. Land and nature have profound meaning in indigenous thinking, which is neither totally understood nor legitimized by the rest of society. This article is aimed at shedding light on this matter by examining the meanings at stake in the territorial claims of the Mapuche people. The Mapuche are an indigenous group in Chile, who are striving to recover their ancestral land. This analysis will be based on the concept of Umwelt, coined by von Uexküll to refer to the way in which species interpret their world in connection with the meaning-making process. Considering the applications of Umwelt to the human being, the significance assigned to land and nature by the Mapuche people emerges as a system of meaning that persists over time and promotes interdependence between people and the environment. On the other hand, the territorial claim of the Mapuche movement challenges the fragmentation between individuals and their space, echoing proposals from human geography that emphasize the role of people in the constitution of places.

Neither here, not there: Bulgaria and Romania in current European politics☆

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor D. Bojkov
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Eu Enlargement ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Politics ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Southeast Europe ◽  
The Eu

The article analyses the process of EU enlargement with reference to the progress that Bulgaria and Romania have made within it. It is argued that leaving them out of the wave of accession finalised in May 2004 for ten of the candidate states, has placed them in a situation of double exclusion. Firstly, their geographical belonging to the region of Southeast Europe has been rendered non-essential by their advanced position within the EU enlargement process. Secondly, their achievement in economic and political transition has been removed from the progress of the ten states, which joined the EU in May 2004 by delaying the time of their accession. As a result, any efforts in regional cooperation and integration between Bulgaria and Romania on one hand, and other Southeast European states on the other, have been effectively cancelled. Moreover, in current European politics, the two countries have come to serve the unenviable role of exemplifying on the part of the European Union how progress is being awarded and hesitation punished.

scholarly journals A viagem entre o feitiço e a maldição

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-30
Author(s):  
Mário Matos
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
The One ◽  
Over Time

This contribution focuses on the multifaceted conceptualization of travel in Western cultural history. Several discourses will be addressed that, over time, have oscillated between the sceptical and restrictive on the one hand, and the truly admiring perspectives of the journey on the other. A number of visions of the phenomenon of travel under the binomial spell/curse will be analysed. The different contexts and historical factors that determined the value of travel will be exposed, from its great power of attraction to its restriction by inward looking religious and political systems.

scholarly journals From Prototypical Stimuli to Iconographic Stimuli: The Power of Images in the Study of Social Representations

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-401
Author(s):  
Ida Galli ◽  
Roberto Fasanelli
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Representation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Social Object ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methods And Techniques ◽  
Interdisciplinary Effort

When we are interested in the image of a social object, we are interested in what individuals have perceived about that object, the ways in which they have interpreted those perceptions, and what they think about that object. Fully agreeing with the idea that the use of iconographic stimuli can enhance the traditional methods and techniques that are used to study any social representation, in this article, two techniques will be presented. The first, the prototypical stimuli technique, was proposed in the second half of the 1980s by Galli and Nigro. The second technique, iconographic stimuli, creatively integrate images and words in a single tool, was designed more recently to study the social representation of culture by Galli, Fasanelli, and Schember. Researches here reviewed clearly shows that the image has the great power to attract to itself the very objects depicted, a power that the word often does not possess. It is images that make people reflect, help them to think about issues concerning the fundamental aspects of everyday life. The work here presented, carried out in first person by the writer, as well as by all the other authors who are concentrating their efforts in this direction, only represents a starting point of reflection. New and more articulated studies will be able to support with heuristic evidence what so far seems to be configured as a suggestive hypothesis, which in any case will require a wider and shared interdisciplinary effort.

Secretariat

1964 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-131 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Annual Report ◽  
Sudden Change ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Member States ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
The Military

Secretary-General U Thant in his Introduction to the Annual Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, 16 June 1962—15 June 1963 commented that the year under review had been marked by a number of developments which on the whole may be said to have brightened the international outlook and strengthened the UN as a result. According to the Secretary-General, the Cuban crisis provided the UN with the opportunity to help avert what appeared to be impending disaster. Proposals which he had been encouraged to make by a large number of Member States not directly involved in the crisis had the immediate effect of tending to ease the situation. In addition, the UN provided an opportunity, both through the Security Council and the Secretariat, for dialogues among the interested parties. The turn of the year also marked a sudden change for the better in the Congo. As a result the terms of the UN mandate in the Congo as far as the military force was concerned had now largely been fulfilled. External military interference in the Congo had ceased, the territorial integrity of the country had been secured, and law and order had generally been restored and were being maintained, although the situation in one or two areas still was giving some cause for concern.

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