Kantian Reflections on the war in Ukraine

Scientific Journal of the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. Series 22. Political Sciences and Teaching Methodology of Socio-Political Disciplines

Російської Федерації, спрямовані на розрив економічних зв'язків із Росією. Після двох світових воєн для запобігання таким масштабним військовим конфліктам засоби економічних обмежень стали важливим інструментом реагування на будь-які зловживання з боку держави-агресора. Економічна війна розглядається як альтернатива традиційній війні. З цієї причини питання санкційної політики стало об'єктом міжнародних відносин, політології, а також досліджень безпеки та миру. Після анексії Криму та війни, розв'язаної Росією на сході України, питання запровадження санкцій проти Росії, їх режим та ефективність стало об'єктом для вищезгаданих досліджень. Після повномасштабного вторгнення в Україну в лютому 2022 року проблемі запровадження санкцій проти Російської Федерації приділяється більше уваги як науковцями, так і політиками. У статті розглянуто особливості санкцій, які застосовуються до країни-агресора. Метою статті є дослідження санкційної політики союзників і партнерів України щодо Росії. В основу статті покладено метод контент-аналізу заяв, офіційних анонсів як урядових, так і надурядових організацій таких як ЄС, ООН, а також статті в періодичних виданнях і наукові роботи, присвячені санкціям. Цей аналіз є проміжним дослідженням санкційної політики проти Росії, який буде потрібний для виявлення неефективності/ефективності економічних санкцій як реакції на російську агресію. Аналіз санкцій як інструменту міжнародної політики може бути використаний для переосмислення важливості економічних санкцій як частини стратегії розбудови миру.

Phronimon, 2024

The work that I wish to concentrate on here, Perpetual Peace, is situated at least in the converging fields of (international and constitutional) law and politics. Given its date of publication (1795), Kant's preceding works may all safely be said to have prepared his thinking for the progressive ideas expressed there, but to disclose the specific threads that connect each of these 12 preceding works with Perpetual Peace would require far more than a mere article. For this reason, I have confined myself largely to drawing such connections between the latter work and Kant's seminal (and famous) essay, What is Enlightenment? (1784) before elaborating on Perpetual Peace and its implications for the current global situation, which will, therefore, also have to be reconstructed, unavoidably, from my own perspective. This article, therefore, addresses the question of "lasting" world peace through the lens of Kant's essay on the conditions for "perpetual peace." This is done by listing each of the six "Preliminary Articles" and three "Definitive Articles" stated by Kant, in turn, and comparing their respective requirements to current events in the extant world, specifically those surrounding the Russia-Ukraine/NATO conflict. It is demonstrated that, although Kant admitted that the principles he listed comprised an "ideal", the present era marks a set of conditions further removed from lasting peace than ever before.

Filozofija I Društvo (Philosophy and Society), 2024

Pre-Review Version. Final version OA: https://journal.ifdt.bg.ac.rs/fid/article/view/1732 The Russian invasion of Ukraine has challenged the ideals of peace that many of us hold dear as leftwing critical intellectuals. As Immanuel Kant argued by the end of the 18 th century, realist law of peoples and the idea of just war should give way to the idea of perpetual peace, and fortunately, in the 20 th century, the principled opposition to war was institutionalized in the United Nations. However, when the aggressor has already taken possession of huge swathes of territory, calls for peace may be suspected of ideological bias. The right to defend yourself is almost universally recognized, but a military counter offensive to reconquer lost territory in not merely defense, but itself aggression and thus war. Many of us, however, want to support this effort in Ukraine, and what is worrying is that this brings us into the slippery slope towards opening up again the possibility of justifying war. As I argue, however, this is the way to go, both accepting the possible justification of war and the possible justification of specific activities and armament rather than other. We should thus take more seriously the ethics of war and all the specific normative challenges that this will require.

Written from the dual perspective of a political philosopher and social analyst, this book is a rich—in many ways, indispensable— source of conceptual information about Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the European Union, and global modernity. Its primary subject is the dirty, hybrid politics of Eastern Europe but even more so, its human substance—those traumatized, depressed and awkward but intrepid, entrepreneurial, and ultimately optimistic women and men whom Mikhail Minakov aptly calls “Post-Soviet Homo Politicus.” Relying on critical theory as summarized by Jurgen Habermas, Minakov illuminates the situation of the “double colonization,” in which the social System ceaselessly formalizes and therefore undermines the human Lifeworld, and the Lifeworld damages the System’s order, creating a chaotic cultural world that resembles “systemic corruption” to outsiders.

Nationalities Papers

This essay conceptualizes five recipes to solve secession conflicts that have taken place in postcommunist territories—federalization, land-for-peace, protectorate policy, reconquest, and the destruction of the parent state by the patron state—and investigates their merits and demerits. This essay provides case studies of the South Ossetian War in 2008 and its aftermath (as an example of the protectorate policy), the Second Karabakh War in 2020 (reconquest), and the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022 (destruction of the parent state by the patron state). We observe the tendency that the ineffectiveness of federalization and land-for-peace induces parties of conflict to move on to unilateral or even coercive recipes.

2019

This report on Ukraine is one in a series prepared within the framework of the EU-LISTCO project, funded under the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme. The purpose of this report is to answer the following research questions: what is the background of the areas of limited statehood and contested orders in Ukraine; how and when could the areas of limited statehood and contested orders in Ukraine turn into areas with governance breakdown and/or violent conflict; what are the mechanisms of resilience in Ukraine; what are the interests of third parties towards Ukraine.

National Security and Defence, 2014

A brief analysis on the state of relations between Ukraine and Moscow together with a number of other experts

This blog-post is a response to recent comments by Giorgio Agamben and Jurgen Habermas on the Russia-Ukraine war. Following Habermas, it asks the question: Why have the Western European institutions created after World War II to prevent international conflict from escalating out of control been seemingly incapable of stopping the Russia-Ukraine war? The answer to this question, I argue, focuses on the status of sovereign violence in the Westphalian world-system and the UN Charter, which define sovereignty as the monopoly on violence over a designated territory and largely restrict its employment to self-defense, but also permit the exercise of sovereign violence in the international sphere under certain conditions, including the defense of the civil and human rights of ethnic or national minorities who are suffering abuses within another sovereign state's territory. The definition of sovereignty in the Westphalian world-system and the UN Charter, however, is also complicated by the difference between the two paradigms that define sovereignty in the contemporary world: the sovereign state paradigm, which identifies sovereignty with a sovereign monarch (Zelensky or Putin) and a State (Ukraine or Russia); and the popular sovereignty paradigm, which identifies sovereignty with a Nation or People (Ukrainians or Russians). Following these distinctions, I attempt to show that the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine crisis requires both a clarification of the terms of sovereignty over the contested territory of the Donbass and Crimea, and the determination of whether the civilian inhabitants of that contested territory really want to be governed by either Ukraine or Russia. And I argue that it is the second question upon which a satisfactory resolution of the Russia-Ukraine crisis really turns, despite attempts by the West, the US, Russia, and China to determine the resolution of the crisis according to their own self-interests and not those of the civilian inhabitants of Crimea and the Donbass.

Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 2016

A common theme in historical and contemporary warfare is the role of militias. Militias, both pro-government and rebel, act beyond their sponsors or else they would be understood as part of the armies that go to war. We think of militias as being paramilitaries, para-meaning approximate but not collocated with the military. Paramilitaries are ordinarily recruited and resourced differently. They are also ordinarily tactically different, playing a role in front line warfare where the intensity may be high, but were the position is fast changing or distributed in local areas. As the conflict literature will show, militias, or paramilitaries, are a common feature of any conflict and thus it is no surprise that we see their use in Ukraine. For the conflict in Ukraine, we use the term paramilitaries to indicate those forces that are fighting at the front line for both the Kyiv government and rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, with these being considered 'pro-Russian' and even include Russian citizens. Relying on the pro-government militias literature, we show how militias on both sides play an important role in the conflict but also pose the biggest threat to a sustainable peace.

Russia as Ukraine's ‘Other’: Identity and Geopolitics. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives., 2015

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