Russia-Ukraine conflict: a constructivist's critique of a realist perspective

The overarching portrayal of the recent insecurity in Ukraine has evident realist underpinnings. Russia’s annexation of Crimea is deemed as being an assertion of, and an attempt to increase, their relative power and a pursuit of their self-interests. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (Source: Google Images)

This aligns with realist theorist John Mearsheimer’s view that great powers seek to expand their military and economic capabilities when the overall benefits outweigh the costs. This state-centrism forms the foundation of traditional realist conceptualisations of international relations, where the state is the sole referent object of enquiry.

Although this is an appealing and somewhat intuitive narrative, this realist ideology presents the current insecurity in Crimea in overly simplistic and material terms, with fixed notions of the nation state, territorial boundaries and identity. However, there is sound reason to suggest that Crimea is not a realist story.

Firstly, the invasion of Crimea is not necessary in order for Russia to enhance the naval capabilities of their Black Sea Fleet, nor does it boost their economic capabilities. In actual fact, Russia faces significant costs. As result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin has dampened Russia’s international reputation and risks the renewal of the East versus West conflict that characterized the Cold War period. Furthermore, Russia will continue to suffer economically from the withdrawal of foreign investment and reduced access to the European energy market. It is overwhelming clear that the benefits of invading Crimea do not in fact outweigh the substantial costs.

In response to the shortcomings of dominant realist narratives in addressing the domestic realm, and their all-embodying emphasis on the material world, constructivism emerged in the 1980’s with an interest in the relationship between immaterial ideas and the physical world. The core proposition of constructivism is that normative and ideological structures are just as important as material ones in the international system. Furthermore, normative structures shape identity, which agent’s then base their interests and actions upon.

Theory in Action: Constructivism (Source: YouTube)

As an example, constructivists call upon America’s relationship with two of its neighbours: Canada and Cuba. From material evidence alone, Canada poses a greater threat to America than Cuba does, however due to the ideological differences between America and Cuba, it is in fact the latter than is deemed an enemy of America. Shared ideas about identity and logics of ideology have nurtured a strong alliance between Canada and America, highlighting the fact that "material resources only acquire meaning for human action through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded". In this sense, norms and shared values condition the behavior of states.

In relation to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it is important to acknowledge the ideas that underpin Russia’s actions and the corresponding reaction from the international community.

Putin has taken advantage of “shared emotional resonance” in Russia, using the existing sense of Russian identity in Crimea to justify the annexation. Another factor at play is Russia’s territorial attachment to Ukraine. For centuries, Crimea Province was part of the Russian Republic until it was gifted to Ukraine in 1954. However despite this handover, “Siegelbaum argues that Crimea’s cultural links with Russia were far stronger, and, at the time, there were slightly more than three Russians in Crimea for each Ukrainian”. Unanimous emotional associations to the territorial identity of a state influence how people understand policy choices. Putin strategically associated his actions in Crimea with emotional attachment and ideas of identity, shaping the way that civilians understood his military efforts in Crimea. This idea of a strong Russian identity in Crimea helps to explain Russia’s interest in reclaiming it.

Geographic location (Source: NPR 2014)

Although a shift in the normative agenda now deems intervention as being legitimate under certain circumstances, institutions and multilateralism play a crucial role in legitimizing action. However Russia’s occupation of Crimea is unilateral, illegal and illegitimate, violating international norms and rules. There was no attempt at employing diplomatic approaches with Ukraine officials before resorting to occupation, setting a negative precedent of illegitimate intervention.

Protestors in Ukraine (Source: Google Images)

In terms of the reaction by the international community, it is clear that shared Western norms in relation to preserving the integrity of territorial borders, adherence to international law and political freedoms oppose Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Established Western societal and political norms can help to explain the West’s opposition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and their subsequent actions directed towards pressuring Russia to withdraw their influence in Ukraine.

Constructivism’s overarching claim that a state’s identity and subsequent actions and interests, are shaped by social norms, is evident in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The emphasis on the immaterial realm helps us to understand policy choices and state behavior. Although critical in its approach, perhaps the most profound weakness of constructivism is its inability to deviate from state-centrism, which lends itself to the traditional conceptualisations of international relations.

International cooperation: a means to achieving global security?

Nuclear Security Summit 2014: 24 - 25 March, The Netherlands (Source: DutchNews)

The world’s third Nuclear Security Summit was held in The Hague last month, in The Netherlands, bringing together 53 national leaders from around the world, along with representatives from four international organisations, namely the European Union, International Atomic Energy Agency, INTERPOL and United Nations.

After the U.S. President, Barack Obama, declared nuclear terrorism as one of the greatest threats to international security back in 2009, the vision of the Nuclear Security Summit's have been to ultimately combat this threat. Its key objectives include reducing the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world, improving the security of all nuclear material and radioactive sources, and improving international cooperation.

The mere existence of the Nuclear Security Summit itself, which facilitates the interaction of state actors and international organisations, along with the final objective of the summit - to improve international cooperation - has evident neoliberal underpinnings.

Back in 1977, neoliberal institutionalists Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, emphasized the increasing importance of non-state actors in the international system, demonstrated by the growing strength of cooperative international institutions, which were facilitating the potential for states to achieve mutual gains. 

Conversations with History: Robert O. Keohane critiques realism (10-14 minute period) 

(Source: YouTube)

Furthermore, neoliberal institutionalists critiqued neo-realists, by claiming that states are concerned with maximizing their absolute gains, as opposed to their relative gains. In this sense, if states find themselves in a position where cooperation will in fact benefit them, then this will be enough of a motivation to cooperate.

Keohane & Nye point out that through participating in international institutions, states are able to expand their notions of ‘self-interest’ to allow more scope for cooperation to occur. In the case of the Nuclear Security Summit, states have demonstrated a commitment to marginalizing their selfish and narrow security interests, in recognition that non-proliferation is in the best interest of the entire international realm, and that each state can cooperate to improve international security. In this sense, their conceptions of national security have broadened to capture a transnational 'security community'.

In doing so, decisions regarding security “have become internationalized, rendering national administration less important than transnational political cooperation”. Transnational regimes and institutional cooperation are seen as bringing higher levels of regulation, stability, predictability and trust to the anarchical international system, whereby the state is of less importance. For example, in co-binding collective security arrangements, such as NATO, there is a recognition that transnational agreements and institutions can provide states with greater protection, as opposed to the realist self-help mentality, whereby states are solely responsible for their own national security measures.

In relation to the Nuclear Security Summit, it is evident that Barack Obama, and many other world leaders, see the potential for cooperation between states in addressing the threat that nuclear terrorism poses to international security. It is important to emphasize that states are willing to cooperate due to the recognition of wider mutual benefits that can be achieved through cooperating. In the case of the Nuclear Security Summit, this ‘greater good’ is embodied in the notion of preventing nuclear terrorism worldwide.

U.S. President, Barack Obama, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, at the Nuclear Security Summit 2014 in The Hague (Source: Freek Van Den Bergh/AFP/Getty Images)

As a direct result of the Nuclear Security Summit 2014, states such as Japan, Belgium and Italy, are prepared to reduce their nuclear stockpiles, providing sound evidence that international cooperation and international summits can have a strong impact on the actions and decisions of states. Furthermore, the BBC reported that “thirty-five out of 53 nations taking part in a summit on nuclear security have pledged to turn international guidelines into national laws”.

However one must question just how representative and widespread international summits, such as the Nuclear Security Summit really are. Although 53 countries were represented, the exclusion of nuclear powerhouses, Iran and South Korea, must be noted, along with the significant absences of small developing countries in this particular international conversation. This then brings about questions regarding whose interests are being served by summits like the NSS and more specifically, whether American hegemony underpins many of the issues that are brought to the agenda.

Furthermore, if we take the current global issue regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which has led to G7 leaders threatening to permanently expel Russia from the G8, it is evident that cooperative ties can rapidly dismantle in the face of rising conflict. This leads us to believe that perhaps the international system is not quite as secure, stable or predictable as neoliberals like to claim it is.

While neoliberal institutionalism is by no means a sound worldview by which to understand the complexities of the international system, it does provide a useful lens through which we can analyse global issues, to deepen our understanding of the role, and impact, of cooperation and transnational institutions in the international system.

Whichever way we look at it, international security, even when limited to the threat posed by nuclear terrorism, is still far beyond our current reach. 

Climate change: reconfiguring the international system

It is widely accepted that climate change is a global issue, with its impacts permeating across the entire planet, paying no regard to boundary confinements or state territories.

Despite this overarching acknowledgement that climate change poses a threat to the entire global realm, international institutions along with the series of international summits and protocols, have had great difficulty in yielding cooperative and plausible solutions to this very complex transnational issue. Ultimately, the primary concern for government’s is the survival of their own state, rather than some sort of wider moral obligation to the international community.

To date, the mitigating actions undertaken to address climate change have been characterized by an individualistic state-focused approach. International protocols such as Kyoto, and organizations like the Untied Nations, have failed to bring about internationally adopted solutions, as a result of individual states being too caught up in their own self-interests. States are very much focused on their short-term interests, rather than the benefits that would be felt from ‘greening’ their societies and economies in the long run. 

An example of this relates to the huge costs involved with reducing carbon emissions, which can make particular industries far less competitive. Because of this, states are far more concerned with maintaining their economy and prosperity in the short term, rather than considering the impacts that climate change could have on their economy in the future. This was touched upon by European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, who specified that “no state, even the ambitious ones, wanted more than a 40% cut” in their total carbon emissions by 2030, partly due to the dampening effect it would have on their economies.

This particular framework of thinking can be demonstrated by French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau’s famous 'Stag Hunt’ model, which describes a hunter who, driven by his short-term interests, strays from his hunting partner in order to kill a hare for his own consumption. However, in doing so, he sacrifices the success of the stag hunt, which could have reaped far greater mutual reward for both parties. This metaphor certainly resides throughout the various international debates regarding climate change, where long-term global prospects are often pushed to the periphery due to the lack of social cooperation.

Rousseau's Stag Hunt (Source: Google Images)

Another core issue in the international climate debate is the fact that developed countries have had the opportunity to develop their industries and economies since the industrial era, which has no doubt played a role in the progressive warming of the planet. The question is whether developing countries, such as Brazil, India and China, with their fast growing economies, should be granted the same right without facing carbon restrictions or environmental obligations. And if not, how can international institutions convince these nations to put aside their self-interests for the sake of overarching international and environmental interests? For more information, please visit http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/22/climate-change-reasons-failure.

The fact is that ‘state-centric’ thinking characterizes the nature of the current international system, compelling states to act in a selfish manner and leaving little scope for international cooperation. In this sense, it’s the system that must be re-configured, for cooperative mitigation and adaptation to be made plausible.

In The Transformation of Political Community, critical theorist Andrew Linklater touches on the idea of reconfiguring the political community, which includes concepts of sovereignty, territory and citizenship, in order for a progression “towards more cosmopolitan forms of governance”. This is rooted in the idea that the state’s all-embodying characteristic can be dismantled to allow for more open forms of community and governance.

(Source: Google Images)

This notion of a transformed political community has been adopted when addressing environmental issues such as climate change. In his article Climate change: some reasons for our failures, Robert Manne states that a rapid adoption of clean energy worldwide would require “one of the largest transformations in the history of humankind”. He suggests a system that facilitates acts of “national altruism over national interest”, whereby our commitment to being a good global citizen triumphs over our current state-based notion of citizenship, which is restricted to a given sovereign territory.

The system itself is what needs to change if we are to progress beyond the current focus on state-based solutions, influenced by the self-interest of states, towards internationally cooperative efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. The crucial point here is that this transformation must enhance the impact of international obligations to the global community on domestic political choices.

Climate change protestors (Source: Google Images)

The question is whether or not the human race will be willing to part from an enduring tradition of state sovereignty, territory and citizenship, in order to lay the foundations for a more cooperative and integrated global community. This reconfiguration could be the key to prioritizing the long-term interests of humanity with respect to climate change.

Video: U.S Secretary of State, John Kerry, urges the international community to take steps to overcome climate change (Source: YouTube)