Conference Program

40 years ago, Bull and Watson edited a collection of essays on The Expansion of International Society, exploring the “expansion” of and “revolt” against Western institutions world-wide. In 2017, Dunne and Reus-Smit updated Bull and Watson’s collection emphasizing the processes of cultural interaction between the West “and the rest” arguing for a hybrid rather than universal character of a globalized international society. Today, the International Liberal Order (LIO) is under pressure like never before: rising China, imperialist Russia and other powerful non-state actors in an environment of general technological boom and climate change.

The goal of this article is to investigate whether we could speak of a “Revolt against the West” challenging the primary institutions of Western international society in general and LIO in particular. Specifically, I am interested in the processes in which imperialistic Russia is challenging or hybridizing the institutions of sovereignty, role of great powers, international law, diplomacy and war.

After theorizing an update of Bull’s five “Revolt against the West” themes to fit present-day international environment, I will try to interpret Russian foreign policy interactions with the Western international society: from an attempt to become part of a hybridized LIO to a revolt against it, especially since Putin’s second presidential term. I intend to detail the processes of cultural interaction, inter-state practices and normative legitimations of Russian activities and the ways in which they undermine the institutions of sovereignty, role of great powers, international rule of law and human rights, diplomacy and war.

The policy of the Russian Federation has been guided by realism since 2008 (war in Georgia), i.e. based on strength and expansions. Since February 2022, when Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine began and the West reacted dynamically, the question of how to stop its actions is current. Realist thinkers, who have referred to historical examples, distinguish some kinds of aggressors, i.e: „have not states” (Edward Carr, practical realism), „revolutionary power” (Henry Kissinger, neoclassical realism), or „over-expansionist” (Jack Snyder, defensive realism). The analysis of three cases will contribute to the search for an antidote to the current Russian aggression against Ukraine.

According to the English School of International Relations (sometimes also referred to as liberal realism), „states can form a society by agreeing amongst themselves to establish common rules and institutions for the conduct of their relations and by recognizing their common interest in maintaining these arrangements” (OxfordReference). Because of that some questions of war in Ukraine seem important: which prompted Russian elites to adopt an aggressive policy? what rules did Russia violate, causing Western states to react in 2022? what is the difference between expansion and over-expansion?

The speech will be based on a behavioral approach. It will concentrate on content analysis: state documents, politicians' speeches, press materials, analyses, and literature. The result will be an attempt to find the best containment strategy for defenders of the status quo facing Russian aggression.

In mainstream IR theory, realism, English School and liberalism are presented and discussed as contradictions, if not as antipodes. In fact, against the background of an alternative understanding and approach in IR, these theoretical traditions cannot be separated, given interwoven and shared intellectual and political origins and roots in Europe in the pre- and post World War I and WW II era, an era from which all these traditions once has spawned out. In other words, the English School combines liberal and realist ideas. The paper, written from this theoretical point of origin through realist English School lenses with a focus on Eurasia in flux, discuss the seemingly new post-Crimea order not as a turning point, or the end of what bwe call the 'liberal post Cold War order', but, quite the contrary, as just another formative moment of an ongoing historical process in which regional powers such as Russia (mis)use diplomacy and war, and try to establish a post-war balance of power order and a certain understanding of international law in line with its power considerations backing and institutionalizing that revisionist post-X order. The Crimea is just the most recent case in point of the recurrence of what I call - in a realist inspired English School language - the choice between pluralismus, solidarism, and insitutionalized revisionism. The paper is located in a well-established context of bringing traditions in IR back in. But it is also an initial try to combine the English School, realism and liberalism to rethink regional order.