Using Indonesia, one of the leading voices in the so-called Global South, I trace the diverse narratives of non-Western elites on interpreting the war in Ukraine, the relationship between Russia and the "non-Western" world, and the NATO factors. The lack of knowledge about Russia and Ukraine, coupled with the strong anti-Western sentiment, has created a more proRussian sentiment in the Indonesian narratives about the war. This tendency was made stronger by the postcolonial thinking in Indonesian elite discourse, creating an 'understander' narrative rooted in the local postcolonial history instead of being driven by external, material factors.
{"title":"Non-Western responses to Russia's war in Ukraine: Learning from Indonesia","authors":"Radityo Dharmaputra","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-41779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-41779","url":null,"abstract":"Using Indonesia, one of the leading voices in the so-called Global South, I trace the diverse narratives of non-Western elites on interpreting the war in Ukraine, the relationship between Russia and the \"non-Western\" world, and the NATO factors. The lack of knowledge about Russia and Ukraine, coupled with the strong anti-Western sentiment, has created a more proRussian sentiment in the Indonesian narratives about the war. This tendency was made stronger by the postcolonial thinking in Indonesian elite discourse, creating an 'understander' narrative rooted in the local postcolonial history instead of being driven by external, material factors.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135637431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Syrian conflict led to a countrywide realignment in both territorial and demographic traits with catastrophic consequences for the population. More than 6,6 million people were forced to leave their homeland, and a further 6,9 million became Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Lately, a subsequent consolidation of the population ensued, which witnessed a partial self-repatriation of IDPs. Here, we report the preliminary results of a study to explore migration motives in the framework of the repatriation aid programme provided for these IDPs. The programme was coordinated by the Melkite Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Homs in and around the city of Homs. Moreover, we provide an overview of the geographic territory covered by the initiative and of the relevant events of the conflict which affected IDPs from the region. Key results from our analysis include the observation that individual experiences of traumatization and deterioration of social status are major contributing factors that fuel resettlement. Our work provides timely guidance for other ongoing struggles and emerging crises by highlighting the causes and circumstances of internal migration.
{"title":"Migration motivation and psychosocial issues of Internally Displaced People: A close-up from Homs, Syria","authors":"Daniel Solymari, Sara Gibarti","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-40300","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-40300","url":null,"abstract":"The Syrian conflict led to a countrywide realignment in both territorial and demographic traits with catastrophic consequences for the population. More than 6,6 million people were forced to leave their homeland, and a further 6,9 million became Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Lately, a subsequent consolidation of the population ensued, which witnessed a partial self-repatriation of IDPs. Here, we report the preliminary results of a study to explore migration motives in the framework of the repatriation aid programme provided for these IDPs. The programme was coordinated by the Melkite Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Homs in and around the city of Homs. Moreover, we provide an overview of the geographic territory covered by the initiative and of the relevant events of the conflict which affected IDPs from the region. Key results from our analysis include the observation that individual experiences of traumatization and deterioration of social status are major contributing factors that fuel resettlement. Our work provides timely guidance for other ongoing struggles and emerging crises by highlighting the causes and circumstances of internal migration.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135947800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ukraine has been, since its independence in 1991, located between two qualitatively different types of geopolitical environments - modern to its east and post-modern to its west. Given the tendencies of both to growth, nonetheless, using different means and seeking divergent goals, Ukraine turned into a geopolitical battlefield that due to the internal developments in Russia stepped into a hot phase in 2014 with further escalation in 2022. The article presents an interpretation of the events through neomedieval and imperial lenses, explaining the behaviours of both the West and Russia and the consequences their foreign policies had for the current situation in the country. It concludes that the mutual misunderstanding about the nature of the respective projects - mainly of the voluntary enlargement of the EU and NATO - led to unnecessary clashes and escalation of the contest by the Russian modern empire.
{"title":"The tale of two empires: Ukraine between the West and Russia","authors":"Bohumil Doboš","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-38665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-38665","url":null,"abstract":"Ukraine has been, since its independence in 1991, located between two qualitatively different types of geopolitical environments - modern to its east and post-modern to its west. Given the tendencies of both to growth, nonetheless, using different means and seeking divergent goals, Ukraine turned into a geopolitical battlefield that due to the internal developments in Russia stepped into a hot phase in 2014 with further escalation in 2022. The article presents an interpretation of the events through neomedieval and imperial lenses, explaining the behaviours of both the West and Russia and the consequences their foreign policies had for the current situation in the country. It concludes that the mutual misunderstanding about the nature of the respective projects - mainly of the voluntary enlargement of the EU and NATO - led to unnecessary clashes and escalation of the contest by the Russian modern empire.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"135 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135947808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The study surveys instances of discursive normalization of the Russian attack on Ukraine across the Visegrád Four (V4) countries, examining political discourses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Following February 24, 2022, the strategies that expressed an open backing of Russia were mostly marginalized becoming morally all but impossible and thus politically too costly. However, other and more indirect ways of showing "understanding" if not support for Moscow's actions soon (re)emerged. These included presenting the war in "realist-geopolitical" terms, as a proxy for the (allegedly inevitable) competition between great powers and a "neutralist-pacifist" discourse that criticized the Western military aid to Ukraine. In a broader sense, both discourses can be viewed as anchored in collective memories of the tragic Central European past that have traditionally infused the national identities in the V4 with a sense of vulnerability. The grim "realist" image of the world also rhymes well with the regional rise of the populist political style that hinges on the stated need to protect the "underdog" people and replaces the imperatives of solidarity with those of "self-help."
{"title":"Do ostriches live in Central Europe?: Normalizing the Russian attack on Ukraine in the Visegrád Four","authors":"Aliaksei Kazharski","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-43201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-43201","url":null,"abstract":"The study surveys instances of discursive normalization of the Russian attack on Ukraine across the Visegrád Four (V4) countries, examining political discourses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Following February 24, 2022, the strategies that expressed an open backing of Russia were mostly marginalized becoming morally all but impossible and thus politically too costly. However, other and more indirect ways of showing \"understanding\" if not support for Moscow's actions soon (re)emerged. These included presenting the war in \"realist-geopolitical\" terms, as a proxy for the (allegedly inevitable) competition between great powers and a \"neutralist-pacifist\" discourse that criticized the Western military aid to Ukraine. In a broader sense, both discourses can be viewed as anchored in collective memories of the tragic Central European past that have traditionally infused the national identities in the V4 with a sense of vulnerability. The grim \"realist\" image of the world also rhymes well with the regional rise of the populist political style that hinges on the stated need to protect the \"underdog\" people and replaces the imperatives of solidarity with those of \"self-help.\"","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135637433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Langan Mark: Neo-Colonialism and the Poverty of 'Development' in Africa, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017","authors":"Stibor Griffin","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-44312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-44312","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135947796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Climate change is transforming everyday around the world. From how we live our daily lives to how we grow our food, where we can build our homes, and even how we protect ourselves and those we love, climate change is forcing us to reconsider long-held beliefs and habits. In this paper, we map and analyze four sea-level-rise (SLR) scenarios for countries in the Northern Mediterranean to explore numerically and visually increasingly likely climate threats to the region. We argue that climate change generates primary (direct), secondary and even tertiary impacts that indicate that securitization has occurred, even if some policy-makers choose to ignore that reality.
{"title":"Climate security in the Northern Mediterranean: Threat scenarios and the prospects for resiliency","authors":"Neil Oculi, Mark Boyer","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-36164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-36164","url":null,"abstract":"Climate change is transforming everyday around the world. From how we live our daily lives to how we grow our food, where we can build our homes, and even how we protect ourselves and those we love, climate change is forcing us to reconsider long-held beliefs and habits. In this paper, we map and analyze four sea-level-rise (SLR) scenarios for countries in the Northern Mediterranean to explore numerically and visually increasingly likely climate threats to the region. We argue that climate change generates primary (direct), secondary and even tertiary impacts that indicate that securitization has occurred, even if some policy-makers choose to ignore that reality.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"195 5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135441093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This year represents the year zero for the Balkan Peace Index (BPI). The Index represents an effort to assess the quality of peace and to quantify peacefulness in the region that is nowadays known by the politically coined term Western Balkans (see Petrović 2014) and encompasses seven countries and territories: Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*,1 Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
{"title":"Balkan Peace Index 2022: Trends and analysis","authors":"Nemanja Džuverović","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-46184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-46184","url":null,"abstract":"This year represents the year zero for the Balkan Peace Index (BPI). The Index represents an effort to assess the quality of peace and to quantify peacefulness in the region that is nowadays known by the politically coined term Western Balkans (see Petrović 2014) and encompasses seven countries and territories: Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*,1 Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135440799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This contribution investigates what explains Brazil's neutrality narrative regarding the Russian war against Ukraine. Brazil's position can be seen as a consequence of the economic interests of Brazilian agrobusiness, but mainly due to its historical tradition of diplomatic neutrality. However, neutrality seems to clash with Brazil's self-conceptualization as being a relevant player at the international level, especially since the 2000s. I show how this identitarian clash has led to an attempt to move from "neutrality" to an "impartiality" discourse, and argue that Brazil might partially align with the West to meet core strategic foreign policy goals.
{"title":"Brazil between global recognition and neutrality over the Russian war against Ukraine","authors":"Clarissa Tabosa","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-41792","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-41792","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution investigates what explains Brazil's neutrality narrative regarding the Russian war against Ukraine. Brazil's position can be seen as a consequence of the economic interests of Brazilian agrobusiness, but mainly due to its historical tradition of diplomatic neutrality. However, neutrality seems to clash with Brazil's self-conceptualization as being a relevant player at the international level, especially since the 2000s. I show how this identitarian clash has led to an attempt to move from \"neutrality\" to an \"impartiality\" discourse, and argue that Brazil might partially align with the West to meet core strategic foreign policy goals.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135637429","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the last decade, a number of non-mainstream European parties have cultivated friendly and mutually advantageous relations with the Russian political establishment. This phenomenon has been common to both the national conservative right and the radical left. This article critically discusses these parties' adaptation to the new political context triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and assesses their strategies and tactics to adapt to the new reality. The cases analysed include primarily Western European Russia-friendly political forces and the level of analysis focuses both on the domestic and supranational EU-level dynamics.
{"title":"Europe's Russia-friendly parties put to the test by Putin's invasion of Ukraine","authors":"Stefano Braghiroli","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-41766","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-41766","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last decade, a number of non-mainstream European parties have cultivated friendly and mutually advantageous relations with the Russian political establishment. This phenomenon has been common to both the national conservative right and the radical left. This article critically discusses these parties' adaptation to the new political context triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and assesses their strategies and tactics to adapt to the new reality. The cases analysed include primarily Western European Russia-friendly political forces and the level of analysis focuses both on the domestic and supranational EU-level dynamics.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135126593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Analogical reasoning is a discursive strategy often used by decisionand policy-makers, think tankers, academics, and cultural producers to either justify actions or learn lessons from references to events in the past. This comparative essay conceptualizes the drastic distinction between the functioning of analogical reasoning in Russian and Ukrainian discourses during the current war. The author argues that the asymmetry between the two modes of analogical reasoning is glaring when it comes not only to the interpretation of history, but also to the drastically dissimilar emotional modalities, understandings of ontological security and rationality, justice and many other concepts shaping Ukraine's and Russia's international agency.
{"title":"Analogical reasoning: Historical parallels and metaphors in the 2022 war narratives in Ukraine and Russia","authors":"Yulia Kurnyshova","doi":"10.5937/jrs18-42128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5937/jrs18-42128","url":null,"abstract":"Analogical reasoning is a discursive strategy often used by decisionand policy-makers, think tankers, academics, and cultural producers to either justify actions or learn lessons from references to events in the past. This comparative essay conceptualizes the drastic distinction between the functioning of analogical reasoning in Russian and Ukrainian discourses during the current war. The author argues that the asymmetry between the two modes of analogical reasoning is glaring when it comes not only to the interpretation of history, but also to the drastically dissimilar emotional modalities, understandings of ontological security and rationality, justice and many other concepts shaping Ukraine's and Russia's international agency.","PeriodicalId":36669,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Regional Security","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135126592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}