Research project
When every act is war: Post-Crimea conflict dynamics and Russian foreign policy
Events
Asking how we can explain the spiral of worsening relations between Russia and the West since 2014, WARU posits that we cannot adequately explain it without understanding the specific way Russia and the West have spoken and related to each other in recent years. We investigate how adversarial relations can spread to engulf the entire relation through totalizing images of the other party as threat.
Examples: On the Russian side, the continuous claims that the West is operating with ‘double standards’ and fostering ‘colour revolutions’ and regime change around the globe has paved the way for policies of denial and rejection of Western initiatives across the board. In the West, a new common knowledge has been established: in Russia, truth is ‘weaponized’ – ‘nothing is true and everything is possible’ – and Russian foreign policy can aptly be summarized as ‘hybrid warfare’. This implies that any Russian foreign policy act can be seen as an act of war.
The project is an in-depth empirical study of how inimical rhetoric about the other party becomes self-evident and unproblematic, making it appear natural, even necessary, to treat the other party as a threat. It explores these dynamics through Russia's interactions with Norway, Estonia, Germany, NATO and the USA in the years 2014–2020. We build on and advance Securitization Theory, by examining how discourses of existential threat expand to encompass all areas of engagement with the other party, and by connecting such a process in one political entity with that going on in another. With this, WARU conceptualizes how rhetorical interaction between political entities can contribute to conflict escalation.
The issue in focus has acute political relevance. We anticipate that WARU will contribute to a school of thought that explains Russia's relations with the West with reference to interaction, help reduce the risk of politization and polarization in the debate about Russia and the West and contribute to knowledge-based political choices.
The project is financed by the RCN and the highly qualified international research team reflects the geographical scope of the project.
The capstone conference for this project will be held on 14 November 2023. Read more and register for the conference here.
Events organized by other institutions than NUPI
Tuesday 8 June 2021 - Yhe panel "Russia-West relations: Changing discourses of the Other post-Crimea" at Fifth Annual Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies. Project contributors: Wilhelmsen, Hjermann, Gjerde, Morozov, Krawatzek og Sasse
Thursday 2 September 2021 - The dynamic of escalation between East and West: Russia, Belarus and regional dimensions of conflict and dialogue. Policy roundtable, Tallinn, Estonia. Project contributor: Julie Wilhelmsen.
Monday 12 June 2023 - The panel "Threat constructions in Russia-West social relations since 2014 " on the Seventh Annual Tartu Conference on Russian and East European Studies. contribution from: Wilhelmsen, Hjermann, Gjerde, Morozov og Toal.
Publications from external partners:
Morozov, Viacheslav (2021): "Institutionalizing National Memories: The Baltic Sea Region and World War II" in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies.
Project Manager
Participants
New publications
Liberal halvtime: En lang samtale med Julie Wilhelmsen om Russland
(This podcast episode is in Norwegian). In episode 343 of the think tank Civita's 'Liberal halvtime', Senior research Fellow Julie Wilhelmsen talks Russia and Ukraine with podcast host Eirik Løkke.
Spiraling toward a New Cold War in the North? The Effect of Mutual and Multifaceted Securitization
Building on a discourse-theoretical reading of securitization theory, this article theorizes and examines how two political entities can become locked in a negative spiral of identification that may lead to a violent confrontation. Through mutual and multifaceted securitization, each party increasingly construes the other as a threat to itself. When this representation spreads beyond the military domain to other dimensions (trade, culture, diplomacy), the other party is projected as “different” and “dangerous” at every encounter: positive mutual recognition is gradually blocked out. Military means then become the logical, legitimate way of relating: contact and collaboration in other issue-areas are precluded. Drawing on official statements 2014–2018, this article investigates how Norwegian–Russian relations shifted from being a collaborative partnership to one of enmity in the High North. The emerging and mutual pattern of representing the other as a threat across issue-areas since 2014 has become an “autonomous” driver of conflict—regardless of whether either party might originally have had offensive designs on the other.
Russian Certainty of NATO Hostility: Repercussions in the Arctic
How does a security dilemma dynamic between parties deemed not to hold hostile intentions toward each other emerge and escalate? This article investigates Russian official discourse on NATO engagement in Europe post-Crimea (2014), and its impact on security interaction in the Arctic. We also examine how Russia represents NATO intentions and actions in a context seen by Russia as a relation of war. We identify the effect of these changing representations of self and other for the emerging securitization dilemma in relations between Russia and NATO, arguing that they have replaced uncertainty about NATO’s hostile intentions with certainty. Although Russia still articulates the Arctic as a unique cooperative region, there may be little space left for non-conflictual Russian action when encountering NATO in the Arctic. We highlight the agency and importance of evolving political rhetoric in creating a dangerous situation where lethal conflict can occur between parties who do not seek it, and also suggest that adjustments to patterns of official speech could be a tool of mitigation