The cold peace: Russo-Western relations as a mimetic cold war

Abstract

In 1989–1991 the geo-ideological contestation between two blocs was swept away, together with the ideology of civil war and its concomitant Cold War played out on the larger stage. Paradoxically, while the domestic sources of Cold War confrontation have been transcended, its external manifestations remain in the form of a ‘legacy’ geopolitical contest between the dominant hegemonic power (the United States) and a number of potential rising great powers, of which Russia is one. The post-revolutionary era is thus one of a ‘cold peace’. A cold peace is a mimetic cold war. In other words, while a cold war accepts the logic of conflict in the international system and between certain protagonists in particular, a cold peace reproduces the behavioural patterns of a cold war but suppresses acceptance of the logic of behaviour. A cold peace is accompanied by a singular stress on notions of victimhood for some and undigested and bitter victory for others. The perceived victim status of one set of actors provides the seedbed for renewed conflict, while the ‘victory’ of the others cannot be consolidated in some sort of relatively unchallenged post-conflict order. The ‘universalism’ of the victors is now challenged by Russia's neo-revisionist policy, including not so much the defence of Westphalian notions of sovereignty but the espousal of an international system with room for multiple systems (the Schmittean pluriverse).

Notes

¹ I am grateful for the exceptionally detailed and helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers.

² For Aristotle mimesis plays a more positive role, comparable to a child learning by mimicry and for humanity as a whole. As Charles Darwin stressed, it is a tool for learning about the empirical reality of the outside world. See Greenleaf and Golburt (2009, 744–745).

³ This is the way Medvedev described it to the members of the Valdai International Discussion Club on 12 September 2008; personal notes.

⁴ This was repeated in various forms at the time of Western intervention in Libya from March 2011. As Putin noted in his ‘crusader’ speech on 21 March 2011, which was broadcast on the RT TV station, ‘I am worried about the ease with which decisions are being made to use force in international affairs nowadays’, reproduced in CEPS, European Neighbourhood Watch, 69, 2011, 6.