ISBN: 9781949762952

Pavel K Baev

PRIO

Read more about this book at www.claritypress.com

Justification of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is a problem President Putin has never been able to resolve, insisting implausibly that he had no other choice. Diesen has undertaken to provide an academic explanation of Putin’s fateful decision by elaborating on the thesis of multi-polar world order, trumpeted by Russian propaganda without substantiation. The narrative traces the origin of multipolarity to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and narrows the focus to Eurasia, where China’s rise and Russia’s resurgence signify the rejection by the continental powers of the five centuries long ‘liberal hegemony’ of maritime powers. NATO enlargement is interpreted as an attempt to consolidate the doomed hegemony by encroaching on Russia’s security interests, and Ukraine is denied any agency and reduced to a ‘pawn’ in the Western strategy. The Russian invasion is described as a ‘war of aggression’ (p. 218), which has delivered an unequivocally positive outcome by becoming the ‘graveyard of liberal hegemony’ (p. 273). Diesen finds it difficult to imagine a peaceful end to the Ukraine war but assumes that the West will abandon Ukraine, which has lost its ‘value in the proxy war’ (p. 244). Lengthy quotes from Putin and Xi Jinping are supposed to add convincing power to the wandering argument, while such names as Arrighi and Braudel, McNeill and Wallerstein are missing. The blend of shallow history, vulgar geopolitics and undiluted propaganda yields a ‘terrific book’ according to Mearsheimer (who needs no introduction) and praise from Karaganov (the main proponent among Moscow war-mongering intellectuals of a nuclear strike on Europe). Researchers of Russian information warfare and investigators of Putin’s network of influencers may indeed find the book useful.