The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and the Rise of the Nation-State

Abstract

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has signaled the emergence of nationstate politics as the new basis of global order. Gone is the hope that globalization would establish a world of interlocking trade relationships to mediate between regions and cultures in order to establish a liberal order of peace and prosperity. On the one hand, the benefits of trade have created opportunities to use trade as a means of coercion that is being used on both sides of the conflict. On the other hand, economic globalization is now being rolled back in such a way that the global economy will be structured more along the lines of political antagonisms. But as opposed to the Cold War, in which the ideological conflict was defined as capitalism vs. communism, or to the post–Cold War era, in which liberal democracy set itself against authoritarianism, the conflict is now between competing nationalisms. Russia has relied on the notion of the civilizational state to support its claims on Ukrainian territory, but in fact the appeal is to Russian nationalism as the basis for a nation-based imperialism in the tradition of Napoleon and Hitler. But as with Napoleon in Spain or indeed in Russia, the Russian nationalist expansion into Ukraine is itself engendering the development of a Ukrainian nationalism that is seeking to ally itself with Europe in order to make its nationalist claims.