Description
This paper builds on the ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ understanding of Russia’s hierarchical world-view introduced in Oskanian (2018). Moscow’s long-held policy discourses and practices are thus seen as entwined with a (post-)imperial geopolitical imaginary separating a sphere of influence from both ‘East’ and ‘West’, through both an ‘imitation’ of and a ‘doubling down’ on difference (Zaraköl, 2017)) from the Western core of modernity. In the contemporary context, this occurs through the appropriation and instrumentalization of liberal concepts – including ‘humanitarian intervention’ - on the one hand; and the (mis)appropriation of subaltern identities on the other. I illustrate these points through an analysis of the discourses of Russian media, think-tanks, and policymakers surrounding two recent conflicts: one – the Russo-Georgian war of 2008 – situated in the Eastern borderlands of its claimed ‘sphere of special interests’; the other – the ongoing intervention in Ukraine – in its Western periphery. In the former case, the tropes used in justifying disciplining projections of power are posited to contain ‘orientalising’ characteristics, in addition to the geopolitical arguments on the perceived Western/NATO threat; in the latter instance, it is argued that discourses will be based on the construction of a mostly Western – rather than oriental - ‘other’. The paper will conclude by considering the implications of Russia’s ‘hybrid exceptionalist’ world-view for present and future relations between Moscow, Kyiv, Tbilisi, and the West.
