Description
In the wake of Ukraine being invaded by Russia and second, due to its fast-track for EU membership, Moldova is suddenly in the limelight as possible candidate for both roles: the next country to be invaded by Russia and/or vying for EU membership in tandem with Ukraine. This paper offers a conceptual outline of three different explanations of Moldova’s path after its 1991 independence. The Moldovan case of 1991 is a striking case for this kind of analysis, and yet it has received surprisingly little attention. The formation and continued independence of Moldova as a nation state in the early 1990s and mid 2020s constitutes an unusually dramatic case of a ‘foundational’ decision. Between Russia, Romania and the European community, the country at the crossroads was confronted with crucial ontological questions of – who are we in terms of Statehood and self-determination of what self? On the International Relations (IR) map, cases of dissolution of states are relatively rare, and unifications even more so. They often raise big questions for international law about recognition and statehood, as previous cases of Kosovo, Bosnia Hercegovina, Eritrea, Palestine or Taiwan have shown. For IR these cases are intriguing because we most often look at what a unit does, not how it comes to be one. The to be or not to be decisions are hard to handle, because almost all approaches (from realism to ontological security) assume in one garb or another some kind of will to survival, continuity or being – of the unit that already is. Or one must invoke some retroactive performativity and the being to be is treated as if it already was prior to the becoming and therefore it could will its own coming into being.
