Description
There is growing literature on Russia’s war against Ukraine as a war of colonialism/imperialism, with Ukraine’s resistance envisaged as an act of decolonisation, and mainstream IR accounts as acts of coloniality/epistemic imperialism (e.g. Barkawi; Hendl et al; Mälksoo; Oksamytna; Snyder). At the same time, since October 2023, the war in Gaza has been widely condemned internationally as an imperialist war, and Israel is often categorised as a settler-colonial state. Such condemnation is common in Aotearoa New Zealand, itself a settler-colonial state where there are ongoing debates about how to decolonise. In this paper, I outline and analyse the postcolonial perspective on the war in Ukraine and then focus on approaches to the war in Aotearoa New Zealand – in the media, in politics, among the public, and in academia. Drawing on interviews with Ukrainian academics based in New Zealand (and Australia), I will investigate to what extent the postcolonial perspective has been taken up or rejected, especially as it intersects with accounts of the Israel-Palestine war and developments in Aotearoa New Zealand itself.
