Authors

Discussion

After the Cold War finished and the collapse of the Soviet Union many experts and academics in the West thought that the ‘main threat’ [the Soviet Union] was not there anymore, the war was over, and it was time for peace. On the other hand, Russia has never given up its imperialistic and hegemonic attitudes and its ongoing hegemonic involvement/interference has always been there in Europe (and not only). Yeltsin’s years have been seen as the period of Russia genuinely aiming to build democracy and move closer to the West. But as the archives open, we see that the imperialist Russian idea was always there and was not going to disappear. Yeltsin to President Clinton: ‘I ask you one thing. Just give Europe to Russia. The U.S. is not in Europe. Europe should be the business of Europeans. Russia is half European and half Asian’ (Memorandum of Conversation: Meeting with Russian President Yeltsin, Istanbul, Turkey, 19 November 1999).

It is important to analyse why Russia behaves as it behaves, and for that we need to look at the theories of geopolitics. Many critics call geopolitics ‘antiquated and baseless concepts’ and argue that jettisoning them ‘once and for all’ is necessary from US politics (Fettweis, 2000; p.70). However, although geopolitics could be antiquated for Americans and the Western Europeans, for Russian policymakers it remains very much influential. Some of the geopolitical theories are widely written in the Russian Federation today. For example, Mackinde’s ‘Heartland’ theory remains very popular in Russia which argues that ‘who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island: who rules the World-Island commands the world’ (1919; p.106)[1], and Russian political elite have believed that if Russia ruled/controlled East Europe again they would be the global power. Thus, when we are analysing Russia’s war in Ukraine we cannot analyse it without the historical and geopolitical context.