Authors

Discussion

This paper is about a practice of diplomacy and its implications for theorising the failure of a peace agreement on Ukraine known officially as ‘the Minsk Agreements’. Bringing coherence to this inquiry is Michael Oakeshott’s political theory of the practice of self–disclosure. The empirical argument is that the idea of ‘indivisible security’ is constitutive of a practice of diplomacy that begins with Vladimir Putin’s Munich speech in February 2007 and concludes with Sergei Lavrov’s interview about a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ in February 2022. The theoretical argument is these speech acts and those in–between support a representation of Ian Clark’s English School theorem of peacemaking. This representation discloses the instrumental rationality to: i) the idea and norm(ativity) of solidarism on ‘indivisible security’ in opposition to NATO enlargement; and ii) the norm(ative) compromise and contestation of a legally–binding peace agreement on Ukraine. The paper concludes with an interrogation of the practical ideal of solidarism to the idea of ‘indivisible security’ to explain: i) the unintended failure of a norm(ative) argument of Russia–NATO diplomacy; ii) and the challenge of a norm(ative) contestation in practice to the presumptions of a ‘peace settlement’ in English School theory.