The ongoing “peace” negotiations between the US and Russia regarding the war in Ukraine are the twisted, yet logical, conclusion of conceiving world politics as great power politics. By considering only the interests and actions of so-called great powers, students of politics often neglect the perspectives and roles of more “peripheral” states – such as Ukraine – whose value comes not from power, but from their fundamental status as a sovereign state. This intellectual tradition is entrenched to the extent that we are witnessing something so daft as a country being excluded from negotiations about a war taking place in its territory.
Some may counter that said negotiations are highly unusual and only possible due to two volatile far-right regimes leading the respective negotiating states. This holds some truth, but ignores that the great power politics paradigm is also popular in more mainstream conservative circles (namely, those related to American neoconservatism) and even among some progressives. Indeed, many “anti-imperialists” are quick to blame the Ukraine war on US-led NATO expansionism, often blind to the fact that the countries to which NATO expanded opted to do so willingly.
Within our university, there are many current and future practitioners of policy. And although I can say with confidence that all of us would quickly condemn any absurdity as brazen as the negotiations in Riyadh, we may miss more subtle ways in which the lens of great power politics blurs our understanding of world politics. In order to be just policymakers, we must move past this paradigm.
Rodrigo holds a BSc diploma in Political Science and International Relations from Leiden University in The Netherlands. He is also one of the current editors at The Governance Post.
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