THE WAR OF NARRATIVES – PUTIN’S CHALLENGE TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY GOVERNANCE IN UKRAINE

Abstract

Rationalist theories have met with difficulties when used to establish credible security governance in multicultural environments for actors possessing a different sense of logic. The case of Ukraine serves as a perfect example of a Hobbesian challenge to a Kantian international system. The present research topic is influenced by the theoretical works of Alexander Wendt and Richard Lebow, and seeks to examine the cultural patterns that influence international systems and their security governance practises. In addition, it is also an attempt to produce contrasting conceptions for interpreting norms, perceptions, and motives. Motives impelled by a Kantian system are divergent from the motives of Hobbesian and Lockean systems. In Ukraine, the Hobbesian political culture, presented by Russia, challenges the Kantian principles of international organisations (UN, EU, OSCE, NATO), which are responsible for the security governance in the postmodern international system. Figuratively, ‘the world of Merkel’, which is influenced by Western liberal traditions, is opposition to ‘the world of Putin’, which corresponds to a Hobbesian and Lockean interpretation of international security. A determined Hobbesian actor can pose serious challenges, or even enact permanent changes, to a Kantian international system. With their intervention in the Ukrainan crisis Russian political elites successfully carried out neoconservative postulates of foreign policy, while international institutions (e.g. the UN, the OSCE) have met with serious difficulties in their attempts to introduce necessary measures of effective security governance.