Philosophical reflections on the Russian-Ukrainian war and liberal international order

Abstract

Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, along with previous acts of the annexation of the Ukrainian territories (Crimea, parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblast), posed many questions about the effectiveness and reliability of the liberal international order along with the exact scope of questions but addressed to the current system of the international law as well. Some of these questions are mainly about the support Western countries and other allies give Ukraine. The questions are primarily not about the efficiency and technological part of the process (even though it might be the case for the political turbulence) but how friendly countries put this type of Ukrainian request in their conceptual systems when deciding the best strategy for future actions. The biggest problem is a collective gap in the experience of the Ukrainian people and peoples from other countries as far as contemporary Ukrainians, as well as their ancestors, suffered from the imperialism brought up by Russia. The population of the countries that are friendly to Ukraine has mostly never experienced anything similar. Mostly, their ancestors were the citizens of the countries that did not suffer from imperialism but brought it up to other countries and societies. This article examines how presumptions of imperialism are lasting in liberalism's theory frameworks, in particular international law and moral analyses of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Rather than a wholesale alternative paradigm, emphasis is placed in searching for significant examples where liberal thought inherently continues imperial legacies. The underlying problem is the manner in which contemporary liberal ideology classifies states as either strong or weak, seeing war through the lenses of actors merely choosing to invade errant states or economically aid weaker states. This vision appears to assume that liberal states themselves are invulnerable to territorial occupation – a suggestion that betrays deeper imperial traditions.

The central thesis argues against the way liberal theory excludes the voice of countries currently in conflict, those upon whom decisions regarding support or intervention are being made by outside liberal powers. This rigid model does not give suffering states their interests but rather proscribes positions from a distance from their world. Understanding the Russian-Ukrainian war in liberal terminology requires not the "liberal" anti-imperialism of the sort built by former empires, but a critique that opposes all imperialism, Russian in particular. In conventional liberal thinking, Ukraine, historically subject to a range of imperial forces, is simplified to another issue to be resolved by great liberal powers, its position already decided within their intellectual paradigm. The analysis subsequently occurs in three parts: firstly, examining central ideas of liberal international order and their theoretical limits; secondly, scrutinizing Western public intellectuals' comments upon war, and particularly upon the Russian-Ukrainian war, as a way of showing how even morally good discourse has an imperialist accommodation (such as the Geneva Conventions' principle of distinction, Rawls's theoretical premises, and assertions by Nussbaum and Butler); thirdly, proposing how liberal international order and international law might be remade by avoiding imperialist theoretical inheritances, including by means of the "substitution argument" whereby international legal norms replace personal moral judgment when liberal systems fail to fit reality.