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The article examines an aspect of the meta-theoretical context of the renewed confrontation between the political West and Russia. A distinction is drawn between democratism, the purposive instrumentalization of democracy agendas in great power conflict, and democracy as a responsive, reflexive and participatory mechanism of popular control over government. In the post-Cold War era this gave rise to inter-democracy, the combination of NATO and the European Union as the basis for the continued predominance of Atlanticism in the political West. This served to exclude alternative security arrangements in post-Cold War Europe, notably pan-continental variants. At the same time, the political West, a constellation of power that was created during and shaped by the Cold War, advanced transdemocracy, the view that democracy was the foundation for the creation of a genuine security community. Drawing on democratic peace theory, this approach substituted democratic internationalism for the sovereign internationalism at the heart of the UN-based Charter international system established in 1945. This gave rise to a distinctive style of international politics, described as democratism in this paper. Rather than overcoming conflict, democratism serves to sharpen antagonisms and thus helped to regenerate Cold War practices and undermined the credibility of liberal internationalism itself. The blowback effects, however, should be distinguished from the continuing struggle for democracy and a style of international politics that remains true to Charter principles.
The article examines an aspect of the meta-theoretical context of the renewed confrontation between the political West and Russia. A distinction is drawn between democratism, the purposive instrumentalization of democracy agendas in great power conflict, and democracy as a responsive, reflexive and participatory mechanism of popular control over government. In the post-Cold War era this gave rise to inter-democracy, the combination of NATO and the European Union as the basis for the continued predominance of Atlanticism in the political West. This served to exclude alternative security arrangements in post-Cold War Europe, notably pan-continental variants. At the same time, the political West, a constellation of power that was created during and shaped by the Cold War, advanced transdemocracy, the view that democracy was the foundation for the creation of a genuine security community. Drawing on democratic peace theory, this approach substituted democratic internationalism for the sovereign internationalism at the heart of the UN-based Charter international system established in 1945. This gave rise to a distinctive style of international politics, described as democratism in this paper. Rather than overcoming conflict, democratism serves to sharpen antagonisms and thus helped to regenerate Cold War practices and undermined the credibility of liberal internationalism itself. The blowback effects, however, should be distinguished from the continuing struggle for democracy and a style of international politics that remains true to Charter principles.
The paper sheds light on the ongoing debate around the Ukrainian war in American and Western scholarship, the focus is especially on John Mearsheimer’s views on the Western perception and attitudes towards Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. An in-depth critical analysis of Mearsheimer’s essay titled “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault” published in the aftermath of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his other works have shown that putting the blame on Putin and demonization of Russia for the Ukrainian crisis is a dominant and prevailing discourse in the West. In this ongoing debate, John Mearsheimer seeks to change such narratives viewing them as one-sided and biased, forcefully and persuasive ly arguing that the Western nations led by the United States are to blame for this international crisis that has led to military conflict in Ukraine. The prime cause of the Ukrainian conflict according to Mearsheimer, lies in the eastward expansion of NATO since the 1990s, which is seen by Russia as a grave threat to its national security. Another reason of why there is a bitter tension between the West and Russia is that the American and European leaders’ beliefs of international politics are shaped and guided by a flawed view in which they tend to trivialize realis m, contemporaneously subscribing to liberalism, a school in international relations theory that dominates the discourse about the Transatlantic security. Although Mearsheimer’s realist stance and views about the Ukrainian war and European security do not constitute mainstream discours e in the West, they contribute to a proper understanding of this international crisis from the perspectives of realism.
The aim of this small-scale research is to provide a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of the framing of news articles about the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict, focusing on online news portals Russia Today (RT) and CNN. The 5 generic frames: Attribution of responsibility, Human interest, Conflict, Morality, and Economic consequences, developed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), were used to perform the analysis. The purpose of this study was to compare the dominant frames and the extent of their usage in the two outlets. Following the compilation of two separate corpora with an equal distribution of 100 articles from each outlet, the articles were classified according to the frames they exhibited by utilizing a set of yes/no questions. To ensure reliability, the classifications were performed independently by both authors. The results of the analysis showed on one hand significant differences in the framing of the war between the two outlets, and on the other similarities in the extent to which framing was utilized. RT mostly relied on the Attribution of responsibility frame to present the West as responsible for the outbreak of war, as well as the Economic consequences frame to portray the Russian economy as resilient despite the Western sanctions. On the other hand, the most frequent frames in CNN’s articles were Conflict and Human interest, which focused on battlefield reports and the portrayal of the Ukrainian side as worthy of assistance, respectively.
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