Geopolitics Quarterly

Geopolitics Quarterly

The Right to War and Katechon in the Geopolitics of Crisis

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Reza Najafzadeh 1
Amirhamed Talebian 2
1 Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
2 PhD Graduate of Public International Law, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
10.22034/igq.2024.175761
Abstract
Abstract
Conducting a special military operation in Ukraine has created a crisis in legal and geopolitical order. Political documents such as ``On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians`` and ``on conducting a special military operation`` cannot be truly re-read except by re-interpreting the geopolitico-theological texts of the Heideggerian theoreticians of the Russian Katechonic identity. By re-visiting the theory of Katechon, this article aims to examine the so-called Katechontic identity of Russia in the geopolitics of crisis and the dimensions of the Russian mindset in intervention in legal rule making in the global state of war. In fact, the main question of this article is how the Katechonic identity of Russia is defined in apocalyptic geopolitics, and theories such as neo-Eurasianism and National Bolshevism, based on theological and philosophical foundations, have worked to prepare an anti-legal order beyond the international legal order? The Russo-Ukrainian War is the main case. This article is in the framework of radical political theology, critical theory in international law and critical geopolitics.
Keywords
Use of Force
Russian Katechonic Identity
Geopolitics of Crisis
Critical Theory
State of Exception

Subjects

  1. Ingram, A; Dodds, K (2009). Spaces of Security and Insecurity (Critical Geopolitics), Routledge.
  2. Dugin, A (2014c).Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, Arktos, 2014 a.
  3. Dugin, A (2015). Last War of the World-Island: The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia, London: Arktos, 2015.
  4. Dugin, A; Heidegger, M (2014b). The Philosophy of another Beginning, Radix: Washington Summit Publishers, 2014 b.
  5. Dugin, A (2014c). Putin vs Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right, Arktos, 2014 c.
  6. Dugin, A (2012). The Fourth Political Theory, Eurasian Movement, 2012.
  7. Dugin, A (2022). UNREGISTERED 193: INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER DUGIN, by Thaddeus Russell, 24.02.2022, https://katehon.com/en/article/ unregistered-193-interview-alexander-dugin.
  8. Allison, G (2017). Destined Forwar: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
  9. Anghie, A (2005). Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law.
  10. Arms Control Association, Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons, and Security Assurances at a Glance, 2022 in ‎https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/ Ukraine-Nuclear-Weapons.
  11. Association Agreement between the European Union and its Member States, of the one part, and Ukraine, of the other part, Official Journal of the European Union, 2014‎ in https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2016/november/tradocpdf.
  12. Balmforth, T (2022). Editing by Peter Graff, Putin ratifies treaties with breakaway Ukrainian regions in Reuters.com, 2022-02-22
  13. Schmitt, C (2006). The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, Telos Press Publishing, 2006.
  14. Cavandoli, S; Wilson, G (2022). Distorting Fundamental Norms of International Law to Resurrect the Soviet Union: The International Law Context of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, Netherlands International Law Review, published online 26 July 2022.
  15. Chachko, E; Linos, K (2022). International Lawafter Ukraine: Introduction To The Symposium, Symposium On Ukraine And The International Order, 2022 Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law.
  16. Charap, S; Colton, T (2017). Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia, London: Routledge, 2017
  17. Chimni, B.S (2012). Capitalism, Imperialism, and International Law in the Twenty-First Century, 14 ORE. REV. INT’L L. 17.
  18. Cuppuleri, A (2021). The Rational Behind Russia's Military Interventions, Italian Institute for International Political Studies, October 25, 2021
  19. David G (2020). Lewis, Russia’s New Authoritarianism: Putin and the Politics of Order, Edinburgh University Press, 2020.

     Documents and Resolutions

  1. Eichensehr, K (2022). Contemporary Practice of the United States, 116 AJIL 593, 595, 599.
  2. Encyclopædia Britannica in https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Yanukovych.
  3. Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, February 22, 2022 in http://council.gov.ru/events/news/133443/.
  4. Gathii, J.T (2007). Imperialism, Colonialism, and International Law, 54 BUFF. L. REV. 1013.
  5. Giorgio A (2011). The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, Stanford University Press, 2011.
  6. Agamben, G (2005). The Time that Remains A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
  7. Green, J.A; Henderson, C; Ruys, T (2022). Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the jus ad bellum, Journal on the Use of Force and International Law, 9:1, 4-30
  8. Hafeznia, M, R (2010). Emerging Geopolitical Structure in the World, Geopolitics Quarterly, and Vol. 6, No. 3.[In Persian]
  9. Hafeznia, M, R (2022). Principles of the School of Humanist Geopolitics (A New Approach and way to the Political and Moral Life of Humankind), Geopolitics Quarterly, Vol. 17, No 4, PP 1-9.
  10. Hafeznia, M, R (2023). Scenarios for the Future of the World in Light of the Ukraine Crisis, Geopolitics Quarterly, Vol. 18, No 4.
  11. Hooker, W (2009). Carl Schmitt's International Thought: Order and Orientation, Cambridge University Press.
  12. Immerwahr, D (2019). How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States 215–61.
  13. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Case No.IT-010xxx‎, Indictment
  14. Ivanise, G (2008). Russia and the responsibility to protect, Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2008‎.
  15. Kagan, R (2017). Backing into WWIII, FOR. POL’Y (Feb. 6, 2017).
  16. Karami, J. (2022). Leviathan's Security Strategy: Reflection of the Geopolitical Environment on the Thought of Russian Governance, Geopolitics Quarterly, Vol. 18, Issue 67, PP 31-69. [In Persian]
  17. Kiselyova, M (2022). Editing by Andrew Osborn and Jon Boyle, Putin orders Russian forces to "perform peacekeeping functions" in eastern Ukraine's breakaway regions in Reuters.com, 2022-02-21.
  18. Koolaee, E; Abdi, A (2018). Geopolitical Components of the Russian Foreign Policy, Geopolitics Quarterly, 14 (49), pp. 1-25. [In Persian]
  19. Kreß, C (2022). The Ukraine War and the Prohibition of the Use of Force in International Law, Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher (TOAEP), 2022.
  20. Kuleba, D (2021). Why is Ukraine still not in NATO?, February 16, 2021, Atlantic Council‎.
  21. Lavrov, S (2022). Russian operation in Ukraine contributes to freeing world from Western oppression – Lavrov: an interview with Xinhua news agency in Tass, April 30, 2022.
  22. Lerch, M (2022). with contributions from Sara Mateos Del Valle, Russia’s war on Ukraine in international law and human rights bodies: Bringing institutions back in, in Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union: Policy Department for External Relations, European Union, 08 April 2022.
  23. Li, D (2018). From Exception to Empire: Sovereignty, Carceral Circulation, and the “Global War on Terror,” in Ethnographies of U.S. Empire (Carole McGranahan & John F. Collins eds., 2018).
  24. Lorca, A.B (2014). Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933.
  25. Mälksoo, L (2015). Russian Approaches to International Law 173 (1st ed. 2015).
  26. Marcinko, M; Rogala, B (2016). The Ukrainian Crisis: A Test For International Law?, Polish Review Of International And European Law, 2016, Vol. 5, Issue 1.
  27. Marks, S (2022). LSE British Politics and Policy, March 11, 2022.
  28. Meduza (2022) in https://meduza.io/news/2022/02/22/sovet-federatsii-razreshil-putinu-vvesti-voyska-v-dnr-i-lnr.
  29. Mégret, F (2006). From “Savages” to “Unlawful Combatants”: A Postcolonial Look at International Humanitarian Law’s “Other,” in International Law and Its Others (Anne Orford ed., 2006).
  30. Hardt, M; Negri, A (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, Penguin Press, 2004.
  31. Michelson, K (1998). Rhetoric and Rage: Third World Voices in International Legal Discourse, 16 WISCONSIN INT’L L.J. 353.
  32. Natarajan, U (2011). Creating and Recreating Iraq: Legacies of the Mandate System in Contemporary Understandings of Third World Sovereignty, 24 LEIDEN J. INT’L L. 799.
  33. OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) Daily Report 41/2022 issued on 22 February 2022 in https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/512842.
  34. Pert, A (2017). International Law in a Post-Post-Cold War World—Can It Survive?, Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2017, pp. 362–375.
  35. Singh, P; Mayer, B (ed.) (2014), Critical International Law: Postrealism, Postcolonialism, and Transnationalism, Oxford University Press.
  36. Putin, President of Russia Press Release, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, July 12, 2021.
  37. Putin, Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, 2007-02-10 01:38:24 .
  38. Putin’s declaration of war on Ukraine, 2022 in https://www.spectator.co.uk/ article/full-text-putin-s-declaration-of-war-on-ukraine/.
  39. Rademaker, S (2021). The ICC’s Fundamental Design Flaws Have Only Become More Evident, International Criminal Justice Today, 2021‎
  40. Utechin, S.V (1964). Russian Political Thought: A Concise and Comprehensive History, JM Dent & Sons, 1964.
  41. Schmitt, C (1997). Land and Sea, Plutarch Press.
  42. Schmitt, C (2011). Großraum versus universalism: the international legal struggle over the Monroe Doctrine: Carl Schmitt 1939, Trans. Matthew Hannah, in Stephen Legg (Ed), Spatiality, Sovereignty and Carl Schmitt, Routledge, p 46-54.
  43. Security Council Resolution 1134 (Oct. 23, 1997).
  44. Security Council Resolution 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997).
  45. Security Council Resolution 1441 (Nov. 8, 2002).
  46. Security Council Resolution 660 (Aug. 2, 1990).
  47. Security Council Resolution 687 (Apr. 3, 1991).
  48. Stahn, C (2022) More than Rhetoric? International Criminal Justice, Crime Semantics and the Role of the ICC in the Ukraine Conflict, opiniojuris.org, February 25, 2022.
  49. The Kremlin Events, February 21, 2022 in http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president /news/67829.
  50. Twardowski, A (2015). The Return of Novorossiya: Why Russia’s Intervention in Ukraine Exposes the Weakness of International Law, Minnesota Journal of International Law, 351, 2015.
  51. S. Department of State, (2021).‎ in https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-ukraine/
  52. Ukraine's Constitution of 1996 with Amendments through 2019.
  53. UNGA Resolution A/RES/73/195‎, Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 19 December 2018, Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
  54. UNGA resolutions ES-11‎.
  55. Update by the Chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on ‎Ukraine, at the 51st session of the Human Rights Council, 23 September 2022‎.
  56. Veicy, H. (2023). The policies of Russian Regionalism and the Eurasian Economic Union, Geopolitics Quarterly, Vol. 18, No 4., PP 177-201.
Geopolitics Quarterly
Volume 20, Issue 2
Spring 2024
Pages 86-113

  • Receive Date 09 March 2023
  • Revise Date 01 July 2023
  • Accept Date 20 July 2023