BINDURA UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

NAME: SHINGIRIRAI
JELINE

SURNAME: MUGADZA

PROGRAM: MSc INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

COURSE: THEORIES & CONCEPTS OF IR

COURSE CODE: MIR523

LECTURER: DR. D N MAHUKU

REG NUMBER: B225715B

QUESTION: A failure of titanic proportions does the outbreak

of the Russian-Ukraine war in 2022 explain the failure

of the Liberalism

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has galvanised the world as
many to their dismay, witnessed the Russian leader Vladimir Putin openly
ordering military actions against Ukraine, its leadership and its citizens. This
essay will seek to make sense of this event from the theoretical liberalism
perspective of international relations. It will clarify why liberalism failed to stop
Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This will be best explained by the response made
by western countries.

Liberalism is based on the moral premise that preserving the right of a person to
life, liberty and property is the ultimate objective of government. Consequently,
liberals emphasise the well-being of the individual as the fundamental building
block of a just political system. Therefore, the main concern of liberalism is to
construct institutions that protect individual freedom by limiting and checking
political power. Liberalism and democratic institutions support international
collaboration, shared prosperity through interdependence between states, and
adherence to a higher order of international rules. In a similar spirit, according
to Jahn (2013), the phrase "liberal internationalism" refers to liberal foreign
policies as well as the application of liberal values and practices in international
relations, as well as the foreign policy of liberal governments. This phenomenon
is multifaceted and dynamic, constituting political, economic, and ideational
principles and practises that evolve with the social and political contexts. The
opposite of liberalism is realism which posits a more individualistic approach to
international relations. The liberal point of view begins by examining the state's
illegitimate domestic system before explaining how the west's failure to include
Russia in the new global order led to the war.

Initially, before the 2022 war, Ukraine joining NATO meant that democratic
ideals would spread to other states that are important to Russia. Democratic
processes and institutions would break the power of the ruling elites and curb
their propensity for violence. Liberal-minded thinkers like Thomas Paine and
Michael Howard add that war was the result of an illegitimate domestic system
that aims to use war not for glory or survival but for feeding that corrupt system
(Howard, 1978). In this case, President Putin has used war as a tool to guarantee
their position as a leader of Russia which drives the country in the international
arena to its ‘rightful’ place. Liberal theory examines western expansion as a
topic of study from a different perspective. NATO and the EU have been
attempting to expand through the former Soviet area of influence known as
Eastern Europe since the 2000s.

Consequently, a natural response to this was Russian resentment. In the liberal

view, states have to unilaterally or multilaterally restrain themselves from
excessive expansion (Kuzio and D’Anieri, 2018). According to the liberal point
of view, after 1992, the west should have been more aware of a once-dominant
power like Russia. The lack of communication, ignoring Russia’s place in the
European continent, inability to make Russia a part of the international
community are the main arguments that this theory brings. For instance, it is
well known that Russia was not so happy with the instalments of the missile
defence system in its neighbourhood; it was also not so content with the
expansion of western institutions to that area. The west knew this, as the liberal
perspective suggests, however they ignored that and proceeded with what was
the opposite of Russia’s demands. The war in Ukraine, therefore, could be
explained by the west’s inability to grasp the measures Russia would take if
they proceeded with violating Russia’s demands (Jensen, 2018). If the West
tried rapprochement with Russia then it could have resulted in a convergence of
the values of both sides, thus increasing the understanding between Russia and
the West (Frix, 2016).

The liberal system, unlike the authoritarian regime, does not impose on people a
certain way of life. On the contrary, it gives the freedom to the members of the
society to live as they want to. While the system aspires to maintain the
people’s safety and ensure security in society, authoritarian regimes are based
on racial, ethnic or religious considerations. Putin's justification for the
invasion, in which he claimed that there was no such thing as "Ukraine," that
the Ukrainian people were historically a part of Russia, and that he would
protect them from Nazism and the subversion of the West, reflected this
authoritarian orientation (Kirby, 2022). The Russian leader's initial aim was to
overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join
the Western defensive alliance NATO (Ajaj, 2022). After a month of setbacks,
he abandoned his quest to conquer the capital Kyiv and moved his sights to
Ukraine's east and south (ibid).

In this context, United States (US) officials were focusing on the use of harsh
descriptions, pointing to the brutality of Vladimir Putin and accusing him of war
crimes (Kirby, 2022). They were calling on China to declare its commitment to
the sanctity of international law and human rights, or else publicly announce its
support for Putin. These descriptions are accompanied by images broadcast by
the liberal media about developments in Ukraine (Mackenzie, 2022). They have
created a new reality that pushed Europe to join the ranks of the US. France, for
example, sent a team to investigate alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Europe,
which had long believed in action through trade, began to arm, such as
Germany, whose liberal system is at risk. The West certainly struggles to fully
comprehend Russian geopolitical thinking, but we can understand the use of
hard power very well. Thus, there is the basis for some understanding. What the
West is failing to do, however, is turn that basis into a way to incentivize what
we see as acceptable behaviour within a liberal order (Mankoff, 2022). Instead,
the West is attempting to coerce Russia through threats of force while claiming
to march under the banner of liberalism. These actions surrounding Ukraine
today prove that liberalism exists largely as a theory and not a method or
practice in international relations.

Also, economic Sanctions, relocating military forces, and public rhetoric

underscore the West’s response to the slow-simmer escalation of Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine (Ajaj, 2022). As the situation develops, a weakness in the
West’s approach is becoming clear. Moscow has been able to elicit predictable
responses from NATO through its exercise of hard power. There are few (if
any) levers of influence that the West can use to force a realist power broker to
cooperate peacefully inside the framework of the rules-based international
order, which is a fault in the liberal paradigm that is becoming glaringly
apparent for them (Kirby, 2022). Today, the liberal order is not being defended
by the self-styled “old liberal bastions” of the US and Western Europe, whose
passive complacency towards creeping authoritarianism worldwide only fuelled
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hubris (Toh et al., 2022). (Toh et al., 2022).
The Liberalist perspective adds that the war was a consequence of the West
disregarding Russia as an important player and that the lack of communication
between the east and west is crucial to understanding the given war. Moreover,
they argue the illegitimate domestic structure that currently exists in Russia is
permissive to conflict.

To conclude, after analysing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the

subsequent western response that came with it from the angle of the liberalism
international relations theory, one may state that this theory has described in its
manner the intricacies of the problem. From the standpoint of the West's
response, the liberal notion of economic interconnectedness allowed them to
sanction Russia, while from a defensive realist perspective, European nations
increased their military spending and some even tried to join NATO to fend off
Russia's expansionist aggression and maintain a balance of power. The double
standards with which liberal norms have been applied leave some people and
communities more equal than others, in what has become a global competition
over ideological visions between the will and rights of people versus the will
and rights of regimes. The struggle of Ukrainians against Russian aggression
shows the West that the liberal order can be defended. However, for this to
occur, the liberal momentum must go far beyond its current emphasis on eastern
Europe. Thus one can conclude that the outbreak of the Russian-Ukraine war in
2022 explains the failure of Liberalism.

REFERENCES
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Jahn, B. (2013). Liberal Internationalism: Theory, History, Practice. Palgrave

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Kuzio, T., & D’Anieri, P. (2018). The causes and consequences of Russia's
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