THE ORIGIN OF THE UKRAINE WAR IN LIGHT OF A MARKET-ANARCHIST THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Abstract

The article undertakes two major tasks. First, the position labeled here as a market-anarchist theory of international relations (MATIR) is reconstructed. Second, the conception is applied to international politics in Central-Eastern Europe with special regard to the Ukraine war. The overarching aim of this endeavor is to highlight MATIR’s explanatory power. The central question posed in the article is: Who, in light of MATIR and some fairly uncontroversial facts, bears the main responsibility for the outbreak of the war? This research problem breaks down into two further questions: (1) How likely is it that the Ukraine war has been triggered chiefly by the West’s eastward expansion? (2) Were policies adopted by parties to the conflict reasonable given the circumstances? The upshot of the inquiry is that (1) on MATIR, Russia would have been quite likely to invade Ukraine even absent the latter’s pro-NATO foreign policy, and (2) that while Ukraine was conducting a textbook (albeit risky) policy of defensive balancing, Russia is guilty of a greatly overdone response to an exaggerated threat. Thus -  John Mearsheimer and some leading proponents of MATIR such as Walter Block and Hans-Hermann Hoppe to the contrary notwithstanding - it is Russia that should be blamed for the present war. An original contribution of the article, then, lies also in putting the libertarian discourse on the Ukraine war on the right track. In terms of methodology, the paper offers purely theoretical investigations based on a rational reconstruction of the theory under discussion.