A comparative analysis of the foreign policies of eight post-communist states which considers the extent to which official communist ideology has been replaced by nationalism and establishes how these states express their national identities through foreign policy.

International Organizations and Post-Soviet Conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine: The Limitations of Imagining Peace and the Failure and Success in Negotiations addresses the protracted history of international conflict resolution efforts to the Georgian-Abkhaz, Moldovan-Transnistrian, and Eastern Ukraine conflicts. The author explores the origins and onset of these first two conflicts in the early 1990s, but also looks at the eruption of conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and at the first months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book shows how, from a conflict-transformation perspective, local vested interests and strategic interests have created obvious obstructions that have both fueled the conflicts and prevented their resolution. This volume develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the success and failure of international engagement that offers a new understanding of the extent to which international responses may or may not be helpful. Through an analysis of over 500 closed-source documents and about 70 interviews, the efforts of pan-European international organizations — with mandates from the OSCE, EU, UN, and NATO — are examined on both political and cultural levels. This work’s innovative analyses of those institutions’ performances shows how successes have often been overlooked and identifies misperceptions that reshape our understanding of the limitations to imagining peace.

How have countries in the EU that were previously under Communist rule influenced the creation of a European policy towards other Post-Soviet nations? This study explores countries including the Czech Republic and Poland and shows how they have helped develop a coherent policy based reconciling political and historical foreign policy identities.

As Russia and China leave communism behind, they struggle to forge a new political ideology for a new era

A fresh look at post-Soviet Russia and Eurasia and at the Soviet historical background that shaped the present.

Základní myšlenkou této publikace je prozkoumat souvislost mezi identitou a solidaritou v zahraniční politice členských států Evropské unie (EU), zejména ted východních členů organizace. The core idea of this publication is thus to investigate the link between identity and solidarity in the foreign policy of members of the European Union (EU), in particular its East Central European (ECE) members.

The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics is an authoritative overview that will help a wide readership develop an understanding of the region in all its political, economic, and social complexity. Including Central Europe, the Baltic republics, South Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans, as well as all the countries of the former Soviet Union, it is unrivalled in breadth and depth, affording a comprehensive overview of Eastern European politics provided by leading experts in the fields of comparative politics, international relations, and public administration. Through a series of cutting-edge articles, it seeks to explain and understand patterns of Eastern European politics today. The Routledge Handbook of East European Politics will be a key reference point both for advanced-level students developing knowledge about the subject, researchers producing new material in the area, and those interested and working in the fields of East European Politics, Russian Politics, EU Politics, and more broadly in European Politics, Comparative Politics, Democratization Studies, and International Relations.

The South Caucasus is the key strategic region between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and the regional powers of Iran, Turkey and Russia and is the land bridge between Asia and Europe with vital hydrocarbon routes to international markets. This volume examines the resulting geopolitical positioning of Georgia, a pivotal state and lynchpin of the region, illustrating how and why Georgia's foreign policy is 'multi-vectored', facing potential challenges from Russia, int ernal and external nationalisms, the possible break-up of the European project and EU support and uncertainty over the US commitment to the traditional liberal international order.

This book provides an up-to-date discussion of the effect of crises on European identities in the post-Soviet states. In doing so, the book presents an original study on dynamics of European identities during four crises in Georgia and Ukraine. More specifically, it considers the comparative impact of two colour revolutions and wars involving Russia on European identity constructions in Georgian and Ukrainian public identity discourses, studied through national mass media. It compares outcomes of change and continuity during such “big bang” events in identity discourses and establishes scope conditions that allow or inhibit change. The major finding of the study is that the selected events can indeed instigate sudden shifts in European identity discourses but only when the elite power structure also changes in such hybrid regimes, as Ukraine and Georgia. These changes include shifts in elite groups and in the relative power they hold in the overall power structure.