EU–Russia Strategic Studies: the Politics, Conflict and Theory of a 'Strategic Partnership'

2024/2025

Academic Year

ENG

Instruction in English

6

ECTS credits

Delivered at:

School of Politics and Governance

Course type:

Elective course

When:

2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructors

Kondratiev, Sergey

Ferguson, Iain

Course Syllabus

Abstract

The European Union (EU) and Russia’s relationship has been described as a ‘troubled’ bilateral association of the contemporary global moment. These troubles have been defined by justifications of independent ‘security strategies’ that refer to an ongoing project of UN reform, ‘treaty–like’ and intermittent political settlements of regional order, and like–for–like ‘mission’(s) of regional governance into states of the lands between. These ‘mission’(s), initially into Serbia and Georgia in 2008 and subsequently into Ukraine since 2013–14, are the events when the ‘troubles’ in this relationship have flared up and seemed most obvious and intractable to policymakers at the center of them, and to the wider world.

Learning Objectives

• The course will allow students to develop a detailed understanding of the origins and dynamics to the political conflict of the EU–Russia ‘strategic partnership’ along with an appreciation of how to evaluate this conflict for debates in a specialist subfield of International Relations (IR) known as ‘strategic studies’. More specifically, students will learn about the theory and practice of grand strategy, worldviews, interdependence, power politics, regional order(s), regional governance, international diplomacy, trust / distrust in international relations, the incomplete project of UN reform in the twenty–first century, and the method and the value (of impartiality) to employing a logic of narrative for studies of political associations in–between today’s major powers for the practice and theory of ‘global strategic studies’.

Expected Learning Outcomes

• Develop an understanding of the logical connection between political discourse, purposeful action and choices in relationships in–between political communities – and especially in–between Western powers and Russia
• Understand the origins and dynamics of a new (and global) ‘strategic partnership’ through the study of the EU and Russia’s choices and worldviews of political association initiated in the context of an incomplete, UN–centered project to the global reform of existing political arrangements for ‘collective security’ in the twenty–first century
• Understand the interconnected (and unintended) events to the political conflict of a (global) ‘strategic partnership’ in the twenty–first century
• Develop an understanding of the method to a ‘logic of narrative’ (or narratology)
• Evaluate the unresolved character of the EU–Russia conflict with respect to understanding and explaining failures of international diplomacy from 2005 and in a hostile parting of the ways of a (global) ‘strategic partnership’ from 2014
• Engage with a live debate about what it means to do ‘global’ strategic studies in the twenty–first century

Course Contents

• The ‘logic of strategy’ from the Cold War’s end to 9/11: the narrative logic to the politics of American ‘grand strategy’
• Inconsistency of a new EU–Russia ‘strategic partnership’: the post–9/11 choices to a narrative logic of worldviews of UN reform
• (Dis)agreements of a global ‘balance of power’ of regional order: the narrative logic to the Russia–EU politics of ‘containment’
• Border politics of ‘civilising mission’(s) of regional governance: the narrative logic to the EU–Russia politics of ‘enlargement’
• Norm(ative) ‘dialogues of the deaf’ and failures of international diplomacy: the narrative logic of an EU–Russia practice of peacemaking
• Narratology of the EU–Russia conflict for ‘global strategic studies’

Assessment Elements

• Seminar written answers
• Seminar participation
• Seminar presentations
• Take home final exam

Interim Assessment

• 2024/2025 2nd module
  0.1 * Seminar participation + 0.1 * Seminar presentations + 0.4 * Seminar written answers + 0.4 * Take home final exam

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

• A twenty-first century concert of powers promoting great power multilateralism for the post-transatlantic era The 21st Century Concert Study Group. Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. (2014). Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.427237939
• Grant, R. W., & Keohane, R. O. (2005). Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics. American Political Science Review, 1, 29.
• Ikenberry, G. J. (DE-588)124931103, (DE-627)368367118, (DE-576)164753869, aut. (2001). After victory institutions, strategic restraint, and the rebuilding of order after major wars G. John Ikenberry.
• Social theory of international politics, Wendt, A., 2000
• Theory of international politics / Kenneth N. Waltz. (2010). Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.322626552
• Wendt, A. (1994). Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change. Edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 308p. $37.50 cloth, $14.95 paper. American Political Science Review, (04), 1040. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsrep&AN=edsrep.a.cup.apsrev.v88y1994i04p1040.1041.09

Recommended Additional Bibliography

• From international to world society? : English school theory and the social structure of globalisation, Buzan, B., 2004

Authors

• Fergiuson Ien Endriu
• Kondratev Sergei Viktorovich