The Haunting of Ukraine: A Geopolitical Spectacle of Self-Destruction

Abstract

This thesis has identified four interweaving causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The first is domestic fragmentation between cultural identities and political models of statehood, internal contradictions which have fused with modern political currents and have thus embedded themselves within competing geopolitical paradigms – the second cause of war. Indeed, this toxic union has cemented Ukraine’s self-destructive impasse vis-a-vis regional autonomy and decentralization, the only pathway to peace. Thus, the first victim of the consummation between the domestic and geopolitical remains the Minsk peace process, a bastardized failure which led to the Russian SMO in 2022 and represents the third cause of war; in Clausewitzian fashion, this phase of Russia’s strategic operation was initiated to achieve ‘by other means’ what the Minsk accords had failed to achieve politically. Lastly, the fourth cause of war is represented as the struggle of World Order between liberal hegemony and unipolarity on one side, versus international law and multipolarity on the other.

This thesis has identified four interweaving causes of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The first is domestic fragmentation between cultural identities and political models of statehood, internal contradictions which have fused with modern political currents and have thus embedded themselves within competing geopolitical paradigms – the second cause of war. Indeed, this toxic union has cemented Ukraine’s self-destructive impasse vis-a-vis regional autonomy and decentralization, the only pathway to peace. Thus, the first victim of the consummation between the domestic and geopolitical remains the Minsk peace process, a bastardized failure which led to the Russian SMO in 2022 and represents the third cause of war; in Clausewitzian fashion, this phase of Russia’s strategic operation was initiated to achieve ‘by other means’ what the Minsk accords had failed to achieve politically. Lastly, the fourth cause of war is represented as the struggle of World Order between liberal hegemony and unipolarity on one side, versus international law and multipolarity on the other.