The curse of Empire: Russia’s war against Ukraine

The European Studies Centre (ESC) held a seminar to discuss two books on Russia-Ukrainian relations by two German authors: Der Fluch des Imperiums. Die Ukraine, Polen und der Irrweg in der Russischen Geschichte (Imperial Curse. Ukraine, Poland, and the False Paths in Russian History) written by Martin Schulze Wessel, Professor of Eastern European History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, and Russia’s War against Ukraine written by Gwendolyn Sasse, Einstein Professor for the Comparative Study of Democracy and Authoritarianism at the Department of Social Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. The seminar was held on 28 November and was chaired by Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

Wessel provided a presentation of the purpose of the book and its key themes. Although a historical book, its purpose is also to contribute to the political debate by showing that Russia’s war against Ukraine has “deep historical roots” and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is in fact not Putin’s, but Russia’s war. The argument of the book is illustrated through three concepts: the epoch, continuities, and contingencies of Russia’s imperial policy toward Ukraine and Poland. The first argument that Wessel makes is that we ought to see Russia’s policy in epochal terms, which means that Putin is operating in the epochal framework of the Russian empire. Consequently, Russia’s aggression should not be seen as a historical deviation from, but rather as a continuation of Russian imperial policy. He further draws parallels between the cooperation of Peter I with German territorial states – Mecklenburg and Holstein – to constructs canals linking the Baltic and the North Seas to bypass Danish customs duties for the export of timber to England and the Russian-German cooperation to build the Nord Stream pipeline, both of which Wessel regards as “imperial infrastructures”. He further argues that through these political structures in international politics, Russia has exercised imperial rule over Poland and Ukraine, and that this long-lasting continuity has been created through high culture. Russian literature, and Pushkin more specifically, according to him, have provided imperial support and legitimacy by painting an almost mystical image of the ties between Russia and the rest of the Slavic nations, which are considered inseparable from each other. This imagery has further strengthened the view that Ukraine has no legitimate national aspirations. Wessel concludes by arguing that to achieve lasting peace, the West must support Ukraine and Russia must break with its imperial paradigm.

Rethinking the Eastern Mediterranean in a volatile world

On 21 November, the European Studies Centre (ESC) (in collaboration with South East European Studies Centre at Oxford - SEESOX) held a seminar on the opportunities and challenges to cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The region has become increasingly important as the European Union (EU) seeks to meet its energy demands after an almost complete ban on the import of Russian gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, the instability of the region coupled with a multitude of global crisis – amongst others climate change, trade wars, US-China competition, and inflation – are making the Eastern Mediterranean an integral part of the geopolitical space that affects regional and global balance of power.

The seminar convened on 21 November is part of a larger effort at ESC/SEESOX to tackle these issues through a special project, which we are expecting to launch in March 2024. The speakers for this seminar included Alexander Clarkson (King’s College London), Costandinos Filis (American College in Athens), Manal Shahabi (St. Antony’s College, Oxford), and Galip Dalay (St. Antony’s College, Oxford). The seminar was chaired by ESC Director Othon Anastasakis.

The Helsinki process: Past and future

The European Studies Centre (ESC) held a seminar on the Helsinki process, which led to the signing of the Helsinki Final Act and the establishment of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The seminar was held on 7 November 2023 and was based on the discussion of the recently published book Defrosting the Cold War and Beyond: An Introduction of the Helsinki Process, 1954-2022 written by Richard Davy, Senior Member at St. Antony’s College. Kai Habel – Assistant Professor of International Relations at Leiden University – and Juhana Aunesluoma – Professor of Political History at the University of Helsinki – joined the author by providing their perspectives on the relevance of the book, while Anne Deighton – Professor of European International Politics from Wolfson College, Oxford.

The author discussed the main reasons for writing the book and provided an overview of the main themes. Davy was prompted to write the book on the Helsinki negotiating process, which he had covered as a journalist, because of many misunderstandings and misconceptions surrounding the process on the positions of the parties during the negotiations and its place within the Cold War framework. He outlines in the book a rather complex process of negotiation amongst the West European countries themselves, between West Europeans and the Americans, and between the Western countries and the Soviet Union. He further includes also the role of the non-aligned countries such as Austria, Ireland, and Yugoslavia.

During the presentation, Davy underscored the role of the nine members of the European Community, which became “the driving force” to include human rights as a principle in international relations. He contrasted this position to that of Kissinger, who maintained that human rights did not have a place in international relations and favoured Détante as the most effective path to stabilize superpower relations and avoid nuclear war. Despite Kissinger’s position, the United States State Department was rather sympathetic and supportive of the European position, whose aim was to encourage the long-term liberalisation of the Warsaw Pact regimes. Conversely, the Soviet position was to achieve a declaration that the frontiers of Europe were immutable and establish the principle of non-interference. Davy concluded by underscoring the role of the Helsinki Final Act in establishing mechanisms for mutual verification and the establishment of a normative framework that would contribute to the end of the Cold War, and the subsequent contributions of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – the successor of the CSCE – in promoting democracy and human rights despite setbacks and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

From securitization of migration to the dehumanization of refugees: A threat to liberal democracy

The European Studies Centre (ESC) held a seminar on the securitisation of migration, the dehumanisation of refugees, and its impact on the liberal democracy. The seminar was held on 31 October 2023 and was chaired by ESC director Othon Anastasakis. The main speakers were Franck Düvell – Senior Researcher and Coordinator of the Forced Migration and Refugee Research consortium at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies at Osnabrück University, Germany – and Başak Kale – Associate Professor at the Middle East Technical Institute, Türkyie. The speaks were joined by Catherine Briddick - Andrew W Mellon Associate Professor of International Human Rights and Refugee Law and a fellow of St Antony's College – as a discussant.

The main speakers presented their work on the dehumanisation of refugees (Düvell) and the securitisation of migration (Kale). Düvell had started to think about the dehumanisation of refugees after having visited the migration centres in 2013. He began writing in 2015 after conducting fieldwork in the Greek islands and the Aegean coast of Türkyie. To understand the hostile responses to migration after the 2015 crisis, Düvell compares the response of the European Union (EU) to this crisis with the response of European countries to the migration of Eastern European Jews during the 1920s. He argued that there are important parallels between the policies of the EU after the 2015 crisis with those of the European countries in the 1920s, as well as between the narratives of refugees that were constructed in both cases. In both cases, the Jewish refugees Jews in the 1920s and those coming to Europe from Syria and other Middle Eastern and African countries were considered as invaders and were confined to camps. Refugees described their experiences in both cases in similar ways. They emphasised hunger, lack of medical treatment, poor sheltering conditions, and mistreatment by the police or the army upon their reception. Alongside these policies, in both cases there was a dehumanisation process at play, whereby a boundary marked the “in-group” and the “out-group”. The refugees – the outsiders – were stigmatised as a threat to the “in-group”. They were thus considered as subhuman to enable the indifference to their suffering and the denial of their rights. Düvell argues that this process is part of a deterrent policy to stem the flow of refugees and represents a new typology of evil.

Heirs of the Greek catastrophe: The social life of Asia Minor refugees in Piraeus

The European Studies Centre (ESC) in collaboration with Southeast European Studies Centre at Oxford (SEESOX) held a book discussion on the experiences of the Greek population of Asia Minor who settled in Greece after the population exchange agreement through the 1923 Lausanne Convention. Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus, written by Professor Renée Hirschon, was first published in 1989, whilst its third edition was published to commemorate the centenary of the Lausanne Convention.

The discussion was held on 25 October 2023, and it was chaired by Michael Llewellyn Smith, Fellow at St. Antony’s College. Renée Hirschon – Senior Research Fellow at St. Peter’s College, Oxford – presented the third edition of the book, while Robin Cohen – Emeritus Professor at Kellogg College, Oxford – and Başak Kale – Associate Professor at the Middle East Technical Institute – discussed the contributions of the book to the research on the topic and more broadly concerning questions of identity, belonging, nationalism, migration, and memory.

During the presentation of the book, Professor Hirschon provided some historical context to her research approach, discussed the key objective of the research, and presented some of the key themes. She first underlined some changes in the names of the locations where the field work had been conducted due to confidentiality concerns. The reader of the third edition should be aware that in the third edition “Nea Ephsus” is used instead of “Kokkinia” and/or “Nikaia”, while “Yerania” has replaced “Germanika”. The author then underscored that the research she was conducting in the 1970s was not part of what we may call today “refugee studies” or “migration studies”. The field did not exist at the time and in 1972, when Hirschon was conducting the research, the worldwide population of forcibly displaced persons was approximately 3.2 million. The purpose of the research conducted in the 1970s was to understand the interaction between the use of space and cultural values. But given the exponential growth of the worldwide number of forcibly displaced persons, she revisits her work and seeks to determine whether “we can learn something from the experience of people who were forcibly displaced in the early 1920s and whether that experience is relevant for us today”.

ESC Annual Lecture - Beyond Civil Society: Renewing the traditions of reform in Europe

On the 30th of May 2023, the European Studies Centre hosted its Annual Lecture. This year’s speaker was Charles S. Maier, the Leverett Saltonstall Research Professor of History at Harvard University. Maier studied at St Antony’s from 1960-61 between his bachelor’s and PhD at Harvard. He had published a number of influential books, including Recasting Bourgeois Europe (1975), Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (1997), and the Project State and its Rivals (2023). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations and has received the Commander’s Cross of the German Federal Republic and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and the Arts. The ESC’s director, Othon Anastasakis (St Antony’s College, Oxford), chaired the event.

Maier’s lecture was entitled “Beyond Civil Society: Renewing the traditions of reform in Europe.” Interrogating the historical record, he argued that the fashionable slogans of governance and civil society need to be rebalanced by a renewed agenda for state/EU political institutions.

Maier began his lecture by reflecting on the political changes that have taken place in Europe and around the world since 1989. Transformations of political language, he said, provide a good window into analysing how politics have changed. The key concept in the Europe of 1989 was “civil society.” The term denoted a far more intense engagement with democracy than, for example, the phrase “parliamentary democracy.” Václav Havel famously said that traditional parliamentary democracy could not protect freedom without the help of a thriving civil society.

The impact of the new geopolitical context on European trade policy

On May 19th, The European Studies Centre welcomed Ignacio Garcia-Bercero to deliver a speech entitled “The impact of the new geopolitical context on European trade policy.” Garcia-Bercero is the Director in charge of Multilateral Affairs, Strategy, Analysis and Evaluation at the Directorate-General for Trade in the European Commission. Active within the European Commission since 1987, he participated in the Uruguay Round negotiations and was the Chief Negotiator for the EU-Korea and EU-India Free Trade Agreements.

The event was chaired by Othon Anastasakis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) and Jonathan Scheele (SEESOX) acted as a discussant. As the talk was convened jointly by the European Studies Centre and the Russian and Eurasian Studies Centre, Roy Allison (St Antony’s College, Oxford) was also present to ask questions before the official Q&A session.

Garcia-Bercero began his presentation by outlining the connection between the global trading system and worsening geopolitical tensions. In 2021, he co-authored a document on the direction in which EU trade policy should develop in the context of worsening US-China relations. The paper made three important arguments. Firstly, the WTO needs to be reformed. Secondly, there ought to be a closer connection between EU trade policy and EU economic priorities. Thirdly, the EU must put together a toolbox for autonomous economic action that will enable the body to act more assertively when faced with pressure. These proposals combine openness, sustainability, and assertiveness as goals for European trade policy.