Ukraine, Russia, and Countering Epistemic Imperialism
In a recent article entitled, “What is Ukraine? Notes on Epistemic Imperialism,” Maria Sonevystsky identifies a trend in academic and public discourses on Ukraine—namely, “epistemic imperialism,” which all too frequently dominates discussions about Ukrainian history, culture, and identity, as well as the complex history of Russia vis-à-vis Ukraine. In fact, John Mearsheimer’s account of the war in Ukraine is a prime example of epistemic imperialism writ large. That is, not only are Ukrainian voices absent in his account, but he also articulates a position that resonates with and repeats aspects of Putin’s propaganda. For example, Mearsheimer claims that alleged “NATO expansion into Ukraine” caused the war rather than Russia’s aggressive, imperialistic history and behavior toward Ukraine, not to mention other Post-Soviet states. In other words, rather than acknowledging the Westward movement of Eastern Europeans—Ukrainians, Georgia, Moldova, and the Baltic States due to security concerns vis-a-vis their aggressive neighbor—he blames the US, the West, and NATO expansion. Here again Mearsheimer’s account repeats Putin’s framework, as it denies the agency, choices, and actions of Ukrainians (and Georgians, Moldovians, etc.) who have voiced their desire to become members of the EU and NATO and, in many cases, have held large-scale public protests or revolutions such as Ukraine’s “Revolution of Dignity” when their attempts to determine their own political futures were thwarted by Russia.
In his essay “The Kremlin’s Next Targets? Georgia and Moldova,” Sergi Kapanadze also counters Mearsheimer’s and Putin’s claims that NATO, the US, and the “West” are to blame for the war. It was not Western coercion but rather, as Kapanadze states, Russia’s unjust invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 that motivated Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia—only 10 days after Russia’s invasion—to apply for membership to the EU. Their decision to take steps to join the EU was based on their own assessment and “realization that they lack any explicit security guarantees against renewed Russian attacks.” Joe Cirincione makes a similar argument in his essay “What’s missing from Mearsheimer’s analysis of the Ukraine war.” Cirincione faults Mearsheimer for ignoring the main driver of NATO expansion—namely, the fact that “Eastern Europeans wanted protection from a historic foe. They pushed to join NATO; America did not pull them into an anti-Russian pact. Centuries of invasions instilled a fear of Russia into their collective memories.”
At the heart of Mearsheimer’s position is his denial of Ukrainian agency. Because of his commitment to his structural realist, “great powers” framework, instead of speaking of Ukraine and Russia as the major players in this war, he, like Putin, makes Ukraine a non-player, and instead describes the war as if it were between Russia and the United States. In his lengthy speech, “The Causes and Consequences of the Ukraine War,” one finds a single sentence in which Mearsheimer ascribes agency to Ukrainian leaders. There he states that “one might hope” that Ukrainians will use their agency to “push for neutralization,” which, as he himself acknowledges in the paragraph prior to this comment, is a position advantageous to Russia and would “[end] the prospect of integrating Kyiv into the West” and “represent a victory for Russia.” (There are other serious flaws with Mearsheimer’s account of the war in Ukraine, which I will address in more detail in one of the chapters of my current book project. One, however, that I find particularly telling is his failure to substantively address the brutality and horrific violence of Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries carried out against Ukrainians. Mearsheimer’s failure to explicitly condemn Putin and Russian combatants is even more egregious in view of the many documented war crimes and atrocities that Russian soldiers, mercenaries, and Putin himself, as head of state, have committed and for which they must be held accountable. For a more detailed critique of Mearsheimer’s position, I encourage you to read Cirincione’s essay “What’s missing from Mearsheimer’s analysis of the Ukraine war.”)
Because of Mearsheimer’s prestigious position within academic discourses of knowledge, his neorealist, “great powers” explanation—which denies Ukraine’s agency and presents Putin as if he had no other choice but to invade Ukraine because this is just how “great powers” act—is repeated again and again in international publications, newscasts, and online media outlets. This brings us back to Sonevystsky’s account of epistemic imperialism in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. As she explains, epistemic imperialism “derives from the supposedly neutral (or seemingly meritocratic) grounds in which knowledge is produced and disseminated within the imbalanced global knowledge economy.” The full-scale invasion has brought epistemic imperialism to the foreground, disclosing how it “governs knowledge production between centres (often correlating to the hubs of former or present empires) and peripheries (formerly colonized spaces such as Ukraine).” For example, epistemic imperialism is advanced when Western scholars, who lack the requisite expertise and knowledge of Ukraine and demonstrate no substantive engagement with Ukrainian scholarship and yet, because of their prestige in the academy or as public intellectuals, speak (and are received) as if they are authoritative voices on Ukraine. However, epistemic imperialistic activity does not apply solely to Western intellectuals or public figures. Putin and his political propagandists as well as Russocentric academics, who wittingly or unwittingly, circulate Russocentric frameworks and narratives likewise engage in epistemic imperialism.
Russia has a long history of not only epistemic but also other forms of imperialistic behavior in its interactions with and relationship to Ukraine. As Sonevytsky observes, whether in its imperial or Soviet variations, Russia has “repressed the Ukrainian language; used brutal techniques to divide and conquer its multi-ethnic populations; banned or executed Ukrainian intellectual, religious, and creative leaders . . .; and created a culture of threat and inferiority around Ukrainian identity.” In Russia’s most recent propaganda narratives, Ukrainians are portrayed “as either the rabid nationalists on the border, as Russians suffering temporarily from false consciousness, or as hapless pawns of U.S. and NATO imperialism. Denying the complex identities, the complex personhoods of Ukrainians, appears to be a technique of epistemic imperialism as well.” Sonevytsky makes the obvious point—yet we continue to fail to hear it—that Ukrainians voices should be central to all academic and public discourse about Ukraine. The question “What is Ukraine?” is not a question that yields a simplistic or definitive answer. Rather, modern Ukraine, like other Western democracies, is an ongoing work in progress. “Modern Ukraine is a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, multi-confessional space with a complex mix of imperial inheritances.” Whatever answers can be given to the question should “come from Ukrainians, who have been defining and will continue to define what Ukraine was, is, and will be in the future.”