CCDP Seminar Series IV features: Colin Chia

Why and how do struggles over relative social position lead to international order contestation? The recent confrontation between Russia and the Anglo-European countries marks a major shift in the Kremlin’s foreign policy orientation since the end of the Cold War, which had initially been to integrate into the liberal order. Although widely seen as aimed at undermining all aspects of the status quo, more careful attention to its contestation strategy suggests that Russia is also promoting what it claims to be more legitimate forms of global governance. I argue that we can better make sense of this by focusing on social positioning and identity performance. International actors are driven by ontological security interests to produce an international order which reifies its social positioning. In this specific case, I argue that the post-Cold War Russia seeks to perform its identity as a great power, by engaging in sphere-of-influence practices associated with its desired social position, while emulating practices of intervention and justification utilized by the United States to assert its social equality. Empirically, I focus on the justifications and arguments which Russia and Western countries used in contention over the status of Abkhazia, Crimea, Kosovo, and South Ossetia. In particular, the choice of particular discursive strategies over other possible ones shows the dynamics of international order contestation at work.