Echoes of the War in Ukraine: Political Ramifications in the Baltics and the Balkans

In a cross-regional approach, Vassilis Petsinis generates new insights about how developments of groundbreaking significance in regional and global politics (here, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 24 February 2022) can exert powerful ramifications on the domestic politics of other states and societies. Inside the geopolitical context of Central and Eastern Europe, this monograph examines this 'external impact' on selected empirical cases from Northeastern (Estonia and Latvia in the Baltic States) and Southeastern Europe (Croatia and Serbia) through the spectrum of idiosyncratic and fluctuating intersections among ethno-nationalist, nativist, Eurosceptic, and 'other' trends (e.g. Occidentalism inside the political and sociocultural context of Serbia) at the level of domestic politics. This is a highly relevant contribution inside an increasingly unpredictable international system where the responses of major actors (Russia, China, and the US) to armed conflicts, or other global crises, can vary from peculiar alignments all the way to alarming friction.

Discusses how these outlooks are related to the trajectories of ethno-nationalism and identity politics Explores how political actors along the right-centre-left axis adopt divergent stances on the war in Ukraine Outlines why the dominant outlooks on the war in Ukraine qualitatively vary in the different country contexts

Autorentext

Vassilis Petsinis (PhD Birmingham) is Associate Professor of Political Science at Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Literary overview: Setting the conceptual and analytical frames.- 3. Echoes of war in Estonia and Latvia: Convergence versus divergence.- 4. Echoes of war in Croatia: Looking through the lens of the 'Domovinski Rat'.- 5. Echoes of war in Serbia: A missed opportunity for the 'broader right'.- 6. Final remarks, conclusions, and trajectories for further research.