The revenge of geopolitics

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 25, Issue 4, 2014, Pages 139-150

  Nodia, Ghia ^a  

^a ILIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (Georgia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84907733757     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: 10863214     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2014.0059     Document Type: Note

References (16)

1. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 23–24.
2. Peter Burnell, “Promoting Democracy and Promoting Autocracy: Towards a Comparative Evaluation,” Journal of Politics and Law 3, no. 2 (2010): 3–14.
3. Jack Snyder, From Voting to Violence: Democratization and Nationalist Conflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).
4. Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 2004).
5. Vladimir Putin has described both the Orange Revolution and the EuroMaidan as purely the work of a Western conspiracy, and has added: “We understand what is happening; we understand that these actions were aimed against Ukraine and Russia and against Eurasian integration.” Note
6. http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6889.
7. Putin also said, in the same set of remarks made on 18 March 2014: “They [the West] are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy.” Note
8. Gerald Sussman, “The Myths of ‘Democracy Assistance’: U.S. Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe,” Monthly Review, December 2006, 15–29.
9. Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53 (March 1959): 69–105.
10. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 3–5.
11. Levitsky & Way, Competitive Authoritarianism, 44.
12. Azerbaijan may be considered a special case in that it is more pro-Western than pro-Russian in its foreign policy, albeit solidly autocratic within. Yet Azerbaijani elites (save for members of the county’s brave but small prodemocracy groups) lean toward the West for reasons of cultural secularism (as is the case with many autocratic regimes that rule historically Islamic nations) as well as for security reasons related to the needs of the country’s crucial oil industry. Indeed, Azerbaijan’s extensive oil wealth makes its negotiating position vis-`a-vis Europe qualitatively different from the relation between Europe and other postcommunist “faultline states.” Most importantly, Azerbaijan’s pro-Western policies have never led to any express wish for even the mildest level of integration with the EU. Note
13. Later, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev defined this war’s goal as stopping NATO’s advance into Russia’s neighborhood. Note
14. “Medvedev: yesli by ne voija s Gruzijej, v NATO priniali by neskolko stran, vopreki pozitsii Rossii” [Medvedev: Had it not been for the war with Georgia, NATO would contrary to the Russian position admit several countries], 21 November 2011, available at www.gazeta.ru/news/ lenta/2011/11/21/n_2104434.shtml.
15. Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), 26–37.
16. Samuel Charap, “Ukraine’s False Choice: There Are No Winners in the Geopolitical Tug of War Between Russia and the West,” ForeignPolicy.com, 7 February 2014, available at www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/02/07/ukraines_false_ choice:russia_eu.