The War in Ukraine: the return of geopolitics and challenges at the EU borders

Abstract

The School of International Studies proposes a talk to discuss two important aspects of the war in Ukraine: From one side, we will look at how the present war is often framed, explained, and justified with a toxic mix of early 20 th century geopolitics and geopolitical language. Thinking in terms of “world order”, or “great power politics” not only brings us back to dangerous traditional geopolitics, but also ends up giving respectability to Russian “great power” ideologies that compose the justification for the invasion in the first place. From the other side, we will focus on the security situation in Europe, approaching the drastic developments from the perspective of another bordering country, Finland, where the current situation is being carefully followed by our guest speaker Jussi Laine. Russia and Finland share significant overlaps in history, coloured by traumatic experiences of wars but also pragmatic forms of collaboration. The role of the Finnish-Russian border has been highly varied, reflecting not only Finnish-Russian relations but also changes in global geopolitics. Once again, the significance of the border is changing.

Speakers

• Anna Casaglia, University of Trento
• Jussi Laine, University of Eastern Finland

Chair

Stefano Schiavo, University of Trento
 

Webinar

To partecipate online please write to events.sis [at] unitn.it.