Enemy-based foreign policy as a framework for understanding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main objective of this research is to establish the analytical framework of enemy-based foreign policy in order to understand certain actions of Russia’s foreign policy towards Ukraine during the invasion of 2022. Through a literature review on the construction of the enemy, the analysis of academic and journalistic sources, as well as the analysis of Vladimir Putin’s speeches and other official positions from the Kremlin, we determine that Russia’s foreign policy is oriented towards the reconfiguration of its identity in the international system through the disintegration of Ukraine, and at the same time serves as a benchmark in defining Russia’s survival. In other words, the creation of the enemy functions as an instrument of ontological position. Finally, based on the work of Esposito and Butler, we find that enemy-based foreign policy accomplishes a dual function of separating lives worthy of mourning from those that are not: it allows the killing as a way to eliminate the Other, but at the same time reinforces the inner life of the political body through annexation, which is used to guarantee immunity from the Other.