Explaining the Russian invasion in Ukraine: between geopolitics, civilisational choice, and dead-end capitalist transition

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article engages with the debate about the causes for Russia’s full-scale military invasion in Ukraine. The existing explanations are organized into three groups revolving around commonalities in their basic assumptions and causal arguments: geopolitics, civilisational choice, and dead-end capitalist transition. The aim is not to advance any theory in particular but to facilitate theory-building in general by identifying intellectual shortcuts and unresolved contradictions in all groups of explanations. The categorization cuts across disciplinary divisions and theoretical camps to propose a typology of arguments that can facilitate the development of better explanations for the invasion. This is relevant not only for the heuristic value of theorisations, but also for ensuring that the conditions precipitating the invasion are not reproduced in the post-war order.