Shelter, stability and beauty

If nations are separated by national borders, the risk of civil war and interstate conflicts increases - as in the case of Ukraine. For this reason, Lars-Erik Cederman believes that sanctions should also be designed to have a deterrent effect on other nationalists. For numerous observers in the West, Putin's invasion of Ukraine came out of the blue. Hopes of a cooperative, economically interwoven, and practically borderless world have been dealt a serious blow. In many ways, Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 heralds the -return of geopolitics.-¹ A large number of analysts, especially those of a realist persuasion, expect the Russian aggression to result in a return to the old-fashioned, multipolar great-power politics of the 19th century.² But does realist theory depict this ostensible anachronism correctly? Indeed, geopolitics is back with a vengeance, but the question is: which type of geopolitics? While various realists identify with the purportedly sober and sophisticated 19th-century masters of Realpolitik , their perspective seems oddly anachronistic, even by 19th-century standards. Great-power competition, the law of the strongest, and territorial conquest dominated international relations long before the 19th century, and in some cases persisted beyond 1945. The cosy relationship of power politics and nationalism .