Aid in War or Aid to War? Foreign Aid in the 2022 War in Ukraine
Aid in War or Aid to War? Foreign Aid in the 2022 War in Ukraine

Summary/Abstract: Aid has confirmed itself as a key instrument of foreign policy in the first year of the Ukrainian war, as it had earlier in the pandemic, pursuing in the first instance the national interests of the state donors. However, when compared to other similar cases, such as the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, exactly 30 years before Ukraine, state funded aid policies in the new scenario show a number of absolute novelties, such as: 1) the speed of reaction of Western state donors at the beginning of the war; 2) the primacy and leading role of state donors over the non-governmental sector; 3) the quantity and diversification of aid mobilised; 4) (Russian) food as a weapon vs. (Western) weapons as legitimate aid; 5) broad anticipation of post-war planning; and 6) sanctions (to the enemy) becoming an aid (to the friend). Each of these aspects has been linked to specific foreign policy issues and interests of state donors to such an extent as to confirm the relevance of using an institutional-realist approach to understand their political utilitarian motivations in organising aid in the war scenario in question. Thus, providing elements to support the thesis of this article, namely that aid to Ukraine in 2022 has primarily been driven by state donors’ realistic foreign policy objectives, aimed at implementing their geopolitical strategies.

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