THE ORIGIN OF THE UKRAINE WAR IN LIGHT OF A MARKET-ANARCHIST THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
THE ORIGIN OF THE UKRAINE WAR IN LIGHT OF A MARKET-ANARCHIST THEORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Summary/Abstract: The article undertakes two major tasks. First, the position labeled here as a market-anarchisttheory of international relations (MATIR) is reconstructed. Second, the conception is appliedto international politics in Central-Eastern Europe with special regard to the Ukraine war.The overarching aim of this endeavor is to highlight MATIR’s explanatory power. The cen-tral question posed in the article is: Who, in light of MATIR and some fairly uncontroversialfacts, bears the main responsibility for the outbreak of the war? This research problem breaksdown into two further questions: (1) How likely is it that the Ukraine war has been triggeredchiefly by the West’s eastward expansion? (2) Were policies adopted by parties to the conflictreasonable given the circumstances? The upshot of the inquiry is that (1) on MATIR, Russiawould have been quite likely to invade Ukraine even in the absence of the latter’s pro-NATOforeign policy, and (2) that while Ukraine was conducting a textbook (albeit risky) policy ofdefensive balancing, Russia is guilty of a greatly overdone response to an exaggerated threat.Thus, according to John Mearsheimer and some leading proponents of MATIR such as Wal-ter Block and Hans-Hermann Hoppe to the contrary notwithstanding, it is Russia that shouldbe blamed for the present war. An original contribution of the article, then, lies also in puttingthe libertarian discourse on the Ukraine war on the right track. In terms of methodology, thepaper offers purely theoretical investigations based on a rational reconstruction of the theoryunder discussion

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