Bringing geopolitics back in

The volume co-authored by Hans Mouritzen and Anders Wivel – Explaining Foreign Policy: International Diplomacy and the Russo-Georgian War (Lynne Rienner 2012) – has been the subject of a review essay together with two other volumes dealing with Russian foreign policy and the post-Soviet space. According to the author (Alexander Korolev), the three books provide new data and valuable insights…the books deliver an important overarching message about how to understand Russia’s external behavior in general…geopolitics emerges as a powerful explanatory paradigm that helps better understand the intricacies of Eurasian international politics. Geopolitical motives appear to govern foreign policymaking in not only Russia but also the European Union and the United States.

According to Richard Sakwa (The Russian Review), the authors have ‘used a wide range of sources, including WikiLeaks material, to build a convincing and durable interpretation of one of the most controversial episodes in post-Cold War history. This book is a worthy successor to Allison’s Essence of Decision’.