What are the legacies of the war on terror? This paper seeks to answer this question through an analysis of vernacular uses of terrorism discourse in political commentary on the Ukraine war. The paper describes how the set of tropes, ideas, and recurrent metaphors that constituted the historical backbone of narratives about terrorism before and after 9/11 is now being mobilised in the context of interstate conflict. Instead of rejecting such deployments of terrorism as lay misappropriations of an otherwise-objective concept, we argue that they evidence the aesthetic force of terrorism discourse in organising our ethical relationship to different experiences of (in)human suffering. The paper advances the concept of terrorism as an aesthetic signifier, to provide two contributions to terrorism studies. First, we argue that narrative approaches to the study of political violence in IR can only move forward if they bypass the field’s traditional framing of terrorism – which we dub the (il)legitimacy trap – and push the boundaries of critique beyond the idea of terrorism as unacceptable violence. Second, we contend that IR scholars must situate the signifiers orbiting the discourse on terror within wider racialised aesthetic regimes dictating the visibility and invisibility of collective suffering. With these two moves, we hope to bring more attention to the question of victimisation in terrorism studies, a field historically focused on perpetrators and the conditions of perpetration of violence.

This study delves into the progression of nuclear war risk perceptions during the initial 6 months of the Ukraine war. It particularly investigated the influence of Italian media coverage changes and the affective tone of war representation. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, two separate yet interconnected studies were conducted. The first study employed web scraping and keyword selection techniques to assess emotional language and quantify war-related content in the headlines of Italian online newspapers from March to July 2022. Results demonstrated a linear decrease in war-related news and an emotional shift, with a significant decrease in fear and an increase in joy noted between March and May. The second study examined nuclear war risk perceptions at an individual level, surveying a panel of 397 Italians at three distinct points during the same time frame. The findings revealed a similarity between the media’s affective tone and individuals’ affective risk perceptions. Analytic risk perception, in contrast, showed a linear decrease that matched the decline in war-related news volume. The study found preexisting individual differences, among women and older participants, to be significant determinants in shaping risk perception evolution. These groups exhibited higher initial risk perceptions and more resistance to change as the scenario unfolded. This research contributes to the existing body of work that underscores the media’s role in influencing risk perceptions by illuminating the relationship between media representation of the Ukraine war and individual-level affective risk perception. Furthermore, it highlights individual differences as significant moderators of risk perception change during a crisis.

Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine has sent shock waves around the world. Russia has violated the most fundamental rule of international law and most people intuitively feel that the war in Ukraine has changed the entire landscape of international society. Given what is clearly a turning point, it is difficult to assume that global constitutionalism founded on ‘human rights, the rule of law and democracy’, called ‘the constitutional trinity’, will not undergo any changes. Can global constitutionalism survive such a difficult moment? This is a fundamental question that global constitutionalists must address. This article answers this question in the affirmative. First, despite its gross violations of international law, Russia is not necessarily attempting to withdraw from the current framework of international law. The existing individual-centred elements in international law, which are the central pillar of global constitutionalism, will not be replaced by any alternatives. Second, even if the existing framework of international law remains viable, there is an undeniable risk that the polarization of international law accelerated by the ongoing war will negatively affect global constitutionalism. Such polarization may hollow out the constitutional trinity in international law. However, global constitutionalism will continue to function as the principal cognitive framework for international society because the exercise of individuals’ rights embedded in international law will incessantly provide energy for global constitutionalism. This article concludes that insofar as international law keeps its individual elements, global constitutionalism will be able to retain its normative power under the present predicament in the world.

This essay aims to advance the general discussion of hypocrisy in moral and political philosophy as well as normative policy debates regarding democratic sanctions against autocracies that often trigger charges of hypocrisy. In the process of making sense of these charges, I articulate and tackle three general puzzles regarding hypocrisy complaints. The first—the inaction puzzle—asks why a charge of hypocrisy should have any effect on the moral assessment of an agent’s actions, as distinct from the agent’s character or attitudes. The second—the ambivalence puzzle—asks why we often react to hypocrisy charges with seemingly paradoxical ambivalence, recognizing such charges for the transparent deflections they often are, but also granting their normative force. The third—the preemption puzzle—asks why hypocrisy charges do not entirely lose their force when their targets openly concede that they too have suffered from the same flaws that they highlight in others. I argue that sustained reflection on each of these puzzles can enrich—and be enriched by—normative analysis of democratic sanctions.

In recent years, Western governments have invoked the values of universal human rights to justify large-scale military operations. Critical theorists have often responded that these campaigns serve not to promote peace, stability, or prosperity, but to entrench Western economic and political power, often in ways that have been devastating for local populations. However, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine casts doubt on whether assumptions about Western dominance will continue to furnish adequate accounts of global armed conflict. Critical theorists base many of their views on what is sometimes called ‘memory politics’, meaning that they cite histories of Western militarism, colonialism, racism and economic exploitation as backdrops to current policies. In this article it is argued that they will only be able to explain a conflict like the Ukraine war with credibility by incorporating into their memory politics the left’s own histories of supporting autocratic regimes.

Russia’s war against Ukraine in February 2022 was the end of the Arctic cooperation between states and others as we knew it, despite the fact that Russia’s illegal actions are not occurring in the Arctic region. Russia’s attack on Ukraine caused pronounced security fears and responses, particularly from the European and North American countries, including the other Arctic states. This naturally affected Arctic cooperation because it is precisely in the Arctic region that Russia is such a vastly central actor. For example, the region’s pre-eminent inter-governmental forum, the Arctic Council, is struggling to continue its activities in full, as the seven western Arctic states paused participating in meetings held in and activities involving Russia. On the other hand, the first in-person meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) under the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) fisheries agreement in late November 2022 successfully adopted its COP Rules of Procedure by consensus, including Russia. The purpose of this article is to investigate how adversely Arctic international cooperation in inter-governmental forums and treaties has suffered due to the Ukraine war, utilising a qualitative research methodology to collect internal and sensitive information from key informants. In particular, the article aims to find an answer to the following question: In which types of Arctic inter-governmental structures have the states been able to continue the cooperation and for what reasons? The hypothesis that will be tested in this article is whether treaty-based cooperation has fared better than cooperation founded on soft law. This article will flesh out the current state of Arctic cooperative frameworks and actual cooperative activities under them, analysing three soft law-based cooperative frameworks, including the Arctic Council and several treaty-based cooperative frameworks, such as the CAO fisheries agreement and Arctic Science Cooperation Agreement. This article is based on the facts as of 22 February 2023.

The wish from 24 February 2022 onwards to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression has led to the provision of unprecedented lethal European Union (EU) military assistance. As the ‘taboo’ of supplying lethal assistance into non-EU conflicts is swept aside, what is the role of international arms control law? The legal requirements of the EU Common Position on arms exports and the Arms Trade Treaty compel EU Member States to assess various short- and long-term risks associated with arms exports. But it is unclear how arms control norms are being taken into account by the EU Council in its rapidly evolving role as a peacemaker.

The standards that are being used to shape EU decision-making on Ukraine matter both for their precedent-setting as reflecting the trajectory of EU normative power, as well as on the long-term blowbacks of proliferation on illicit arms trafficking. While from the EU Council, there has been limited public articulation of these risks, greater consideration thereof would serve as a reminder of the reality of post-conflict arms proliferation, ie. illicit arms trafficking of weapons leached from the conflict, and their subsequent misuse by undesirable actors. Geostrategic precedent is being set, with implications that extend far beyond Ukraine, including to other conflicts where the EU is already intervening. The EU’s delivering of massive lethal military assistance alters also the reflexive perception of its institutions.