Overview

International Organizations and Post-Soviet Conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine: The Limitations of Imagining Peace and the Failure and Success in Negotiations addresses the protracted history of international conflict resolution efforts to the Georgian-Abkhaz, Moldovan-Transnistrian, and Eastern Ukraine conflicts. The author explores the origins and onset of these first two conflicts in the early 1990s, but also looks at the eruption of conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and at the first months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This book shows how, from a conflict-transformation perspective, local vested interests and strategic interests have created obvious obstructions that have both fueled the conflicts and prevented their resolution. This volume develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the success and failure of international engagement that offers a new understanding of the extent to which international responses may or may not be helpful. Through an analysis of over 500 closed-source documents and about 70 interviews, the efforts of pan-European international organizations — with mandates from the OSCE, EU, UN, and NATO — are examined on both political and cultural levels. This work’s innovative analyses of those institutions’ performances shows how successes have often been overlooked and identifies misperceptions that reshape our understanding of the limitations to imagining peace.

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9781666959260

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Reviews

“Most accounts of the unresolved conflicts in Eurasia summarily dismiss the multi-level role of external NGOs and international organizations. In this rich and conceptually innovative study, Nina Lutterjohann expands our understanding of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ by showing how external actors, even when they don't definitively ‘solve’ a conflict steeped in geopolitics, can still transform relations among local actors in important ways that meaningfully change their perceptions and on-the ground relations.” -- Alexander Cooley, Columbia University “This is a very interesting book that compares two continuing, unresolved conflicts from the Former Soviet Union – the breakaway regions of Abkhazia from the Republic of Georgia and Transnistria from the Republic of Moldova – and provides a lens through which the present war in Ukraine can be scrutinized. There are few publications that make such comparisons, or if a comparative framework is offered it often focuses on Russia’s role. This book focuses on the role of International Organisations and their ability – or inability, as the case may be – to broker peace between the various actors involved in the conflicts. Importantly, this includes actors that are not party to the conflict but have interests or agendas connected to the resolution of these conflicts such as NATO, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the European Union. Lutterjohann’s book will be very useful to other scholars, especially those in Peace and Conflict Studies, to read an analysis of the limits of powerful International Organisations in shaping the impacts of conflicts on populations caught up in war. These are useful lessons for those that study conflicts far from the Former Soviet Union as well as those who are examining conflicts within it.” -- Jeffrey Stevenson Murer, University of St. Andrews “As the EU has expanded its engagement with Eastern Europe through the Eastern Partnership, it has been confronted with the dilemma of the intractable conflicts in this region. The danger of unresolved conflicts, and their role in the geopolitical tug-of-war between the West and Russia, unfortunately remain poorly understood in spite of the war in Ukraine. Nina Lutterjohann’s book helps us understand not only why these conflicts have remained unresolved, but bores into the role of international organizations in the conflict process. As she argues convincingly, international organizations lacked sufficient imagination to help transform the conflicts. They were perceived as weak by conflict parties, while frequently duplicating each other’s activities. All the while, geopolitical forces affecting the region grew harder to navigate. These conflicts will remain a feature of the European landscape for a long time to come, and both intergovernmental and nongovernmental organization would do well to learn from past mistakes and fundamentally revamp their approaches.” -- Svante Cornell, Institute for Security and Development Policy “Dr Nina Lutterjohann's work on the post-Soviet space is highly relevant and timely. In recent years we have been inundated with information about conflicts in these regions, but not enough work has been done to create analytical frameworks. Understanding the capabilities and limitations of international actors in these conflicts will help us to take advantage of areas where we can strengthen initiatives that could produce positive results. Understanding the EU's capacity to work for a safer world is a primary and essential interest for Europe, not just in academic research but the real basis for policy-oriented research.” -- Paulo Botta, Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina

Author Information

Nina Lutterjohann is a project manager at Bertelsmann Foundation, and a former lecturer at the School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews.

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