VOLUME 12 ISSUE 3

The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary Civic
and Political Studies
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pan-Slavism and Soft Power in Post-Cold

War Southeast European International
Relations
Competitive Interference and Smart Power in the
European Theatre of the Clash of Civilizations

BENEDICT E. DEDOMINICIS

THESOCIALSCIENCES.COM
 EDITOR
Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece

MANAGING EDITOR
Dominique Moore, Common Ground Research Networks, USA

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Patrick Baert, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK
Andreja Bubic, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Norma Burgess, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA
Hillel Goelman, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Peter Harvey, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia
Vangelis Intzidis, University of Aegean, Rhodes, Greece
Paul James, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Ivana Batarelo James, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Gerassimos Kouzelis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Massimo Leone, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
Jose Luis Ortega Martin, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Francisco Fernandez Palomares, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Spain
Constantine D. Skordoulis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Sanja Stanic, University of Split, Split, Croatia

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 Pan-Slavism and Soft Power in Post-Cold War
Southeast European International Relations:
Competitive Interference and Smart Power in the
European Theatre of the Clash of Civilizations
Benedict E. DeDominicis, 1 Catholic University of Korea, Republic of Korea

Abstract: Conceptualization of soft power as influence deriving from attraction benefits from an application of a theoretical
framework that accommodates the importance of nationalism. The drive for self-determination of national minorities often
arbitrarily placed within state borders receives support from competing great power actors, intensifying conflict. External
powers are more likely to respond to local client solicitations for backing against the latters adversary as the local
contestants strive for supremacy or separation. This pattern has intensified in the nuclear era as direct great power conflict
has become too dangerous to accommodate. Ukraine is a scene for this competitive interference in the post-Cold War era.
Lay media and academic publications today label this familiar pattern of intervention hybrid warfare. Hybrid warfare is
an attempt at a smart power strategy, i.e., the effective application of both hard and soft power instruments to achieve state
actor objectives. Pan-Slavism is an idealized symbol set that elites in Slavic polities use in transnational appeals to public
opinion in justifying pursuit of policy objectives in other Slavic, targeted polities. This appeal lacks a politically significant
response regarding impact on target polity foreign policy trends. Pan-Slavism is today an indicator of the decaying legacy
networks of pan-Communist-era control systems.

Keywords: European Union, Hybrid Warfare, Soft Power

Introduction

S oft power is the power of attraction, e.g., the appeal of a development model, demonstrating
that hard and soft power have a relationship, but they are not the same (Nye 2001). Political
attraction may have its basis in the appeal of a shared component identity community in the
global political context. Relatively successful nationalist movements that unified a national
community heretofore partitioned are a category of examples of the power of nationalism as soft
power. Not all such pan movements have historically been as successful as pan-Italian, or pan-
German, or, more recently, pan-Vietnamese nationalism. Pan-Slavism is typically considered a
failed pan-movement (Brykczynski 2010). Historically, it nevertheless was a significant impetus
behind Imperial Russian military mobilization during the Balkan crisis of 1914 (Utkin 2000).
Today, pan-Slavism is at a low, but still noticeable, level of intensity in eastern European Orthodox
Slav communities that emerges at the polity, if not the governmental, level (Higgins 2016c).
Russian leadership efforts to appeal to it are in conflict with the appeal of European Union
integration, providing an opportunity to observe its strength (Higgins 2016a, Higgins 2016b,
Bittner 2016).
This paper argues that the significance of the topic lies in it being a case study of broader
patterns in international relations that have become central since the 1945 use of nuclear weapons.
Intra-state wars have replaced inter-state wars as the main feature of postwar military conflict
(Stares 2015). US-USSR competition often fueled these intra-state conflicts (Crocker, Hampson,
and Aall 2015). This paper seeks to present an explanation of the causal dynamics for this pattern
of the great powers competitive political interference in the internal political processes of third

1
Corresponding Author: Benedict E. DeDominicis, 150th Anniversary Building, 43 Jibong-ro, Department of International
Studies, Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do, 14662, Republic of Korea.
email: bendedominicis@gmail.com

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies

Volume 12, Issue 3, 2017, www.thesocialsciences.com
Common Ground Research Networks, Benedict E. DeDominicis, All Rights Reserved
Permissions: support@cgnetworks.org
ISSN: 2327-0071 (Print), ISSN: 2327-2481 (Online)
https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-0071/CGP/v12i03/1-17
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CIVIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES

states. It poses the lessons that students of international relations may learn from the Cold War
nuclear era for the post-Cold War world.
The surrender of non-nuclear Imperial Japan to the nuclear-armed US led to further nuclear
proliferation in 1949 with the test of the first Soviet nuclear weapon. With ongoing proliferation
of both know how and actual production of weapons of mass destruction, the balance of terror
heightened the salience of displaced political competition for influence by great powers in conflict.
This indirect competition took the form of competitive interference within the internal political
processes of third states (Cottam 1967). Avoiding use of deadly military force directly against the
national assets of a perceived, threatening nuclear aggressor was to have the highest priority. To
avoid being maneuvered into a situation in which a defending nuclear power faced the choice of
surrender or a hot war with another nuclear power, the US and the USSR fought their competition
indirectly. They sought to attract, even lock, the sovereign authorities of third states into an alliance
or de facto client status. The intensity of US-Soviet competition was high, but it remained a cold
war in that US and Soviet military forces did not openly fight each other. Millions of innocents did
die in this cold war. Many were the victims of the US and Soviet military action where Washington
or Moscow sent forces to prop up a tottering allied regime perceived as critical in preventing the
perceived expansion of the other. Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan were scenes of direct
intervention on behalf of beleaguered local political client regimes. Covert competitive support of
a local client while subverting the perceived local client of the other superpower was a more
common pattern. Aside from economic assistance, aid included weapons which intensified and
escalated local violent conflicts, taking their toll in victims. Landmines left in Latin, America,
Africa, and Asia; as well as unexploded ordinance, continue to increase this toll.
The Cold War was a two-generation conflict of sustained intensity that ended a quarter century
ago with the collapse of the USSR. The patterns of international competition and conflict that the
Cold War generated transcend that conflict. The world has learned through experience how great
powers in the nuclear era struggle intensely with each other. They do so through competitive
interference in the internal politics of third states to influence or control the policies of the
government of the third polity. Note that states may or may not have actual, declared possession
of nuclear weapons, but observers know a state like Japan or Germany could produce them very
quickly, if perceived as necessary to do so.
The data used in the paper consists of the public record to tease out these regular patterns over
two generations to highlight their political significance for conflict analysis and resolution. As such
it is an investigative argument that can help lay the foundation for additional, subsequent empirical
research, for example, on patterns in covert intervention. After a generation has passed since the
Soviet Union disintegrated, the public record and scholarly research have progressively revealed
the covert side of the Cold War (Carson and Yarhi-Milo 2017).
Direct military intervention today (e.g., Iraq, Syria) or covert subversion historically (e.g.,
1953 in Mossadeghs Iran), are two tactical approaches for influencing the outcome of the policy-
making process of a target state. Other methods include public diplomacy and propaganda
distribution. The former is typically portrayed as a legitimate public relations activity if the
sponsoring government is officially declared. National media authorities characterize the latter as
proscribed if the external source is covert, e.g., todays internet alleged fake news supposedly
emanating from Russia (Grier 2017). The disintegration of the unifying, perceived Soviet
Communist threat has increased the vulnerability of even Western great power polities to influence
attempts emanating from Moscow. Observers identify high profile Russian news media as
transmitting the Moscow authorities perspective, e.g. Ruptly, RT, Sputnik. Regulators may or may
not identify the source of Internet fake news and slander. Moscows tactics reflect the Soviet era
in which they were first spawned, albeit with the constraining factor of socialist ideological support
now removed (MacFarquhar 2016).
Cold War competitive interference patterns included the solicitation by local, competing
actors in a third state for external great power patronage. The pattern of appeals by local actors
hostile to each other seeking a power advantage through external support began long before the

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 DEDOMINICIS: PAN-SLAVISM AND SOFT POWER IN POST-COLD WAR

Cold War. The intensity and length of the Cold War correlated with the likelihood that Washington
or Moscow would respond positively to these solicitations. Astute local actors would phrase their
particular appeals in terms of the regional foreign policy aims of Washington or Moscow. The
ideological dimension of these pleas may have diminished since 1991, with solicitors today using
more overt appeals to shared ethnic identity community sympathy. Some in Moscow now claim,
again, to represent the pre-1917 Russian global interests of Slavdom, Orthodoxy, and Eurasia
(Sidorov 2006).
In eastern European polities under two generations of Communist totalitarian hegemony,
coerced economic and political integration with the Soviet Russian hegemon has left behind an
extended, albeit decaying, organizational legacy. These informal networks of collaboration, often
based on the large regional coercive apparatuses supervised from Moscow, have created political,
economic networks of covert and informal cooperation. Political authorities in Moscow have
sought to utilize these networks to resist the expansion of political, economic networks beholden
to Western political power centers. This resistance has not been particularly effective, at least
regarding long-term trends, e.g. Montenegro joined NATO in 2017, after allegations of a Moscow-
sponsored failed coup attempt (Higgins 2016c). EU and NATO member Bulgaria continues to
implement its alliance commitments dutifully, despite pervasive Russian covert penetration of the
Bulgarian state (Kaplan 2017). Communist Bulgaria was Moscows closest European communist
ally, with a long preceding history of pro-Russian sympathy among the public. Today, Moscow-
centered pan-Slavism in Bulgaria no longer supports Bulgarian government appeals to Moscow
for patronage for national self-determination. Rather it is a label applied to trade networks that
have their basis in the transnational organizational legacies of Communism which may or may not
act illegally, even with the complicity of Western intelligence agencies (Angelovski et al. 2017).
As a behavioral institutional legacy, pan-Slav influence is not conceptualized here as an
ideology. It is rather a communal attitudinal behavioral pattern. This paper argues that pan-Slavism
today has its foundation in the legacy of postwar Communist-era regional economic, security and
political control networks (Kuzio 2015). The instrumental appeal of Russian hard as well as soft
power amongst other smaller Slavic Orthodox communities is the source of pan-Slav soft power,
to the extent it exists as a behavioral policy attitude. The promotion of subversive corruption
against Euro-Atlantic integration is one label that some observers have applied to this collective
behavior pattern. Its influence can be seen particularly in the former Soviet Slavic core successor
states and also in the Balkans.
The paper first presents an analysis of the impact of nuclear weapons on patterns of
competitive interference. It then addresses the case of pan-Slavism today as a form of behavior
manifested in political relationships from the nineteenth century to the present. The analysis then
places the current discussion of so-called hybrid warfare in Ukraine in the context of postwar
development of insurgency and counterinsurgency capabilities during the Cold War and afterward.
It concludes with a discussion of implications and policy recommendations regarding the European
Union relationship to this competition in the context of Russian-Western competitive interference
in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Nuclear Weapons and Competitive Interference

The impact of nuclear weaponry upon state behavior generated significant changes in patterns of
security and foreign policy. It intensified indirect competition between nuclear powers. Opposition
to the expansion of each others influence took a variety of forms. One systemic pattern included
competition for influence within the political processes of third states, as, in effect, virtual
battlefields instead of direct military contests. Today, one form it takes is the hybrid warfare
deployed by the Russian government in eastern Ukraine (North Atlantic Treaty Organization 2014,
para. 13). While ostensible, hybrid warfare is a blunt, blatant, albeit unacknowledged covert
intervention, it is a version of a political pattern that has become more pronounced since 1945. The

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subversive nature of external intervention to encourage ethnic separatist destabilization of a target

government is not new. The US, for example, encouraged Iraqi Kurdish ethnic separatism in the
1970s to revolt against a perceived Soviet client, the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baathist regime
in Baghdad (Gibson 2013). A critical objective in these covert interventionsthat can be more or
less violentis to avoid inadvertent political escalation between intensely competing, nuclear-
armed powers (Carson and Yarhi-Milo 2017).
Maintaining the broadest possible decisional latitude for the policy maker of the initiator is
one of the tactical objectives for this unacknowledged intervention, blatant or otherwise, in the
nuclear era. Formal declarations of war and assistance are more likely to evoke a domestic
nationalist constituency response that affects the decisional latitude of state leaders. Nationalism
is conceptualized not as an ideology, but as a community behavioral predisposition indicating a
strong value preoccupation with national sovereignty against readily perceived challenges (Cottam
and Cottam 2001). A nationalistic community, like the US or Russia, may grant their leaders more
decisional latitude to undertake proactive foreign policies to advance the interests of the nation-
state (Hall and Ross 2015). After military intervention has begun, nationalistic US polity
tendencies are significantly less politically tolerant of perceived humiliating policy failures and
retreats (Laucella 2004). A policy failure is less likely to generate acute national humiliation if the
policy goal was never formally acknowledged as a commitment by the leadership at the start of a
crisis (Carson 2016). The aim is to preserve maximum influence capability over crisis political
dynamics, the control over which is more or less problematic. Nuclear weapons have magnified
the importance of this imperative. It arguably is one consideration why the US Congress has never
been asked to provide a formal declaration of war for US military intervention since the Second
World War. A formal US declaration of war was considered to be a proclamation of a general state
of war between the US and the target, potentially involving all military and civilian resources
available (Fehlings 2000). The US media was arguably complicit in cooperating closely with
postwar US administrations in limiting public exposure of US covert intervention until the Cuban
Bay of Pigs fiasco (Segal 1994). The focus on controlling the political dynamics of international
crises to lessen the danger of escalation led to Washington, Moscow, and Kiev immediately
removing Ukraines Soviet-era nuclear arsenal (Codevilla 1994).
In one Cold War containment variant of competitive interference, the creation of the Republic
of Vietnam produced a formal legal interlocutor to invite US military intervention. The US
intervened under the justification of rendering aid in self-defense. South Vietnam was formally
recognized by scores of states, partly as a consequence of US use of its bargaining leverage towards
other governments to provide this recognition (Prugh 1975). The separatist Donbass region in
eastern Ukraine does not now have this recognition, and may never seek it. Unlike the US regarding
South Vietnam, the diplomatic bargaining leverage of Moscow to gain such international third-
party recognition is comparatively much weaker (Cottam and Gallucci 1978). Following
Moscows military intervention, South Ossetia and Abkhazia have gained recognition from a few
states upon secession from Georgia. Kosovo, allied with the US, has obtained recognition from
many more upon secession from Serbia.
US interference, often covertly, in the internal politics of third countries occurred eighty-one
times during 19462000, e.g., contributing to the 1948 electoral defeat of the Italian Communist
Party (Agrawal 2016). Commentators have noted that the propagation of so-called fake news is not
new. The US covert operations employed propaganda campaigns in encouraging the 1973
overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Chile, the Marxist Salvador Allende
(Dorfman 2016). The Chile operation represented competitive interference in the current era of
mass political participation. The external power identifies and intervenes to support one polarized
segment of society to take government control against another. The former is seen as predisposed
to support more favorable policies regarding the interests of the intervening power.
The Chilean case of intervention contrasts with earlier patterns of intervention predominant
until the early Cold War in societies with still largely politically inert mass populations. In these
cases, the interfering power views politics in the targeted, so-called developing country as an arena

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 DEDOMINICIS: PAN-SLAVISM AND SOFT POWER IN POST-COLD WAR

of competing elite factions, relatively unconstrained by domestic public opinion demands. In these
still predominantly traditional societies, sustained political attentiveness is limited to a small
segment of the population. Traditional, de facto or de jure hereditary ruling dynasts still dominate
these governments. Emerging counter-elites representing new, participatory mass political
attitudes and values increasingly challenge these traditional authorities. The pro-change policy
agenda of the former often threatened the vested political and economic interests of the latter. The
traditional authorities, in turn, are prone to solicit external support to fortify their threatened,
traditional predominance.
The pro-change counter-elite initially had a small public support base, facilitating its
suppression with foreign assistance by the traditional elite in the initial stages of mass mobilization.
This pattern long predated the nuclear era, but after 1945 the US often assumed this role heretofore
dominated by European powers. The US authorities perceived the USSR as a revisionist actor
promoting global subversion to extend its imperial influence under the ideological cloak of
revolutionary socialism and self-determination. As such, what became known as the Third World
was perceived as particularly vulnerable to these subversive Soviet imperialist endeavors. The US
often responded by allying with the local traditional elites sharing the perception of threat from
these emerging radical, and typically nationalist, forces. Foreign connivance with these traditional
authorities could still orchestrate the removal of newly-ascendant pro-change counter-elites.
Successes include the CIA-MI5 supported coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in
Iran in 1953 and the CIA orchestrated overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 (Sanger
2016).
The Vietnam disaster is one example of the failure of the US authorities collectively to adapt
effectively to the rise of mass political participation. The ascent of mass politics often occurred
within the context of state boundaries drawn among politically-parochial populations under
traditional hereditary authorities. These polities now often encompassed mobilized groups and
classes that often displayed more or less intense antipathy towards each other. If only to avoid state
domination by the despised other, these groups have been prone to solicit external support to
capture the state and its resources. The intense Soviet-US Cold War influence competition
incentivized Washington and Moscow to respond positively to these solicitations, if only to prevent
influence expansion by the other. The danger of nuclear Armageddon irresistibly pushed their
conflict towards indirect competition through competitive interference in third states. This
predominant power competitive interference continues in the post-Cold War era of global political
awareness, now allying with societal groups in the target polity against reviled others. Dorfmans
editorial cited above evokes the 197073 Chilean case as an inaugural instance of nuclear-era
competitive interference in the era of globalization. Chilean societal polarization was intense.
General Augusto Pinochet had extensive public support particularly among the Chilean middle
class despising President Allendes socialist policies on behalf of his core constituencies. Elements
of the latter looked to Soviet-supported Havana as a source of inspiration, succor, and backing,
aside from the extent to which Washington may have exaggerated this threat (Harmer 2013).
A Manichean worldview characterized the US Cold War establishment, tending to perceive
external actors as either allies or adversaries. At the Cold Wars most intense stages, the American
authorities saw these adversaries as the USSR and its supposed lesser power puppet clients, e.g.,
Nassers Egypt (Borzutzky and Berger 2010). In competitive interference in the internal politics
of third states, the outcome was supposedly evident; either US or Soviet clients or sympathizers
were now in power. Determining which actor was which superpower blocs client became an
imperative, even if it was later not so definitively clear to which side the soliciting local actor was
beholden. Later, avowedly non-aligned actors like Titos Yugoslavia would vary in their perceived
value to the US or the USSR. This estimate depended on the overall state of relations that each
respectively had with their superpower ally and adversary. Assertions of belonging to a Non-
Aligned movement independent from either the West or the Soviet Union, tended to be dismissed
as, at best, navet, or at worst, eyewash. The proclaimed independence of nationalist

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CIVIC AND POLITICAL STUDIES

movementswhich, by definition, seek sovereignty while typically responding to foreign

dominationwas evaluated instrumentally. They, consequently, often were viewed with suspicion
and doubt by the superpower whose hegemony was perceived as challenged by them (Claudio
2015).
Decision makers like US President John F. Kennedy were arguably relatively more prone than
other US leaders to see the international political context in non-Manichean terms (Lefebvre 1999).
Accounting for nationalism as a challenge to existing international borders originally established
by imperial powers remains a necessary prerequisite for successful conflict resolution (Adie 2003).
Kennedy spoke of nationalism in Asia and Africa as a powerful third force not instigated by the
Cold War (Stephanson 2014, 10). Whether or not Kennedy would have escalated US military
intervention in South Vietnam to the levels that his successor did is a perennial topic of debate.
The US, of course, did increase its military advisor deployment to 16,000 at the time of Kennedys
death (Nguyen 2006). Kennedy extolled and promoted the capabilities of US special operations
forces, publicly by designating these insurgency and counterinsurgency military professionals to
wear the green beret (Green Berets n.d.). The Kennedy administration accepted a negotiated
settlement in neighboring Laos despite increasing Chinese involvement there concomitantly with
Soviet withdrawal (Nguyen 2006). Outcomes of intrastate, violently polarized community conflicts
in the postwar nuclear era can appear less decisive.

Pan-Slavism and State Actors

Some states have their foundation in a bounded territorial community whose members
overwhelmingly share the same primary terminal national group self-identity with that bounded
community, i.e., they are nation states (Cottam and Cottam 2001). Such states are more prone to
generate foreign policy process outcomes showing conformity with stereotypical images of the
target during periods of crisis (Cottam and Cottam 2001). In the post-Cold War international
environment, nation states Russia and the US are competing for influence over policy in Kiev in
multiethnic Ukraine, albeit with its Ukrainian national core group at its base.
The protests and overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych following his refusal
to accept an EU Association Agreement significantly reflected the reaction of Ukrainian
nationalism. Due to history, the latter tends to view the greater challenge to Ukrainian sovereignty
coming from Moscow. Among the Russophile population concentrated in the east, self-
identification tends more strongly to associate with the neighboring Russian patron state. Note that
this self-identification is not necessarily synonymous with responses made to questions on a survey
or asked by a surveyor. The intensity of self-identification falls along a range of intensity. It also
is context dependent, i.e., its intensity may not be clear even to the individual citizen or observer
until the political situation generates a stark, difficult choice. For example, the overwhelming
majority of externally displaced inhabitants of Donbass have migrated to Russia (UNHCR 2016).
In such a situation, in which an individual chooses an option that has a cost, the choice made may
be surprising, both to the individual as well as the observer. Perceived boundaries between national,
ethnic identities in Ukraine among the Slavic population are notably diffuse and fluid (Brubaker
2011).
In social competition with the European Union, the Russian authorities presently assert an
alternative form of policy and polity integration based upon a Russian World concept of
Moscows hegemony extending into Soviet-era areas of control (Laruelle 2015). The Russian
authorities have proposed an alternative, Eurasian Union (Lomagin 2012). Choosing between
joining Moscows proposed a Eurasian Union versus the European Union poses such a stark, albeit
collective, choice. This choice further polarized Ukrainian community ethnic identities.
Moscows appeals to receptive internal and external soft and hard power constituencies as
legacies of its Cold War hegemonic control structure react to European Union expansion. Pan-
Slavism in this sense represents the legacy of a shared primary terminal identity community that
transcended formal state borders in the form of the self-styled international Communism. Its core

6
 DEDOMINICIS: PAN-SLAVISM AND SOFT POWER IN POST-COLD WAR

lay in the pan-Communist block control apparatuses focusing on the party elite and police as its
foundation. Such a conceptualization differs from viewing pan-Slavism as a form of ideological
appeal. Rather, pan-Slavism is a form of collective behavior, a pattern tendency that more or less
intensively manifests itself as a collective identity expression. The international Communist
movement in Europe did create a primary intensity, terminal self-identity community in the form
of regional Communist party elite community. At times, it produces behavioral affinities that even
the West finds useful. The relative ease with which former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili
moved into his 201516 appointment as governor of the Odessa region of Ukraine illustrates this
legacy. It implies that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko viewed Saakashvili as qualified at
least to attempt to provide transformational leadership for the province (Saakashvili is Turning
Politics Upside Down in Ukraine 2015). From his command of Russian to his presumed
understanding of nomenklatura attitudes and values, Poroshenko viewed Saakashvili as qualified
for this position. It presumably stems from his socialization, and the socialization of his Odessa
underlings and his Kiev superiors, in the single common generational experience of Soviet-bloc
Communism.
This analysis postulates that the Communist party elite throughout the Soviet bloc constituted
a primary intensity, terminal self-identity community (Strayer 2001). This de facto sovereign
international organizational community existed as a social mobility pinnacle vehicle atop a
multinational Eurasian Communist bloc. Multinational sovereign state regime authorities rely upon
coercion as an important internal control mechanism. As the coercive control apparatus
disintegrated, indigenous, national and ethnic identities reasserted themselves concomitantly with
self-directed, public political participation. Tellingly, they typically did so around the formal
constitutional republic and provincial administrative, institutional frameworks bequeathed by the
Soviet Communist regime (Rakowska-Harmstone 1998; Zamyatin 2016). The disintegration of the
multinational de facto sovereign Soviet bloc political entity produced states that are more
substantive in their sovereignty to varying degrees. They vary; there is Poland, a nation state that
was of course not part of the USSR, the foreign policy of which includes a perceived major threat
emanating from Moscow. Then there is Belarus, a former Soviet republic whose leadership has
expressed a willingness to reintegrate politically with Russia. Ukraine is a legacy state that has a
Ukrainian nationalist core centered in the western regions, with generally more fluid identities in
the east bordering on Russia. Lovell reiterates that the pervasive corruption in these post-
Communist East European societies is structural, encouraged by the pervasive clientelism
especially within late Communism. These clientelistic social structures blossomed when the
remaining authoritarian, coercive check mechanisms disintegrated by 1992. These societal
behavioral patterns labelled corruption resemble the imperial legacy in Third World post-colonial
states with parallel challenges to nation-state building (2005).
In the imperial era, pan-Slavism was a more pronounced Russian imperial polity elite value in
the nineteenth century, after the defeat in the Crimean War. The elite component of the domestic
political control strategy of the Romanov imperial authorities increasingly emphasized defending
and extending Russian global influence (Vovchenko 2012). Pan-Slavism became one articulation
justifying this international influence expansion among domestic and foreign elites and their
constituencies perceived as predisposed to be receptive (Farrar 1996). It emerged concomitantly
with an increasingly strong internal Russification policy trend (Urry 1994). Its importance to
critical segments of the ruling elite, including within the army, increased (Zlatar 2004). The
conservative monarchical regime encouraged Russia-centered pan-Slavism among the small, urban
but expanding politically attentive public (Farrar 2003). It would grow as a domestic public opinion
constraint on its foreign policy decisional latitude as demonstrated in 1914 in the Russian
governments response to Viennas ultimatum to Serbia and Berlins intervention.
Pan-Slavism has evolved, in this sense. In late imperial Russia, pan-Slavism was Russia-
centered and typically equated with Russian expansionism in Eastern Europe. Pan-Slavism today
is a self-serving former Communist-era nostalgia that Slavic nationalist entrepreneurs in small and

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large states use to attempt to leverage greater support from each other. One substantive difference
is that there is no pretense of creating a greater, formally sovereign pan-Slavic entity. Rather, it is
a form of neo-colonial imperialism in the post-Soviet/post-Communist space. It is a counterpart to
the US, French, and British neo-colonial imperialism perceived by nationalists in former
possessions of their respective old empires. Hybrid warfare exploits this legacy because today,
existing, formally sovereign state borders are officially sacrosanct. Intervention, therefore, is
covert or at least unofficial, especially in the era of nationalism and nuclear weapons (Cottam and
Gallucci 1978).
The pan-Soviet Communist core, terminal self-identity community today lacks a sovereign
territory necessary to reproduce itself through economic, social and political institutionalization.
These Soviet imperial legacies will continue to decay in Ukraine and Bulgaria, as their
development into institutionalized nation states continues. 2 Differing regional political dynamics
determine their respective paces, but a critical facilitator of this support process is Euro-Atlantic
integration (Traynor 1999).
The Soviet Communist underlying terminal self-identity community institutionalized
attitudinal collective behavioral patterns that associate with the imperial stereotype of threat from
the capitalist West (Cottam and Cottam 2001). The perceived source of threat was from capitalism
as the political, economic form of the Western civilizational challenge. The collapse of the Soviet
Union shifted the locus of resistance to the Russian successor state. Other post-Soviet nations have
often sought refuge from a prospective, resurgent Russia through allegiance with Euro-Atlantic
structures. Moscow ruling circles increasingly see a challenge to Russian prestige and security
from Euro-Atlantic expansion. Their response includes attempts to institutionalize a corporatist
system of control over the economy. It is vaguely reminiscent of Lenins New Economic Plan,
with a focus on state influence predominance over the commanding heights of the economy
(Yergin and Stanislaw 1998). Russian ruling circles have also responded with their initiative for a
Eurasian Union. Post-Soviet Ukraine is one of the front line focal points of this clash of
civilizations (Huntington 1993).
Such a conceptualization elaborates upon the claim, made by one panel participant at the 2015
convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, that Moscow
exports corruption. This characterization corresponds with a rogue conceptualization of Russia
(Cottam and Cottam 2001). Its policy behavior, serving to export corruption, incorporates the
Cold War competition legacy, updated for the post-Cold War clash of civilizations framework.
Bulgarian analyst Ivan Krastev rebukes the return of the Cold War narrative in that the
Wests current obsession with Mr. Putin is at the heart of the Russian Presidents newly discovered
soft power (2016, para. 8). This narrative implies that Russia, successor state to the defeated
USSR, is a capital of Western polity subversion. Its alleged latest successes include tipping the US
2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump. This stereotype case is suggestive of an
organized, global subversive criminal enterprise. Differentiating Russia from other stereotyped
gangster-controlled rogue states such as Milosevics Serbia and Saddam Husseins Iraq is its
exponentially larger power potential base (Cottam and Cottam 2001). Russias GNP may be
equivalent currently to Spain, but its power potential, including natural resources and its nuclear
triad arsenal, make it an impregnable headquarters for global organized crime. This view sees the
competition between the West and Moscow as extending more deeply into the polity itself. Either
as criminality or foreignness, the competition is as much about a way of life as it is between states.
It is a progression from the Cold War clash between Western liberalism and Soviet Communism.
The supposed degeneracy of the defeated latter into a decaying but still dangerous shadow of its
old self-poses new challenges with the linkage between criminality and rogue state terrorism.

2
In 1994-2009, this writer was on the faculty at the US government-supported American University in Bulgaria established
in 1991, a purpose for which is to accelerate this decay. Due to historical and cultural affinities, Bulgarian public opinion
is traditionally exceptionally positive towards Russia, and Moscow is actively striving to maintain this affinity (Ratchev,
Petkov, and Tagarev 2015).

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In sum, Pan-Slavism is conceptualized here as at best a tertiary intensity sentiment within

Orthodox Slavic polities today. Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic attempted to appeal to pan-
Slavic sympathies in Moscow for support (Dinmore et al. 1999). Belarusian leader Alexander
Lukashenko as well as Russian leaders in the Duma during the ongoing Yugoslav crisis
reciprocated calls for Slavic unity (Kim 1998). Parliamentary deputies in Moscow, Minsk, and
Kiev publicly appealed to pan-Slav sympathy in support of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan
Milosevic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian MPs 2001). Its effect in the Balkans has so far
produced little substantive change in policy trends in the region; the regions integration into Euro-
Atlantic structures continues. Belarus and Ukraine proximity and historic infrastructure integration
with Russia shifts bargaining leverage more favorably towards Moscow. The Balkans remain a test
case for the strength of pan-Slavism versus Euro-Atlantic integration. Acting on pan-Slavisms
behalf would generate highly costly tradeoffs that Sofia and Belgrade cannot pay since the fall of
Milosevic.

Hybrid Warfare vs. Insurgency vs. Counterinsurgency

The advent of nuclear weaponry has arguably led to a fundamental change in international political
behavior (Desch 2003). During the Cold War, it was evident due to unacceptability of direct use
of force against each other by the superpowers. Two features defined the Cold Wars unique kind
of competition for influence: 1) critically important engagements or battles occurred at the non-
violent level; 2) the US and the USSR demonstrated a willingness to accept defeat in these
engagements to a degree which would have been unthinkable in past wars. The Cold War
antagonists conducted their conflict within the domestic political processes of other states,
particularly within Third World states through competitive interference (Cottam 1967). As Chan
(2010) highlights, local contestants exploited the Cold War competition in seeking patronage
against their local, typically stronger, adversary. The likelihood of Soviet or US intervention
directly correlated with the varying intensity of US-Soviet competition (Chan 2010).
Counterbalancing nuclear triads motivating control of escalation dynamics remains a critical factor
explaining the newest form of a blatant, albeit unofficial, familiar pattern, now labelled hybrid
warfare (Stefanescu 2015). Hybrid conflict has been defined in various forms, depending upon
what the particular observer wishes to highlight in this behavior. The most general definition
encompasses reliance on both conventional and irregular forces to achieve a common political
purpose. Observers have defined them as guerrillas, insurgents and terrorists (Wither 2016, 74).
Wither distinguishes these irregular forces from special operations forces (SOF) deployed for
insurrectionary operations under the guise of reconnaissance and conflict regulation. Wither
focuses his discussion on the little green men, i.e., Russian covert SOFs, deployed accordingly
to link up with opposition groups in a targeted state in seizing Crimea in Ukraine (Wither 2016,
81). The emphasis on the psychological warfare component in so-called hybrid warfare highlights
the importance of appealing to sentiments in public opinion in the targeted region or community
(Ibid). Indeed, the military involvement of the US in Indochina conformed with what NATO now
brands hybrid warfare. The Johnson administration undertook overt command of military
operations following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution. At least until then, the US and its allies
maneuvered behind cooperative, traditional local elites to provide the formal legal legitimacy for
Western opposition to the Hanoi authorities. As noted, these policies included the creation and
deployment of the Green Berets (Zambernardi 2011).
These cases indicate that developing the soft power component in so-called hybrid warfare
should include a focus on the national self-identity predispositions among peoples within regions
placed within a state. Often, these state boundaries were drawn by decision makers of states
generations earlier with little consideration to the community behavioral patterns of the peoples so
partitioned. Stalin or Titos interests in creating the republic boundaries of what became formally
sovereign states did not include full national determination as an objective. Soviet and Yugoslav

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disintegration demonstrated the limits of authoritarian government educational socialization,

propaganda and disinformation in socializing peoples over generations to change national
identities. In the ongoing history of multinational state disintegration, clear limits exist to what
even a totalitarian state can achieve in changing so-called primordial identities of the public.
One observer characterizes European Union influence expansion into the Eastern Partnership
states Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, as exporting governance.

The EUs policies may be better comprehended through the Foucauldian concept of
governmentality that includes the transfer of administrative and managerial practices
across the border in order to enable partners to take care of themselves and therefore make
their own decisions as its pivotal component. In other words, the EU aims to strengthen
the capabilities of its neighbors to act independently and pursue their interests accordingly
[sic] (Makarychev 2014, 183).

This characterization implies state building. Recent history demonstrates the limitations to state
building in an era of mass political participation and nationalism. The above characterization
assumes that at minimum a core national community exists, typically a titular community, as a
foundation upon which to build a nation state. A shared national identity facilitates building a
Hobbesian Leviathan and the construction of jurisdictional territorial and functional norms to
overcome free riding and corruption. By overcoming the prisoners dilemma in societal interaction,
a strong state is necessary for the operational functioning of the EU system of multilevel
governance (Hooghe and Marks 2003).
In states with national minorities, they may be more successful at integration if competing
external powers refrain from responding positively to respective solicitations for their patronage
(Cottam and Cottam 2001). Even without this support, the appeal of simultaneous secession and
accession to a bordering, perceived national motherland might be a foreboding obstacle to this
integration. Latvia and Estonia, besides Ukraine, share this dilemma (as does post-Yugoslav
Bosnia and Herzegovina in its relations with Croatia and Serbia). The utilitarian economic
incentives of EU membership for Russophile citizens of Latvia and Estonia would presumably be
strong at least to acquiesce to separation from Russia. For much larger, turbulent Ukraine, these
incentives may be less immediately perceived. EU visa-free travel, however, is one tangible benefit
incentive for all citizens of Ukraine. National minority status is more likely to be an insurmountable
barrier if and when external patrons encourage dreams of self-determination and irredentism
through supporting national minority rebellion. They do so in pursuit of their respective, regional
foreign policy objectives (Shevtsova 2014).
Other states may not be viable despite continuing application of vast power resources by
external actors to support them, e.g., South Vietnam. Of particular note is the invocation of failed
states. Foreign policy decision makers view target states as failed or failing depending upon
the interests of the perceiver. At some point, paying the price of competitively supporting a states
continued integrity may not be desirable, or at least may not be perceived as feasible, e.g. East
Germany. Indeed, the prevailing view in the Putin regimeand one which is more intensively self-
fulfilling since the Maidan revolutionis that Ukraine is a failed state (Makarychev 2014). Ionita
highlights that hybrid warfare theory is a new form of warfare that encompasses a unique
combination of hybrid threats in the shape of failed states and non-state actors sponsored by
states (2014, 61). A significant difference from the past is the blurring of regular and irregular
forces in the targeted area (Ionita 2014, 64).
News reports highlight the presence of US special operations forces wearing Kurdish Peoples
Protection Units (YPG) insignia in Syria (Ackerman 2016). They are cooperating in military
campaigns against Islamic State forces, to the consternation of Turkish government which does
not distinguish the YPG from the PKK (Calamur 2016). Indeed, the importance of SOFs is growing
(White 2016). Shrouding such interventionist acts of war in ambiguity and deniability is an
essential characteristic of what NATO now describes as hybrid warfare (Borger 2016). It has

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always been so in the postwar nuclear era. This increasing importance reflects the renewed
recognition of the need to understand the intertwining of military with political objectives in
turbulent local political contexts. NATO recognizes the importance of ambiguous warfare, i.e.,
international intervention below the threshold of a conventional military invasion across borders
(NATO 2014). Recent events in the former Soviet Union highlight the extent to which Moscow
favors now-entitled hybrid warfare. Another question is the extent to which any political regime
in Moscow could acquiesce to the loss of eastern Ukraine, including the Crimea, from Russias
sphere of influence. From a Russian nationalist public opinion perspective, a Moscow regime
acquiescing to such a loss would conceivably be committing political suicide (Cook 2014).
A broad categorization of professed hybrid warfare notes special operations forces
collaborating covertly, or at least unofficially, with irregulars, along with so-called hearts and
minds winning instruments. If so, then little would seem to differentiate it, broadly speaking, from
variations on insurgency and counterinsurgency efforts (Blank and Kim 2016, esp. 198). US
support for the Hmong tribes in combatting Communist forces in Laos is one example (Hamilton-
Merritt 1993). If such tactics are only branded hybrid warfare when they seek to destabilize or even
dismember an existing state, then its condemnation derives from a political stabilization strategy.
Stabilization strategies are favored typically by state actors that are paramount in a regional, not to
mention in the global, political order. This narrower definition therefore also overlaps with
international discourse regarding the negative challenges posed by rogue, failed, and failing states.
Determining when a state regime or government, or even the state itself, is legitimate, i.e.,
destabilizing it would be ethically wrong, is a familiar debate topic. The answer depends on the
interests of the external powers, as well as on the political leverage of an insurgency, to make itself
a recognized actor in international law (Cassese 2005). Insurgencies in the form of national
liberation movements are legitimate actors in international law if they acquire international
community recognition (Cassese 2005). The struggle to achieve international recognition is itself
a question of direct and indirect influence generation capabilities, i.e., diplomatic leverage,
including soft power capabilities. Political actors apply leverage capabilities within states, by states
and towards states, as well as towards other non-state actors.
The issue ultimately is contingent upon relative power capacities. A nationalist insurgency
may be so innately strong that it can overcome the partition of a national community enforced by
the United States, e.g., the unification of North and South Vietnam. Vietnamese nationalism may
not have prevailed without the aid, overt and covert, from the USSR and the PRC. Without this so-
called primordial national identity, this assistance would not have been sufficient. The US could
not construct a paramount, primary intensity South Vietnamese identity despite all of its resources.
Similarly, the USSR and its local clients could not create a sustainable East German national
identity.
In sum, NATO authorities apply the label hybrid warfare to perceived aggression by Moscow
in the form of various intensive covert lethal and nonlethal forms of support for insurgencies in
former Soviet territories. Whether Moscows intent is indeed aggressive is not a direct focus of
this study, nor is whether US support for the Kurdish uprising in Iraq in 1975 manifested aggressive
intent. The question of ultimate motivation is germane regarding the potential for preventing an
escalatory conflict spiral. Russias motivation is a topic of debate; Markarychev, for example,
argues that Moscows actions in Ukraine since 2014 are ultimately defensive reactions to Western
influence expansion (Makarychev 2014). The thesis of this essay is that what the international
community calls hybrid warfare is partly an accommodation of intensely competitive state actors
in the nuclear era to the challenge of national mobilization and self-determination. It is a challenge
because it tends to be destabilizing to state borders often drawn by imperial powers, dividing
communities consisting of (then) traditional, non-mobilized populations. Since international law
supposedly makes state boundaries sacrosanct, classical military conquest of territory is now
forbidden. External actors may give support only to national liberation movements, which again
depends on the particular foreign policy goals of a state that induce it to intercede. Support for

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intervention may exist in the international community, but the hostility open intervention may
generate may be too great and too threatening to other foreign policy objectives. Even so, state
leaders may calculate that territorial secession through NATO military intervention may have
sufficient support to make it desirable, e.g. Kosovos widespread recognition in 2008.

Conclusion
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. stated, The capacity to know when to use hard power, when to use soft power,
and when to combine the two, I call smart power (Nye and Welch 2017, 49). Competitive
intervention on behalf of client/lesser actors respective unsatisfied nationalist aspirations can be
an arena for the attempted exercise of smart power. Smart power requires conceptualizing what
target actors want, which may include national self-determination aspirations. Political strategy
focuses on shaping longer-term trends, developing the magnitude and effect of political bargaining
levers that diplomatic negotiators cannot readily vary in the short term in a particular crisis. Smart
power aims to shape these trends in a desired direction.
Short term crisis applications of bargaining leverage include Russias nuclear-armed
authorities exploiting the perceived danger of accidental war (Cottam and Gallucci 1978). This
lever relates to apprehension concerning possible escalation of Ukrainian fighting to confrontation
between Russian and NATO forces. Increasing Russian diplomatic bargaining leverage includes
impressing international observers with the degree of support among the Russian public for the
Putin regime. Attempting to strengthen this lever is conceivably a response to the worldwide
collapse of oil prices. Cornering the Russian leadership, incentivizing it to rely on appeals to
Russian chauvinism to buttress the regime domestically, risks pushing the Russian regime further
in the direction of authoritarian populism. Chauvinistic regimes tend to rely on international
aggrandizement to demonstrate national superiority over traditionally denigrated other national
and ethnic groups.
Competitive intervention in the internal politics of third countries constitutes a more
prominent form of state foreign policy behavior today in the nuclear era. Intervening powers aim
to achieve greater respective control over the policies of these third states. They typically have
little difficulty in finding clients among dissatisfied minorities within third party states that are
seeking external patronage. Symbolic, figurative justifications for such interventions will include
appeals to various forms of trans-border solidarity, including pan-Slavism, where more or less
plausibly applicable.
Internal conflicts within these third states, including between antagonistic ethnic groups or
socio-economic class representatives, may be intense. The prospect of an internal adversary
controlling the coercive and utilitarian resources of the state is likely to be viewed with varying
degrees of mutual alarm. Solicitations for support to external powers may be a consequence by
these internally competing groups. The likelihood that an external patron would respond positively
would significantly depend on some situationally specific factors. A significant factor would be
the intensity of conflict among these greater powers themselves. The more intense the perceived
challenge that they see from another great nuclear power, then the more likely they are to seek and
respond to solicitations from these internal contestants in a third state. The other internal
competitors, if they have not already done so, will compensate by seeking patronage from an
external power. The aim would be to counterbalance the advantage enjoyed by their competitor.
This grim logic became more distinct during the Cold War. It has remained critical in the post-
Cold War political environment. This pattern of competitive interference is evident today in
Ukraine.
Mutual, accurate determination of Russian and US foreign policy motivation is critical for
formulating a political strategy that can minimize competitive interference and its consequent
intensification of local conflict. Millions of innocents died in the Cold War. Advocates of
containment viewing the USSR as, in effect, a Russian version of Nazi Germany, would argue that
these lesser evils were a price paid to prevent greater evils: totalitarian Soviet Communist world

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domination or nuclear war. In contrast, post-Vietnam critics of Cold War containment may argue
that fear motivated Moscows belligerence due to a perceived aggressive threat from the West. The
question of what are Moscows motivations today should be a topic of debate (Cottam 1977).
Mearsheimer suggests that Russias violent interference in Ukraine today is ultimately defensively
motivated (2014). The late Helmut Schmidt, chancellor of West Germany and Chancellor Willy
Brandts foreign minister during Ostpolitik, held a similar view and castigated the European Union
accordingly (Ex-Chancellor Schmidt 2014).
The European Union as a smart power actor needs to accommodate the national self-
determination demands of the nations of Europe and the rest of the world when partitioned by more
or less contrived political boundaries. Its capacity to address national self-determination aspirations
will significantly determine its peaceful conflict resolution capabilities in Eurasia. A challenge it
confronts is the Eurasian Union counter project centered in Moscow. The rise of China, not
discussed in this paper, raises additional challenges regarding the complexities of competitive
interference among nuclear powers in the international political system. The US has leveraged the
European Union within the NATO framework to contribute to US-led military operations in the
Greater Middle East. One Russian response has been to attempt to claim common cause with the
US through asserting Moscow to be on the frontline in the war on Islamic militancy in Syria while
also defending its Assad regime client.
The European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 for its success in keeping peace
in Europe (Zeff and Pirro 2015, 7). Accurate determination of the ultimate source of the Russian
foreign policy challenge to political stability in Ukraine, rooted either in perceived threat or
perceived opportunity, appears to be a prerequisite for this success. The development of greater
EU military capability under the Common Security and Defense Policy is, among other purposes,
a tactical response to Russias recovery from post-Soviet collapse (EurActiv 2016). The growing
challenge to European stability with Brexit and the US presidential election of Donald J. Trump
indicates that the European Union should increase its diplomatic bargaining leverage towards the
US as well. Assuming US leadership via NATO to ensure European security is no longer a default
option.

Acknowledgement
This paper was produced with the support of the Research Fund of the Catholic University of
Korea. The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques and
suggestions as well as Dominique Moore at Common Ground Research Networks for editorial
oversight. Any mistakes and omissions are solely the responsibility of the author.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benedict E. DeDominicis, PhD: Associate Professor, Political Science, Department of
International Studies, Catholic University of Korea, Bucheon, Republic of Korea

17
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