Suchergebnisse

The logics approach : discourse, affect and critical explanation -- Rethinking foreign policy: including affect, encircling decisions -- Contradictory common sense : Iraq War and social logics of German foreign policy -- Constructing crisis : political logics and the madness of decision -- Affective disorder and the desire for closure : Fantasy and the fantasmatic logic.

Abstract
This essay reviews four recent books on Germany's foreign policy with emphasis on the era of Angela Merkel. The evaluation is based on their (a) added value to scholarship on German foreign policy, (b) theoretical sophistication and contribution to IR, and (c) relevance also for the post-Merkel era. I argue that the books bring in valuable insights regarding the enduring, yet also changeable role of anti-militarism and provide knowledgeable analyses of the failure of Germany's policies toward Russia. Importantly, they enrich also broader literatures, especially in their focus on discursive change and state power in the European Union context. I demonstrate that these ideas help us understand Germany's struggle to redefine its role after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and offer more nuanced analyses of Germany's policies and their specifics, staying clear of treating the country as a priori exceptional.

1. Introduction: The Problematic Politics of 'hybrid warfare' -- 2. Liminal Insecurities: Crises, Geopolitics and the Logic of War -- 3. Formation: Emergence of the 'hybrid warfare' Assemblage in Czechia (2014–2016/17) -- 4. Politicisation, Institutionalisation, Internationalisation: The Czech 'hybrid warfare' Assemblage in 2017–2021 -- 5. Differentiation: Three Main Narratives of 'hybrid warfare' -- 6. Boundaries: Expertise, Authority and Contestation in the Czech 'hybrid warfare' Debate -- 7. Conclusion: Reclaiming Politics from the Logic of War.

What do we speak of when we speak of 'hybrid warfare', a notion that has become prominent in discussions of European security? The article shows that this question is difficult to answer, as the hybrid warfare discourse is not only vague, but also consists of multiple, and at times contradictory, narratives. While talking and writing about supposedly the same thing, participants in the hybrid warfare debate often suggest markedly different ideas about the precise nature and target of the threat, offer different responses and draw upon different expertise. Grounding our argument in critical scholarship on narratives, security knowledge and hybrid warfare, we build a framework for studying security narratives around the four elements of threat, threatened value, response and underlying knowledge. This framework is utilised in a case study of Czechia, a country that has played a pioneering and outsized role in European hybrid warfare debates. We identify three narratives of hybrid warfare – defence, counterinfluence and education – which present markedly different understandings of 'hybrid warfare', and ways to defend against it. Our intervention hopes to contribute to disentangling the contradictions of the hybrid warfare discourse, itself a necessary precondition for both sound state policy and an informed public debate.