Abstract
The aim of the article is to analyse the way the RIC (Russia, India and China) states understand resilience in the world order. In doing so, the article compares their interpretation to that developed by the European Union (EU). The first part of the article surveys the way the literature has analysed the role of resilience in the foreign policy of the EU. One of the main findings here is that the mainstream interpretation of resilience tends to be rather circular and leads to process of securitisation of the external environment. The second part of the article then presents and applies to the case of the RIC states a more nuanced framework that examines resilience along three complementary dimensions: resilience as ontology (attribute), as process and as outcome (agency and intentionality).
Introduction
During the last decade, the concept of resilience has increasingly made its way in the foreign policy of the European Union (EU). This development has been primarily influenced by the widespread perception that the Western-led liberal world order is entering a period of decline, instability and disorder (Acharya 2018; Apeldoorn 2018). The literature on international relations and the nature of the world order has aimed, for at least two decades, to apply insights from other disciplines such as sociology in order to highlight the relevance of resilience for international processes (Evans and Steven 2009; Korosteleva and Flockhart 2020). To that extent, resilience offers the promise of an attractive and clear framework for understanding the way states engage with internal or external challenges. The scholarship has jumped on this opportunity and highlighted how the EU can develop resilience and the way the concept would complement its foreign policy (Bendiek 2017; Kerr and Wiseman 2017). Nevertheless, critics drawing on Foucauldian views on governmentality argue that resilience portrays limited explanatory power, as it is mainly a by-product of neoliberalism and paves the way for states to abdicate responsibility for their actions in the face of crises (Korosteleva 2016; Juntunen and Hyvönen 2014). Experiencing a wide range of deep crises (such as the financial crisis, Brexit, the migrant crisis, or the Ukraine crisis), EU policymakers seem to have identified an ultimate panacea in the concept of resilience (Wagner and Anholt 2016). The latest iterations of the Global Strategy or the revisions of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) place resilience at the centre stage (European External Action Service 2016, 2017; European Commission 2015a, 2017). These external challenges have forced the EU to recognise that the resilience of the liberal world order has been crippled due to the actions of ‘illiberal states’ such as China or Russia.
What is interesting here is that the example of the EU has been mimicked by non-western states such as the RIC group (Russia, India and China). Leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or Narendra Modi have frequent alluded to their countries’ resilience in the face of challenges originating from the liberal world order (Xia 2019; Wang 2019; The Economic Times 2019; BBCnews 2014). Nevertheless, the scholarship tends to focus primarily on the case of the EU, with only a limited number of studies enquiring into the approach of non-Western states in relation to the nature of the world order (Deudney and Ikenberry 2018; Acharya 2018). In this context, the aim of the article is to analyse the way the RIC states understand resilience in the world order. In doing so, the article compares their interpretation to that developed by the EU—the literature highlights that one of the salient transformations based on developing resilience has been experienced by the EU (Tocci 2020). In this context, the first part of the article surveys the way the literature has analysed the role of resilience in the foreign policy of the EU. One of the main findings here is that the mainstream interpretation of resilience tends to be rather circular and leads to process of securitisation of the external environment. The second part of the article then presents a more nuanced framework that examines resilience along three complementary dimensions: i.e. resilience as ontology (attribute), as process and as outcome (agency and intentionality). In the final part, based on data from speeches, official documents and media sources, the article discusses the nature of the contrasts between the approach to resilience in the world order of the EU and the RIC states (Russia, India and China).
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