The name of this conflict is “Russo-Ukrainian War”

As authors of the article Russo-Ukrainian War: Impacts on Regional and International Security  (2022), published in the third issue of CEBRI-Journal (2022), we welcomed, with a spirit of scholarly dialogue, Demétrio Magnoli’s critique (2022), entitled Names for a War, upon its publication in the Snapshots section, in September 2022.      

As the critique raises a wide range of issues–including some that were never the subject of our article–we limit ourselves here to addressing only a few of them.  We understand, however, that several other points mentioned were never addressed in the article itself. . Therefore, since there was no intention to address certain aspects, it is obvious that there would be no reason to address or elaborate on them. So, let us move on to our response:

First, regarding the article's title being “burlesque” because it was not a war, but a Russian “war of aggression.” Let us get to the point: what is a war? For Clausewitz (2008, 77), “war is not only a political act, but a true political instrument, a continuation of the political process, an application by other means.” Furthermore, the act of war, which is a relational, not unilateral, act, is present in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and, as a general rule, involves an offensive and a defensive actor, as well as a violent confrontation between two or more armies. Most military analysts and centers specializing in war statistics–such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and UPSA, the database of Uppsala University–agree that we are dealing with a war when there are more than 1,000 casualties. In the conflict in question, adding the casualties on both sides, the total now exceeds 100,000. 

One should not confuse the conflict between Russia and Ukraine simply as an imperial act of occupation, since Ukraine has shown a strong capacity for retaliation and engagement in the conflict. It has suffered many casualties, but has also inflicted many casualties on the Russian army. In this respect, Magnoli loses sight of the conflict's discursive semantics. The fighting between both armies is violent, and even if there were a “war of aggression” on the Russian side, the occupation of territories proves unstable because the Ukrainian military forces do not remain merely passive or in a defensive war; they are also capable of retaking territories (that is, switching to an offensive stance). It was the acts and events of war (by the Ukrainian army) that enabled the conquest and retaking of territories occupied by the Russians. Let us grant that the conflict could have been a “war of aggression” in its first weeks, but from then on, what we saw was an unfolding between two armies that are equivalent in many ways, and which will tend to become even more equivalent as new military equipment promised by Germany and the United States begins to arrive on Ukrainian territory. For example, on December 21, the United States confirmed “a shipment of Patriot air defense batteries to the country that has been at war with Russia since February 2022” (Aventuras na História 2002).

Using terms like “War of Aggression,” “legitimate destruction of targets” (such as bridges used by civilians and the military), “war propaganda,” or calling a particular title “burlesque” are rhetorical devices that generally only conceal the side a critic does not want to reveal, so to speak, but whose choice is clearly evident in Magnoli's argument. Therefore, we are not alone in this conception–or rather, in the title we gave the article. Specialized studies and research centers on military spending and conflicts, such as SIPRI and the UPSAL University Conflict Database, also adopt titles similar to ours. In fact, as the war progressed, many sources worldwide abandoned titles such as “Russia's war in Ukraine” and began to more frequently use titles such as “the war or conflict between Russia and Ukraine” (see Aparecido & Aguilar 2022; Bumbieris 2022; BCDOC Defensa 2022; Mielniczuk 2006; Brinci 2022; Sanchez Tapia 2022). Characterizing the actual acts of two warring actors as a War of Aggression is a form of propaganda or discourse intended to raise the collective or national morale of one side (and its supporting parties). 

Another issue raised by Magnoli, which he supports without citing sources, is that “the defense budgets and military forces of European NATO countries decreased drastically after the end of the Cold War, including during the expansion of the military alliance to the east–and did not recover even after the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014” (Magnoli 2022). This argument does not hold up when we analyze the SIPRI annual report (2020), one of the main international sources on military spending. We observe that the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy are among the top 10 in military spending relative to each country's GDP in the period 2011 to 2020; and that Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Ukraine, Romania, Belgium, Greece, and Denmark, in the same period, were ranked among the 40 countries in the world with the highest volume of military spending relative to national GDP. The argument that European NATO countries do not spend militarily, and that they have only increased their military budgets after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, is untenable. 

Regarding Magnoli's argument that our article adheres to “Putinist” discourse, we believe he misunderstood that we were using the discourse not only of Putin, but also of the United States, Nordic countries (such as Sweden and Finland), and even China-Russia–in the joint communiqué of February 2022 (Kremlin)–as a technique of triangulating discourses, which sought to show how rhetoric framed in nationalist and historical terms can be instrumentalized for both foreign policy purposes and in war. Moreover, this war, beyond its cruel development, has been discursive, no less important than the one waged on the battlefields, in which the initial movements of the Russian narrative seemed to prevail, but which has been balanced by the skillful nationalist leadership and counter-semantics of the Ukrainian and Western leadership, mainly the US and Germany (see Brinci 2022).

Magnoli states that “Lebelem & Villa seem to follow the Putinist diagnosis of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution when they emphasize that 'the US supported the overthrow of the then-government in Kyiv' (2022, 120), as if the White House's influence could trigger demonstrations by millions of citizens in a distant country” (Magnoli 2022). Contrary to what Magnoli claims, we do not endorse Putin's defensive argument; we only show how this defensive discourse is doctrinally mobilized by actors (especially nationalist leaders like Putin) to justify the motivations for a war, whatever its nature and axiology. Furthermore, the function of theory, as in the case of John Herz's theory cited in the article, is to understand the international context that gives rise to this discourse. However, Magnoli seems unable to accept “that the White House's finger has been influencing events as if it were capable of triggering demonstrations by millions of citizens in a distant country” (Magnoli 2022). It is unnecessary to remind Magnoli, because he knows this, that since the end of World War II, the United States has justified its participation in coups d'état and fueled popular mobilizations in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa in the name of liberal peace.

Nevertheless, this does not make the Russian invasions of other peoples, which have also occurred with considerable intensity and frequency since Peter the Great and Catherine, any less guided by Russian influence. We recommend that Magnoli read the excellent, “burlesque” book by researcher Christopher Kelly (2015), *America Invades: How We Have Invaded or Been Militarily Involved with Almost Every Country on Earth*. The reader will be quite surprised to see “the White House's finger” involved in social and political conflicts across the world.

Another point raised by Magnoli concerns the assertion that “during the Cold War, NATO did not invade any country, unlike the Warsaw Pact, which promoted the invasions of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).” Following this line of reasoning, we should nominate NATO for the next Nobel Peace Prize. Magnoli ignores the fact that NATO participated with intense bombings in the Kosovo War (1999), certainly defending the human rights of the Kosovars, according to the narrative of NATO and the United States, and that in the 21st century NATO was involved in missions in Iraq (2004) and Afghanistan (2003), intervened in piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, in addition to missions during the Arab Spring, such as in Libya in 2011. Furthermore, European NATO countries, such as France and Greece, plus the United States, were actively involved in the Syrian Civil War and are obviously involved, with their military support, in the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is perfectly legitimate for a critic to highlight facts that exempt a country or organization from warlike attitudes, but it is not very legitimate, academically, to engage in selective historical readings and excerpts that undermine that country or organization's pacifism. All these post-Cold War NATO involvements could be justified by academics and politicians as legitimate because, in the narrative of liberal peace, they were carried out in the name of human rights, the responsibility to protect (R2P), and Western democracy. However, as Mearsheimer (2001) himself showed, such discourses form a liberal ideological framework to justify interventions, that is, an Augustinian way of saying that there are bad and good (just) wars. 

Indeed, we do adopt and expand upon Mearsheimer's argument that NATO bears primary responsibility for the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. We take this opportunity to express our solidarity with Mearsheimer, whose academic freedom has come under pressure for expressing a theoretical and historical view that does not align with the mainstream American political and academic view of the Russo-Ukrainian war. These positions, contrary to Mearsheimer's thinking, are conveyed in a fundamentalist manner and based on the civilizational and political superiority of liberal peace, which reminds us of the worst days of the George W. Bush administration's discourse (2001-2008), which professed that “whoever is not with us is against us.” This type of reaction violates the academic freedom of an intellectual like Mearsheimer and of any other intellectual. Beyond our disagreements with Magnoli, however, we believe we share one fundamental conviction: war brings nothing but pain and suffering. We therefore reaffirm our solidarity with the millions of Ukrainians victimized by the war, as well as with the families of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers who lost their lives in a cause that perhaps was never truly theirs. 

References     

Aventura na História. 2022. “Envio de armas para Ucrânia pode desenhar outro futuro para a guerra”. Aventura na História, 21 de dezembro de 2022. https://aventurasnahistoria.uol.com.br/noticias/historia-hoje/envio-de-armas-para-ucrania-pode-desenhar-outro-futuro-para-guerra.phtml

Aparecido, J. M  &  S. L.C. Aguilar. 2022. “A guerra entre a Rússia e a Ucrânia”. Série Conflitos Internacionais 9 (1).

Brinci, S. 2022. “Rusia y Ucrania: Una guerra (también) retórica”. Palabra Pública, 2 de Mayo de 2022. http://palabrapublica.uchile.cl/2022/05/02/rusia-y-ucrania-una-guerra-tambien-retorica/

Bumbieris, J.V. J 2022. “A Guerra Russo-Ucraniana e seus impactos para O Brasil”. ESTUDO, maio de2022). Câmara dos Deputados. Brasília. 

BCDOC Defensa. 2022. Dosier: Guerra Rusia/Ucrania. https://patrimoniocultural.defensa.gob.es/sites/default/files/2022-07/GUERRA.pdf

Clausewitz,  C. V. 2008. On War. Princeton University Press.  

Mielniczuk, F. 2006. “Identidade como fonte de conflito: Ucrânia e Rússia no pós-URSS”. Contexto int 28 (1): 223-258. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-85292006000100004

Sanchez Tapia, S. 2022. “¿Hacia dónde va la guerra? Rusia pugna por recuperar la iniciativa mientras Ucrania se crece”. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/hacia-donde-va-la-guerra-rusia-pugna-por-recuperar-la-iniciativa-mientras-ucrania-se-crece-191220

Received: October 25, 2022

Accepted for publication: January 19, 2023

Translation published: July 16, 2026

* Translated by Theo Pereira with the support of digital machine translation tools: Google Translate (initial draft), Grammarly (grammatical and syntactic revision), and ChatGPT (selective phrasing refinements). Reviewed by the author.

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