Afterward: The shadow of the Second World War

Abstract

It is difficult not to be struck by the contemporary resonance of a study on how neutral states have wrestled with the ‘memory’ of the Second World War over the last eight decades. The war’s long shadow has weighed heavily on events in Europe since February 2022. Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine openly challenged Europe’s post-Cold War political order and security architecture, and has forced Europeans to reconsider Russia’s place within the common European homeland. When Russia’s aggressive intentions first manifested themselves in 2014, academic pundits – typically political scientists, comfortably seated on the other side of the Atlantic – rushed into print, urging Kyiv to satiate Russia’s ‘legitimate’ security concerns by committing themselves to a position of neutrality. At one level, Russia’s military aggression and the consequent strengthening of the Beijing-Moscow axis appears to signal the return of unrestrained power-politics.