With Friends Like These: Brinkmanship and Chain-Ganging in Russia's Near Abroad.

INTERNATIONAL relations; INTERNATIONAL security; BALANCE of power; INTERNATIONAL conflict; POLITICAL science

Unrecognized statelets may be forming in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine under the aegis of Russian protection—a “frozen conflict.” Georgia's past provides a useful cautionary tale in reference to Ukraine's probable future. The very same conceptual debates that are currently underway in the West with respect to Ukraine—“credibility of great-power security guarantees versus chain-ganging”—have, over the past twenty years, generated policies that facilitated the rise of political coalitions within Georgia that prefer war with Russia to any other outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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