Cultures in competition: Ukrainian foreign policy and the ‘cultural threat’ from abroad

IN THEIR FOCUS ON ISSUES OF MILITARY SECURITY and political economy the dominant approaches to international relations, realism and liberalism, fail to investigate an issue that for many countries in today's increasingly interdependent world is of critical importance: how ethnic and national cultures penetrate, shape and erode each other.1 In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union new or newly independent multiethnic states confront the particularly challenging task of constructing state-wide national identities and revitalising ethnic cultures that suffered from years of Russian and communist rule. They must also define their place in the international system by choosing the partners with which they will develop extensive political, economic and military ties. These two processes of national and international integration are linked in these, and other, countries through inter-state cultural contacts and influence. Within most multiethnic states, ethnic groups compete not only for political influence but also for cultural survival and dominance. Scholars of national inte-