Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and
Global Disorder since 1989
By Penny M. Von Eschen
Duke University Press, 2022, 400 pages, $30.95, ISBN: 9781478022848
Go East! A History of Hungarian Turanism
By Balázs Ablonczy
Indiana University Press, 2022, 296 pages, $33.25, ISBN: 9780253057433
The Sources of Russian Foreign Policy Assertiveness
By Angela Borozna
Springer, 2022, 279 pages, $106.13, ISBN: 9783030835903
The polarity changes in the international system in the early 1990s due to the end of the Cold War was not limited to a U.S.-centered geopolitical transformation. It also brought with it an extremely determined ideological excitement. The life of this paradigm, which gained an ‘iconic’ place in the IR literature with Fukuyama’s “The End of History” thesis, was shorter than expected. Although the challenge against neo-liberal and capitalist values is identified with the 9/11 attacks in the case of fundamentalism, the real dynamic that causes ‘history to continue’ is independent of the phenomena of terrorism and violence. ‘Nostalgia,’ which revived as a reflective phenomenon in the foreign political minds of actors with an imperial past, such as Türkiye, Russia, and Hungary, should be considered the most concrete challenge to U.S.-centrism in the present day. More clearly, romantic nationalism in actors with an imperial past in the historical process represents a highly reflective identity that is likely to be triggered in the future. This situation often manifests itself as a strong emphasis on the ‘past’ in the foreign policy discourses and practices of the mentioned actors. These discourses, which are extremely motivating for the public, turn into a perfect harmony between the public’s expectations and foreign policy discourses after a certain period of time. These discourses, which generally target the hegemony of the dominant power in the international system, are actually evaluated in a revisionist context towards the status quo.
