Shards and Specters of the New World Order: Casting Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies as Critique

by Timothy W. Luke

Also available in Kindle ebook format at Amazon.com.

From ideological dynamics in revolutionary Russia, cultural stagnation in the USSR, and ineffective Soviet governance in the 1980s to the USSR’s institutional collapse in 1991, the emergence of the Russian Federation under Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin’s wars in Ukraine since 2014, Timothy W. Luke’s Shards and Specters of the New World Order investigates how the geopolitical clout of the United States has worked to contain, but at other times sustain, the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. Luke’s critical studies also examine how Moscow’s strategies provoked radical Islamic resistance movements in Afghanistan and aided anti-Western client states, like Iraq and Syria, that threatened the New World Order envisioned in Washington after 1991.

Praise for Timothy W. Luke’s Shards and Specters of the New World Order

“In this wide-ranging and rich collection of articles from the past four decades, Timothy Luke explores with theoretical curiosity and adventure new critical normative perspectives on superpower politics. Luke presents a systematic analysis of past East–West relations vital for understanding the historical development of the Russian and American imperial projects and their challenges to contemporary world order.”
—Hartmut Behr, Professor of International Politics, Newcastle University

“Building on situated experiences, extensive knowledge, and decades of devoted work through major crises and history-defining events, Timothy Luke assembles a compelling framework that offers ways out of the pitfalls of political-economic and political-geographical disciplines. In this impressive tour through the ‘shards and specters’ of Soviet and post-Soviet change, Luke reminds us that the familiar entanglements between East and West, Old and New World Orders, which seemed long gone, have proved resilient and recently returned in full force. This book is an invaluable resource in the current geopolitical moment.”
—Vera Smirnova, Department of Geography and Department of Political Science, Kansas State University

“Intellectually rich, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, Shards and Specters of the New World Order traces the trajectory of the Cold War and its aftermath in geopolitics, from the Soviet Union to the ‘War on Terror’ to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Across six decades, Timothy Luke has been one of the sharpest scholars and analysts of global order, world politics, and critical theory. Luke’s perceptive insight, his acumen, his wry wit, and his deep knowledge of history are amply on display in this book.”
—Samuel Garrett Zeitlin, University College London

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction: The War of Forms: America, Russia, and the Modes of Empire

1. The Proletarian Ethic and Soviet Industrialization

2. Civil Religion and Secularization: Ideological Revitalization in Post-Revolutionary Communist Systems

3. Technology and Soviet Foreign Trade: On the Political Economy of an Underdeveloped Superpower

4. The Nature of Soviet Society

5. “Packaging” Chernobyl: The Manufacture of Meaning from a Transnational Ecological Disaster

6. The Other “Global Warming”: The Impact of Perestroika on the United States

7. Postcommunism in the USSR: The McGulag Archipelago

8. Yeltsin’s Progress: On Russia’s Pilgrimage to the West

9. On 9.11.01

10. The Insurgency of Global Empire: New World Order in an Era of Civilian Provisional Authority

11. Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021: Blows against the Empire of Bases

12. Ukraine and World Order: Today’s Scramble for Eurasia

Conclusion: The Forms of War after 1945: From a World of Great Wars to a Planet for “Special Military Operations”

ISBN 978-0-914386-88-9 (paperback) • 978-0-914386-89-6 (ebook)
Pub. date: December 22, 2023
356 pages