Journals
2026 EN
Holesch Adam · Zagórski Piotr · Buzogány Aron
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a watershed in European politics, compelling parties to adopt explicit positions on relations with Russia. Prior to the invasion, particularly parties on the ideological fringes often relied on strategic ambiguity. The 2022 attack triggered a surge in assertiveness toward Russia across much of the political spectrum, with only limited exceptions. This article examines whether these positions have endured or whether war fatigue among European political parties has led to declining assertiveness as the conflict has evolved. Drawing on roll-call votes in the European Parliament on key resolutions related to Russia and Ukraine between 2019 and 2025, we develop the Assertiveness Toward Russia Index (ATRI). The results show that mainstream parties have largely sustained their critical stance, while the European far right has become increasingly divided since 2022. The findings reconceptualise party group cohesion as dynamic yet durable, extending beyond short-lived rally effects.
Journals
2026 EN
Borońska-Hryniewiecka Karolina · Sus Monika
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 not only reshaped national security considerations but also influenced debates in the European Parliament (EP). This article examines how this external shock shaped supranational political discourse in the EP between 2022 and 2024. While crises often generate temporary depoliticising effects, we find that these were conditional and context-dependent. Based on a thematic discourse analysis of EP plenary debates, we show that support for Ukraine remained depoliticised, marked by broad cross-party consensus. However, politicisation re-emerged when the war was framed as an opportunity for EU institutional reform. Unusually, it was mainstream rather than challenger actors who used this strategic window to promote deeper integration. By demonstrating that crises do not automatically generate convergence but instead produce selective politicisation across issues, our findings advance debates on EU crisis governance. We show that even existential security shocks may strengthen coordination without prompting far-reaching institutional change.
Journals
2026 EN
Battat Zach · Cohen Ronen A. · Naor Dan
During the 1950s, Lebanon was swept into a series of turbulent events shaped by the global Cold War between East and West and the regional Cold War among Arab states. Crises such as the 1955 Baghdad Pact, the 1956 Suez War, and the 1958 Lebanese Civil War forced Lebanon to navigate the competing pressures of these geopolitical blocs. At this point, the Lebanese Sunni community aligned itself closely with the Arab world, while Rashid Karami, one of the community’s most prominent leaders and Lebanon’s longest-serving prime minister, was in the formative stages of his political career. Karami had to balance the aspirations of his community with his role in Lebanon’s complex political landscape. His efforts were directed toward aligning Lebanon with the broader Arab world, often through alliances with regional powers like Egypt and, later, the United Arab Republic. This article examines Karami’s early political actions within Lebanese and regional contexts. In many ways, Karami’s political journey mirrors that of the Sunni community in Lebanon, as his values and struggles closely reflected those of the broader community.
Journals
2026 EN
Kodet Roman
The Japanese invasion of Formosa in 1874 was the first case in which Japan used force to promote its international interests since the creation of the Meiji regime in 1869. The murder of Ryukyuan sailors in 1871 provided the Japanese an opportunity to emulate the gunboat policy so successfully used by the Western Powers against Japan in previous decades. Similarly, as the British in 1863, Japan demanded satisfaction for the death of Ryukyuans, whom it viewed as its subjects. Though the military expedition and subsequent negotiation were not a complete success, and at one point, Japanese actions almost led to a direct war between Japan and China, British intervention saved both countries from confrontation. Though the Japanese could not push through their interests by themselves, the partial success of their intervention was viewed in Japan as a mark that the country was adopting the new international methods of the ‘civilized’ countries. This attitude contributed to the emulation of such actions in the future. Therefore, the Formosan expedition can be viewed as one of the first steps towards building the Japanese Empire. It is also an example of how Japan tried to emulate the West and be recognized as an active and equal participant in the international field in East Asia.
Journals
2026 EN
Chen Tao
The trip of Otto Wolff to China in 1957 and the subsequent bilateral trade agreement created direct trade relations between West Germany and China and built channels of communication and trust among trade officials, businessmen, and mid-level diplomats in these two countries. The role played by Wolff and his fellows at the Ostausschuss, as well as their Chinese interlocutors was equally important in the negotiations towards an agreement. The decision to engage with China through private business ventures ultimately created a model with lasting commercial success. However, inherent flaws of the agreement and an intertwinement of political and economic factors together led to the nonrenewal of the 1957 agreement, which also demonstrate the limit of multinationals and business associations in building economic relations without political and diplomatic relations during this phase of the Cold War.
Journals
2026 EN
Mrňka Jaromír
This article explores the persistence and transformation of violence in the Czech lands during the transition from Nazi occupation to post-war retribution, with a focus on role reversals and shifting power dynamics. Through the concept of a “liquid state of exception,” the study examines how Nazi anti-partisan operations, death marches, and the suppression of resistance cultivated extreme brutality, normalizing the treatment of civilians as enemy combatants. As Nazi authority disintegrated, Czechoslovak forces absorbed and adapted these learned practices, redirecting violence toward German civilians, alleged collaborators, and political targets. This ongoing cycle of violence demonstrates how retribution and exclusion reversed the roles of victims and perpetrators, blurring the line between vengeance and justice. By tracing the actions of key actors within the frameworks of power relations, personal choices, and institutional policies, this article uncovers the long-term legacies of wartime role reversals in post-war Czechoslovakia, where the echoes of wartime atrocities influenced post-war ethnic cleansing and social restructuring. This study thus situates the Czech lands within a broader transnational pattern of violent adaptation, offering new insights into the impact of occupation and resistance on Central European societies during the chaotic end of World War II.
Journals
2026 EN
Wambach Julia
The particularly dense history of mutual occupations between France and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century allowed for biographical continuity of occupation personnel from one occupation to the next. This article traces the life of Francis Thiallet (1898–1998), a French soldier and administrator. Thiallet experienced and took part in no less than four French and Germans occupations in his lifetime – both as an occupier and as a member of the occupied population. Based on Thiallet’s self-published memoir and sources from French archives, this article tries to capture the logics behind Thiallet’s role reversals and the lessons he learned from his involvement in the First World War, the Rhineland occupation, Vichy France, the Allied Occupation of Germany after the Second World War, and French colonial rule. In doing so, the article uncovers the broader opportunity structures, the distinctive store of knowledge, and the personal networks that allowed technocrats such as Thiallet to navigate the ‘Age of Metamorphosis’ successfully.
Journals
2026 EN
Mark Ethan
For Japanese and Asians alike, Japan’s wartime occupations are generally remembered as nightmares. Yet an exclusive focus on the commonality of Asian suffering at Japanese hands also masks a profound distinction in the occupation experiences of North- and Southeast Asia, prefigured by the prior history of Southeast Asian societies as Western colonies, and their resultant openness, to greater-or-lesser degrees, to imperial Japan’s self-proclaimed role as a force of liberation and as a role model and brotherly leader of ‘Asian-style’ development. Japanese wartime experiences in Southeast Asia were also distinctive in the degree to which the Japanese themselves, seduced by an unprecedented string of early victories against the Western imperialists and by warm ‘native’ welcomes, envisioned their mission as representing a world-historical role reversal for Japan both as Asia’s new hegemon and as an empire that might transcend imperialism. On an ideological level, Japan’s contradictory anticolonial liberationist claims as well as the degree of local receptivity in response mark its southeast Asian occupations as distinctively revolutionary among world war two-era occupations, as such also heralding a global-historical turn to a postcolonial world of nation-states in which the contradiction of colonial occupation as anticolonial ‘liberation’ was to become the global norm.
Journals
2026 EN
Streicher Félix
This article explores the emotional aftereffects of the Second World War on Western European societies. It focuses on the little-known case of Luxembourg, whose inhabitants turned from humiliated victims of Nazi occupation into triumphant Allied occupiers in Germany in 1945. This power shift sparked a vindictive “emotional regime” marked by revenge-driven rhetoric and retributive violence by Luxembourg soldiers against occupied Germans. Drawing on archival sources, print media, and oral testimonies, this paper examines expressions of hatred, resentment, honour, and guilt in Luxembourg in 1945-46, and discusses acts of retaliation, humiliation, and shaming directed at Germans within the Luxembourg occupation zone. In doing so, it highlights how Luxembourg serves as a microcosm to explore the “emotional mobilization” of patriotism, nationalism, and anti-German sentiments in post-war Western Europe, thereby playing a key role in reshaping nation-states and national identities after 1945. It further challenges conventional understandings of 1945 as a clean break between war and peace, proposing instead to view it as an “age of metamorphosis” defined by shifting power structures and lingering emotional trauma. Luxembourg’s post-war experience thus sheds light on the broader Western European process of reckoning with the aftermath of war and the reshaping of national societies after 1945.
Journals
2026 EN
Cross Cara · de Matos Christine
Australia makes an interesting case when it comes to colonisation, war, and reversals of power. After Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War, Australia provided a military force as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) for the Allied occupation. Participating in the force were two groups that experienced a distinct shift in power dynamics: Australian former POWs of the Japanese, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Utilising archival sources, newspaper articles, interviews and memoirs, this article seeks to understand how individuals navigated these shifting roles, one from the incarcerated to the occupier, the other from the colonised to the occupier and back to the colonised. In doing so, the article reveals examples of human resilience and empathy, and the complex interplay between race, power, identity, and labour in the mid-twentieth century from multiple sides of the power divide.