Interview with Stefano Costalli Professor of Political Science at the University of Florence, Italy, March 5th, 2026

In this interview, Stefano Costalli, Professor of Political Science at the Cesare Alfieri School of Political Science, reflects on the transformation of the international system in the wake of the war in Ukraine, the evolving role of territorial power, and the shifting balance of global politics. The conversation was conducted by Andrea Corinaldesi and Mariele Salotti, second-year students in the RISE (International Relations and European Studies) program at the University of Florence, as part of their academic work on contemporary geopolitical dynamics.

“For decades, we lived under the illusion that globalization and economic interdependence had made territorial conquest a relic of the past, replacing the struggle for space with the struggle for markets. Yet the war in Ukraine seems to have brutally restored the primacy of physical geography and brute force, showing that the security of states still depends on defensible borders and strategic depth. Are we witnessing merely a temporary deviation in history, or have we entered a new closed political system in which physical control of territory has once again become the only real currency of power?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“I would not say that physical control of territory has become the only real currency of power. In fact, I am not even sure that it has ever been the only one, at least in the last thousand years.

Economic power still matters a great deal. It is also increasingly important to be at the forefront of technology, especially in certain strategic sectors. There is no need to explain this in detail: the consequences of the computer revolution, up to artificial intelligence — which is one of the major topics today — are obvious. Another important currency of power is technology applied to weapons.

So, the power of a state is, and remains, multidimensional. If anything, the point is that the territorial element, which seemed to have disappeared from this multidimensional conception of power, has now probably returned as one of its components.

I would put it this way: we need to understand why there has been this re-emergence of the territorial factor as a relevant element of state power today.

In my opinion, we need to consider three factors.

The first is the transformation of the international system. We have moved from the post-Cold War international system — clearly hegemonic in nature — to a system which is not yet properly multipolar, but in which the former hegemon now faces at least some regional challenges. In other words, there are actors in the international system that have increased their relative weight. In some parts of the world, this has brought back tensions and conflicts, which in certain cases have turned into armed confrontations with a territorial dimension.

A second factor is the so-called crisis of the liberal international order. This dynamic is not new; at least for professional observers, it has been unfolding for years. It is linked to the weakening — or at least the perceived relative weakening — of the hegemon. Since the hegemon is a liberal hegemon, and since it not only contributed to but constituted the fundamental pillar of the liberal order after the Second World War, its weakening has major consequences. Now, this liberal order — made up of rules, institutions, and power relations — is eroding. What is interesting and innovative, compared with other hegemonic orders in history, is that it is also eroding from within. This is a genuine novelty, because the United States is now, in many respects, continuing to dismantle the very liberal order it founded eighty years ago with the idea that it would help preserve its hegemony — and in fact, it did. But now, mainly for reasons of domestic politics, the United States itself is contributing to its weakening. One of the benefits of the liberal international order was the protection of state borders. As that order weakens, this principle — which had seemed almost unquestionable — also begins to falter. As a result, the territorial factor re-emerges.

The third factor, in my view, is the diffusion and re-emergence of nationalism. This nationalism often takes a highly personalistic form, because it is re-emerging in an age of the general personalization of politics. In many countries — I am thinking of the United States, but also Russia, China, and India — important actors in the international system are governed by nationalist political forces in which individual leaders play a preponderant role, often more important than the broader political forces or structures behind them. This means that nationalism — which by definition contains within itself a claim about the “right” territorial extension of the state — is now being expressed in an even more problematic way, because it is an ideology applied substantially by a small number of individuals who hold great power within their states. These three fundamental changes are, in my opinion, at the root of why the territorial element has returned to be an important issue in contemporary international politics. I would not say that it is the only element of power, but I would say that it has once again become one of the central elements of state power.”

“It is often said that the most dangerous powers are not those on the rise, but those that have already peaked and are beginning to see demographic and economic decline on the horizon. Do you believe the invasion was driven by a kind of “strategic anxiety” — that is, by the perception that the window for bringing Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit was closing for good as the Ukrainian state grew stronger?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“I do not think that Putin acted because he perceived Russia as a power entering a demographic decline. On the contrary, I think he had the perception that Russia had returned to being a great power, and that it could therefore afford this kind of action precisely because it was once again able to play a leading role in the international system. This also relates to the broader transformation of the international system that I mentioned earlier.

Even in this case, several factors need to be considered.

The first is the role of Ukraine itself. Certainly, the fact that Ukraine was a consolidating democracy — still with many limits, and certainly not perfect — but nonetheless moving out of the Russian orbit, played an important role in my view. It was one of the relevant factors. The idea, from the Russian perspective, was that Ukraine was heading in a direction that was increasingly incompatible with Putin’s presidency, and that in a changed international system Russia, as a great power, could take action to prevent that outcome.

That said, there is another important factor: misperceptions. It is now clear that Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, at a specific moment and in a specific way, also because of major misperceptions.

Part of these misperceptions concerned Russia’s own relative power. Putin believed that Russia was stronger, relative to others, than it actually was. Another misperception concerned what the West, and especially the Europeans, would do. He seems to have expected that European states would look the other way and would not have the resolve to seriously challenge Russia.

There were also more strictly military misperceptions, both strategic and tactical, linked to the way the invasion was planned and the way the war began for Russia.

So, to summarize, one factor was Ukraine’s democratic consolidation and its trajectory away from Russia. Another was Russia’s series of misperceptions. And then we return to the nationalist ideology that motivates Putin.

Putin — and I would say, like many nationalists — tends to act on what he says. He has repeatedly argued that Ukraine cannot, from his point of view, be considered a truly independent state, because in his view the Ukrainian nation does not exist.

Here again, we see a typically nationalist form of reasoning: the state must reflect the geographical boundaries of the nation, and if there is no nation, then by definition there can be no legitimate state. This is important because it tells us something about how the Russian leadership reads international politics. It reads it through specific ideological filters. Of course, everyone interprets politics through filters, but these are the filters through which they see the world.

This is one factor we must consider when trying to understand why Russia took certain actions at a particular moment. It is not the only factor — there are others as well — but in my opinion it is certainly one of them.”

“Professor, in the debate between John Mearsheimer and Michael McFaul, we see a clear clash: for the former, the conflict is a defensive response to Western “provocation” (NATO/EU); for the latter, it is Putin’s own choice, linked to his domestic political survival after the 2012 protests. In light of the 2022 escalation, do you still see these two interpretations as mutually exclusive, or could we understand the invasion as a synthesis in which geopolitical “necessity” was used as a “shield” for an authoritarian domestic agenda?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“Perhaps one could put it that way.

Certainly, a part of the Russian leadership — and first and foremost the leadership around Putin — has the perception that NATO and the European Union represent an enemy, or perhaps more accurately, a challenge. They are seen as problematic for Russia because they constitute an obstacle to Russia’s return as a great world power.

This way of reading international politics, and of interpreting relations between Russia and what Russian officials call the “collective West,” has deep roots in Russian foreign policy. It is a particular lens through which international politics and Russia’s role in the international system are understood. It is not the only possible interpretation, it has long been the dominant one in Russian foreign policy-making circles.

Here again, we are dealing with an interpretation of international politics through specific lenses. Now, to say that NATO and the European Union represented a real danger to Russian security would, in my view, be more of a rhetorical argument. However, they certainly did represent a challenge and an obstacle. There is no doubt about that. If the goal is to reaffirm Russia’s role as a great power from a nationalist perspective, through an assertive foreign policy, then these two entities clearly become a problem. So I would not say that, because of the positions held by the EU and NATO, they represented a direct threat to Russian security. But the Western alternative certainly represented a danger — even if indirectly — to Putin’s regime.

Why? Because the real issue was the possibility of comparison. Above all, that comparison could take place in a context like Ukraine’s, which was far more comparable to Russia than, for example, the Netherlands or other long-established Western democracies. It is easy for Putin’s rhetoric to dismiss Western countries as fundamentally different and therefore not comparable to Russia. Ukraine, however, was comparable — and that made it more problematic.”

“Sanctions were presented as “weapons of financial destruction.” Yet Russia has shown unexpected resilience. Does this mean that dependence on natural resources still outweighs dependence on Western financial systems?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“My answer would be: yes and no.

First of all, much depends on the type of sanctions and on how they are applied.

I would not say that sanctions do not work. The problem is that their effectiveness is difficult to measure, because any evaluation depends on a counterfactual: we do not know what would have happened in the absence of sanctions.

Of course, it is often said that sanctions have not worked as well as expected, or as well as many had hoped. But here again, the concrete way in which they are applied matters a great deal.

Take the European Union, for example. It has adopted a very broad sanctions regime against Russia, with considerable depth and precision. But one could still ask whether this process has been too gradual. Why did it take so many rounds of sanctions to reach this level? One might argue that fewer rounds, if they had been more substantial from the outset, could perhaps have been more effective. So the issue is complex.

It also depends on who is applying the sanctions. Russia has found countries willing to continue doing business with it. Most importantly, it has found China. On the one hand, this has made Russia more dependent on China. But on the other hand, this does not necessarily mean that sanctions are ineffective in themselves; rather, it means that they are not being applied universally.

If major actors in the international economic and political system do not participate in the sanctions regime, then sanctions inevitably lose some of their force. The same point applies to countries such as India. And here we return to the broader transformation of the international system. There are now several important actors that feel increasingly detached from policies shaped by the West. In that context, sanctions lose part of their relevance and effectiveness.”

“We have moved from the promise of a “post-historical” future, dominated by economic calculation and liberal peace, to the return of heroic struggles and ideological clashes. Is this return of history a sign that “hegemonic shocks” are the only true constant of the international system, making democratic stability a temporary exception rather than an endpoint?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“Here, we first need to clarify the concepts and be precise about what we mean.

If by democratic stability we mean the fact that, as many studies have shown, liberal democracies do not fight one another, then I would not say that this kind of stability — understood as the absence of conflict within the liberal-democratic international sphere — is temporary. It is a well-established finding, with solid foundations and a long historical duration.

The real issue, rather, is that democracies themselves are not permanent. In other words, we can never take for granted that a political regime, once consolidated, will remain unchanged forever, regardless of developments in domestic or international politics.

Even the most consolidated democracies are not immune from change or deterioration, for example in the quality of their democracy. A few years ago, an entire line of political science research focused precisely on this issue: the quality of democracy. There are international research projects that track how democracies change over time, because democracies do not always function in the same way, and they are not always equally liberal.

Democracies are political regimes that live through transformation and adaptation. They change alongside their societies — both their domestic societies and the broader international society. And if democracies change, then the international consequences of their democratic nature can also change.

If, instead, by democratic stability we mean the stability of an international system in which the hegemon itself is democratic, then the issue is different. But even here, we first need to ask how we measure stability. We often think of the stability of the international system, especially in relation to the United States, in terms of the absence of major interstate wars. But there have also been many civil wars, which have caused tens of millions of deaths. So, it depends very much on what exactly we are looking at.

In any case, if by democratic stability we mean the stability of an international system led by a liberal democratic hegemon, then I believe that this kind of stability has in fact been weakening for years, for the reasons we discussed earlier. That type of order has been eroding.

And that kind of stability was always, in any case, more temporary than the relative pacification among democracies themselves. This is because hegemonic orders are by nature more temporary, and more exposed to challenge, than liberal-democratic regimes that have truly consolidated internally. So yes, I fear that this kind of stability has gone.”

“When discussing sanctions you mentioned countries such as China and India, and more broadly the existence of actors that do not necessarily feel bound by policies they perceive as Western-driven. In that context, sanctions inevitably lose part of their effectiveness.

Does this reveal a deeper problem? In other words, are sanctions designed within a Western framework that implicitly assumes a shared liberal order and common political logic—while in reality many states do not share that framework and pursue different interests? What weight can sanctions really have in an international system where several major actors do not think in the same strategic terms as Western countries?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“The issue is less about Western “misperception” and more about the structure of interests in the contemporary international system.

There are actors in the political and economic system that believe they have interests diverging from those of Europe and the United States. That is the first element: the perception of divergent interests.

The second element is the perception of capability. Over the last thirty years, several countries have grown economically, politically, and militarily. As a result, they increasingly believe they have the capacity to pursue those interests autonomously.

If a country concludes that the position taken by Europe and the United States on the war in Ukraine does not correspond to its own interests, the natural question becomes: why should it adopt sanctions designed to support that Western position?

This is the core of the issue. Many states today believe they both have different interests and possess the ability to act on them. Thirty years ago this was far less the case.

At the same time, it is important to avoid the idea that all non-Western or non-aligned powers share the same position. Their interests differ substantially from one another.

A good example is the behavior of India and China. Roughly a year ago I participated in a series of closed door round tables at the British Academy with scholars and policymakers from different parts of the world. One of the most interesting discussions involved participants from non-Western countries.

I remember an Indian colleague who said something quite revealing. He argued that India would not necessarily become hostile to the United States or Europe, but that it would prefer to maintain the flexibility to align with one side or the other depending on the issue.

In many ways that is exactly what India is doing today: maintaining strategic autonomy and navigating between different poles of power.

China’s position, however, is different and follows a distinct strategic logic.

All this reflects a broader transformation of the international system. We are moving toward a context in which more states feel able to pursue their own interests independently, rather than automatically aligning with Western policies.”

“In public debates about international crises, experts are often asked to forecast what will happen next. What should we realistically expect from political scientists?”

Professor Stefano Costalli:

“Our role as political scientists is to analyze what we actually observe. I believe our task is to try to untangle the knot of political — and, if you like, military — phenomena, which are inherently complex.

How does politics work? How does international politics work? Why do states go to war? These are difficult and complex questions. But our role is not to stop at the threshold of complexity and simply say: these are complicated issues. On the contrary, our role is to enter into that complexity, to unravel it, and to do so through transparent and verifiable methods.

This should provide everyone — not only scholars, but also political decision-makers and informed citizens — with tools to face future challenges with greater awareness. And that is different from predicting the future.

This does not mean that we can say nothing about the future. We can say something, but what we say must necessarily be conditional, because we do not know the future and there is no way to know it with certainty. There are always unknown factors ahead of us.

So, if someone asks me what could happen in Iran, I have a responsibility as a scholar to answer in conditional terms: X could happen if Y occurs; another outcome could take place if Z happens.

Even in this case, the task is still the same: to untangle complexity, to identify the factors that matter, and to indicate what should be kept in mind as a situation unfolds. That is very different from claiming to predict events with certainty.

To use a simple example: it is one thing to say that this book may play an important role because it could fall from the desk. It is another thing to say with certainty that the book will fall. Whether it falls depends on factors such as how it is positioned and where its centre of gravity lies — but I do not know exactly how it is positioned. That is the difference between analysis and prediction.”

The conversation ultimately leaves open questions rather than definitive forecasts. As professor Costalli suggests, the task of political science is not to predict the future with certainty, but to understand the forces shaping it. The war in Ukraine, the weakening of the liberal international order, and the growing strategic autonomy of several global actors all point to a system in transition. In such a context, the challenge for scholars, policymakers, and citizens alike is to interpret these transformations with analytical clarity, recognizing that the international system is entering a more complex and contested phase than many had anticipated after the end of the Cold War.