Authors

Discussion

This paper provides a comparative overview of the European Union’s and Russia’s forms of exceptionalism in light of the ongoing crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO). It draws on Holsti’s definition of exceptionalism, understood as comprising: a sense of responsibility, obligation, or mission to liberate others; freedom from external constraints in pursuing that mission; the hostility of the surrounding world; the need for external enemies; and a tendency to portray oneself as a victim. The paper situates these incompatible exceptionalisms within the broader context of a changing world order. The European Union’s exceptionalism—conceived as a Kantian mission to liberate Europe from its Westphalian past through economic and political integration—has, since the end of the Cold War, largely aligned with the requirements of the LIO. By contrast, Russia’s hybrid form of exceptionalism has placed both itself and its claimed “sphere of special interest” in an ambiguous relationship with the EU project and Western modernity more broadly, oscillating between imitation, tolerance, and resistance. As the international order shifts away from its post–Cold War liberal iteration toward something more in line with Westphalian assumptions, Moscow has hardened its stance, while the EU has found itself increasingly out of sync with changing realities. The paper concludes by considering the prospects for a redefinition of EU exceptionalism in an increasingly post-liberal world, and in the face of a more belligerent Russia.