Palestine and Ukraine: A Postcolonial Critique of the Neo-Realist Strategy of Offshore Balancing

This article employs Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading to challenge the account offered by proponents of offshore balancing of the conflicts in Palestine and Ukraine. This reading, the article argues, presents two challenges to the strategy of offshore balancing. First, it shows that the strategy’s treatment of Israel and Russia as states like any others morally equalises the dispossessors and the dispossessed, and leads to unviable policy conclusions – namely, the two-state solution (Palestine) and territorial concessions (Ukraine). Second, it shows that the strategy’s assessment of these conflicts solely based on capabilities harms US national security and threatens the survival of the United States as a liberal democracy. The article advances postcolonial critiques of neo-realism towards its contemporary application via offshore balancing in Palestine and Ukraine. Furthermore, by extending Said’s contrapuntal reading to Ukraine, it contributes to a closer engagement between postcolonial scholarship on the ‘Global East’ and the ‘Global South’.