ABSTRACT
Polanyi was trying to make sense of the world that emerged after World War I (WWI). The balance of power in Europe that ensured the long peace after the Napoleonian wars collapsed and this led to WWI and the subsequent turmoil. The war in Ukraine generated a series of theoretical questions in a climate fraught with partisanship, not least in the academia. Political entrenchment guided the answer to questions pertaining to the origins of the war. This chapter argues that the perplexities caused by the war in Ukraine warrant a return to Karl Polanyi’s writings. These writings offer important insights in order to help structure the “confused” climate of opinion, if not to dispel it altogether. The reason this is so, I suggest, is not because Polanyi offers a ready-made toolkit of concepts. The opposite is the case. What is valuable in Polanyi is how he shaped his thinking in media res. Karl Polanyi’s reflections on war and peace and his inchoate theory of international relations help us reframe the way we think about the war in Ukraine, and perhaps of any conflict. Instead of trying to apportion blame for the conflict, a proper Polanyian question would be: why is peace absent?
