The use of force in interstate relations: theory and evolutions in geo-political practice. – The use of force in relations between states and other players on the world stage: theory, practice and developments in political geography. Based on the experiences of the twentieth century (world wars, genocides, ideological-totalitarian degenerations, decolonization processes), the geopolitical thought of late modernity, starting from the 1960s, essentially develops in a “critical” sense. Then it assumes, among its favorite themes, the discussion on the essence of power (whether or not it is intrinsically “bad”), of the state and of politics (if they inevitably have to rely on the use of force); then it starts the development of a method targeted to regulation and prevention of conflicts, based on a process of deconstruction of alleged “false” ideas of power, to prevent the effects of escalation that have led the whole of humanity to the risk of destruction and self-destruction. These needs are translated operationally into the search for the so-called “insider” factors, that is, those that, in a certain scenario, beyond an immanent and self-evident “casus belli”, cause effects of permanent and out of control conflict, to the point of making war an element that justifies itself (an end, rather than a means). Effects that confuse any causal chain, which make it difficult to identify links and motivations, and therefore the search for a solution, and with it the pacification of crisis scenarios (which in fact tend to perpetuate themselves in areas of “endemic” conflictuality. All this proceeding on the basis of a neo-Enlightenment (possibly neo-liberal) assumption, which almost deterministically assumes the affirmation of an open society, refractory to violence, and the assimilation of “evil” to the mechanisms of democratization, to open market and capitalist prosperity. All this in a context of multilateral policy development, the establishment of international organizations, and the consolidation of a trans-national geo-economic apparatus, of civil society as an “answer to war”, with the aim of progressively limiting, up to cancel the same occasions of conflict; and this to the point that an idea of war as something obsolete spreads (perhaps in an illusory way). The latest events, however, and recent developments, seem to contradict this trend, re-proposing themes and tensions that ge-ographic-political theory seemed to have abandoned for some time. A fact made even more evident by the current invasion of Ukraine, which leaves you dismayed, like aggression to troglodytic times, when the invasion did not need to have a justification; it seems to cause deliberate violence and destruction on a large scale, so much so as to question the entire “critical” paradigm. Putin 24th February discourse deliberately denies the right of Ukraine to survive as a national human community. Evolutions that make it necessary to rethink the practices of limitation and regulation, of the intervention and prevention devices of war, and of the same method of study of the scenarios; perhaps a return to models that, just until a few months ago, were considered outdated.

The complicate role of violence in the interminable dissolution of multi-national territorial states. A comparison of Yugoslavia, the Soviet Empire and contempo-rary Russia. – The collapse in different ways of some multinational states at the end of the twentieth century (empires or micro-empires and apparent federations) prompted questions about the role that violence played in their disintegration. While some states have experienced peaceful separations (Czechoslovakia), others, such as the former Yugoslavia and only to a small extent the Soviet Union, have sought to violently hinder political-territorial disintegration, escalating violence and repres-sion to the extent of democides, genocides, ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter, and population displacement. This paper, developing personal reflections of the author and at the same time using a factual and theoretical analysis, aims to compare three case studies of disintegration (Yugoslavia, the Soviet Empire and contemporary Russia), seeking to identify the main factors (ideal and material) that stimulated, or conversely restrained, the use of violence in the course of disintegration. Indeed, these very factors may provide insight into whether those processes of disintegration have come to a halt or still underlie a long ongoing disintegrative phenomenon that former imperial centers are striving to stop with violence. While the degree of the latter may be limited and “settling” in the former Yugoslavia, contemporary Russia's attempt to restrain the long post-imperial disintegration for years has been involving a shift to open violence - that could affect even the internal dimension - along the lines of what occurred in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.