This is the first piece in a planned series of posts on humiliation dynamics and international conflict, and how insights from the relevant academic literature can feed into analysis and thinking on policy decisions related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
References to the need not to “humiliate Russia” by French president Macron in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have predictably drawn criticism.1 In the following months, preoccupation about the risk of humiliating Russia have all but disappeared from the public conversation about the war in Ukraine.