Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security.

• Author: Ozcan, Arif Behic

By Jeffrey Mankoff

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022, 384 pages, $40, ISBN: 9780300248258

This book on the four important states in the Eurasian region (Russia, Turkiye, Iran and China) relates their geopolitical objectives to their imperial pasts. Jeffrey Mankoff argues that these states inherited the legacy of their previous empires for historical and geographical reasons and this legacy is effective in their current policies. Mankoff's main argument is that due to the indelible effects of their imperial past, these states are not nation-states with a common ethnic and linguistic identity in a specific country, and therefore they have a different understanding of politics from the Westphalian national-state model. The author preferred to explain the position of these four post-imperial states in global relations in terms of the civilization argument, although there are those who explain it with political/ideological and structural approaches.

This book, written by the author with a neo-liberal perspective, analyzes each state separately in terms of civilization, imperial heritage, politics, history and geography, and uses these states as a new context that he thinks can be explanatory in terms of current security policies. The book also explains how the post-imperial visions of these states were built historically, and in which periods there were breaks from this vision, with justifications. The most basic conclusion reached by Mankoff is that these states do not conform to the Westphalian national-state model or act with a "non-normal" perspective, as the author puts it. The post-imperial context includes advantages for these states that increase their influence within and outside their borders, as well as disadvantageous dynamics that limit this influence.

In order to support his argument, the author examines the imperial past of the states individually in separate chapters, within the framework of their effects on their own current post-imperial approach.. While discussing the imperial past in the context of the history of cities in the near (and sometimes distant) geography of these states, the impact of political transformations and (if any) revolutions, it refers to the discourses of important intellectuals and political leaders who were influential in the political history of each state and contributed to the imperial vision.

Although the four states are examined in separate chapters in the book, Mankoff emphasizes the aspects...