Chinese, Russian, and Turkish Policies in the Iranian Nuclear Dossier: Between Resistance to Hegemony and Hegemonic Accommodation

This article sheds light on the foreign policies of China, Russia, and Turkey towards the controversial Iranian nuclear program and analyzes to what extent their policies are indicative of a security culture that resists hegemony. While advocating a nonhegemonic security culture discursively, China, Russia, and Turkey still partially adhere to hegemonic power structures on a behavioral level. These states’ policies are the outcome of a balancing act between resistance to hegemony and hegemonic accommodation. The analysis in this article nuances the idea that counter-hegemonic discourses of rising powers always herald a revisionist power transition. The article thereby makes a contribution to the scholarly debate about emerging powers and the coexistence between declining hegemonic powers and norm-shapers in the making.