The heuristic suitability of dominant Western geopolitical approaches to the Ukrainian crisis is examined through an examination of their epistemological foundations. The most influential discourses today, essentially culturalist, derive from widely disputed paradigms of International Relations and have trouble overcoming the methodological biases and limitations of realist, statist, or neorealist approaches. Deconstruction of the various models reveals the self-same ethnocentric and prescriptive notion of a world order that serves as a foundation for a full-blown “hegemonistic consensus.” Such a vision of international relations however, structured around the assumption of u.s. pre-eminence, is unable to address the complexity of a conflict reducible neither to age-old Russian imperialism nor to a return of the Cold War.