Russian Global Perspectives and Contemporary Military Intervention

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Russian response to Western-led interventions in the wider context of Russian global diplomacy and discourse. It relates norms to power. It argues that a vociferous Russian campaign under Putin against Western ‘hegemony’ was less about legal principles than fears about how global rule-making is shaped by disparities in power. To assert itself as a global actor Moscow has sought to project itself within a concert of great powers and has repudiated the notion of NATO functions ‘going global’. The second half of the chapter compares the legal, normative, and political positions of Russian and Western states over two major controversies. First, the threat of future military intervention in Iran by the US, perhaps with Israel. Secondly, the UN authorized intervention in Libya in 2011. The latter offered new hope for normative congruence over the Responsibility to Protect. Yet Moscow harshly criticized the conduct of the Libya operation and after that adamantly opposed external intervention in the mounting crisis in Syria.