The Politics of Russian Revisionism: Diplomacy of a Worldview, 2011–14

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-477
Author(s):  
Iain Ferguson ◽  
Sergei Akopov
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
The Political ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
Peace And Conflict ◽  
History Of

Abstract Russia’s use of force in Ukraine has been described as a challenge to the rule of international law and an event of unilateral intervention. This paper provides a reinterpretation of this standard history of Russian revisionism. Our new history places this practice in a global governance context through an analysis of the politics concerning the international legal norm of ‘non-intervention’ and its legitimate/illegitimate exceptions for collective intervention. This analysis discloses a practice of Russian diplomacy that emerges out of resistance to humanitarian interventions advocated for by Western states. This practice justifies its own state-bound humanitarian intervention as the legitimate exception to the foundation of international order, which Russian diplomacy had previously sought to restore. We argue the political discourse of the worldview of ‘state civilization’ explains these events of Russian revisionism. We conclude with an analysis of the international paradoxes of peace and conflict contingent on this Russian worldview.

Humanitarian Intervention under International Law: the Strife for Humanity

1993 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schweigman
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
State Practice ◽  
Domestic Jurisdiction

Is the concept of humanitarian intervention part and parcel of customary law? In order to answer this question the or gins of the concept, (alleged) pre- and post-Charter state practice and the relation with the principles of non-interference in the domestic jurisdiction and the non-use of force will be considered. It will be concluded that the aforementioned question must be answered in the negative, notwithstanding the fact that genuine humanitarian interventions tend to be tolerated by the international community.

Humanitarian Intervention and the Clean Hands Doctrine in International Law

2015 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ori Pomson ◽  
Yonatan Horowitz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
International Tribunal ◽  
Jus Cogens

A serious issue that has confronted the international community is the legality of humanitarian intervention. Although the majority of scholars reject the existence of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention, could the attacked state invoke the responsibility of an intervening state before an international tribunal? This article attempts to answer this question in light of the often misunderstood clean hands doctrine in international law. It first concludes that under thelex lata, humanitarian intervention is prohibited under international law. This raises the question whether the clean hands doctrine may nevertheless preclude a court or tribunal from adjudicating in favour of a state that has been subject to humanitarian intervention. Although the clean hands doctrine exists under international law in various manifestations, its applicability in cases concerning humanitarian intervention is lacking. The article finally considers whether thejus cogensstatus of the prohibition of the use of force would prevent the applicability of the clean hands doctrine to humanitarian intervention cases were the clean hands doctrine to evolve into a customary international legal norm.

The Justification of War and International Order

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Order ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Pertinent Literature ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Modern Times

The history of war is also a history of its justification. The contributions to this book argue that the justification of war rarely happens as empty propaganda. While it is directed at mobilizing support and reducing resistance, it is not purely instrumental. Rather, the justification of force is part of an incessant struggle over what is to count as justifiable behaviour in a given historical constellation of power, interests, and norms. This way, the justification of specific wars interacts with international order as a normative frame of reference for dealing with conflict. The justification of war shapes this order and is being shaped by it. As the justification of specific wars entails a critique of war in general, the use of force in international relations has always been accompanied by political and scholarly discourses on its appropriateness. In much of the pertinent literature the dominating focus is on theoretical or conceptual debates as a mirror of how international normative orders evolve. In contrast, the focus of the present volume is on theory and political practice as sources for the re- and de-construction of the way in which the justification of war and international order interact. The book offers a unique collection of papers exploring the continuities and changes in war discourses as they respond to and shape normative orders from early modern times to the present. It comprises contributions from International Law, History and International Relations and from Western and non-Western perspectives.

scholarly journals Kant's metaphysics of law

2004 ◽  
Vol 76 (9) ◽  
pp. 426-436
Author(s):  
Danilo Basta
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Union ◽  
History Of Interpretation ◽  
Final Goal ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cosmopolitan Law ◽  
Political Principles

The history of reception and the history of interpretation of Kant's legal deliberation are not the same even after two centuries. This was not only due to the recipients and interpreters of Kant's thoughts but also and above all due to Kant, i.e., the content and the spirit of his philosophy. The law of the state, the international law, and the cosmopolitan law are the ways to approach the eternal peace, which was considered by Kant as the final goal of the entire international law. The existence of the State is based on the idea of the Initial Agreement. According to Kant, in the Initial agreement all the individuals abandoned their external freedom in order to attain the freedom in a legal order as members of the political union. Kant did not always succeed to stay on the level of his own legal and political principles, and hence the light of his philosophy is sometimes covered with the dark shadows.

The Dilemma of Humanitarian Intervention: The Executive Power of the Law of Nature, After God

1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dunn
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Territorial Jurisdiction ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Law

There are at Least Three Possible Types of View about the justifiability of the use of force by states or private individuals on behalf of other private individuals or groups who are the victims of brutal and gratuitous coercion by another state. The first type of view is that no human being, and a fortiori no state, can be justified in using force under any circumstances and for any purpose, because (and only because) force is an intrinsic evil. This unflinchingly deontological view is generous but practically absurd. The second type of view is that states (or even private individuals) can be, and often arc, justified in using force against the brutally coercive actions of another state when, but only when, the latter is acting outside its own territorial jurisdiction. At least in the case of states what grounds that justification is their entitlement to defend themselves against foreign (as against domestic) aggression, and to defend also any other states with whom they have linked themselves either by standing alliances or by solemn common undertakings to secure each other's safety and sovereignty within the bounds of international law. In the case of private individuals, the corresponding justification would lie in their several personal entitlements to defend themselves as best they can against aggression.

Seneca the Elder, the Controuersia Figurata, and the Political Discourse of the Early Empire

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-150
Author(s):  
Matthew Leigh
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Roman History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Turn On ◽  
Specific Event ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Seneca The Elder

This paper studies examples of how exponents of Roman declamation could insert into arguments on the trivial, even fantastic, cases known as controuersiae statements of striking relevance to the political culture of the triumviral and early imperial period. This is particularly apparent in the Controuersiae of Seneca the Elder but some traces remain in the Minor Declamations attributed to Quintilian. The boundaries separating Rome itself from the declamatory city referred to by modern scholars as Sophistopolis are significantly blurred even in those instances where the exercise does not turn on a specific event from Roman history, and there is much to be gained from how the declaimers deploy Roman historical examples. Some of the most sophisticated instances of mediated political comment exploit the employment of universalizing sententiae, which have considerable bite when they are related to contemporary Roman discourse and experience. The declamation schools are a forum for thinking through the implications of the transformation of the Roman state and deserve a place within any history of Roman political thought.

Justifications of the Use of Force as Constitutive Elements of World Order—Points of Departure, Arrivals, and Moving Destinations

2021 ◽  
pp. 503-524
Author(s):  
Lothar Brock ◽  
Hendrik Simon
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
World Order ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Order Change ◽  
The Difference

In the book’s concluding chapter Lothar Brock and Hendrik Simon take up the notions of change, progress, and structural repetition (Wiederholungsstrukturen) as understood by Reinhart Koselleck. From a genealogical viewpoint, how and in which way do theories and practices of the justification of war and their meaning for world order change from early modernity to the present? Are there any signs of progress in terms of hedging collective violence and if so, what makes the difference? Or does the history of the justification of war repeat itself in endless cycles of justifying, criticizing, and reproducing war so that change and progress (if any) are stuck in these cycles? Whichever answer seems plausible: the contributions to this book show that international law is more than the white handkerchief in the dinner jacket of crocks.

Part 2 The Post-Cold War Era (1990–2000), 47 The Kosovo Crisis—1999

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franchini Daniel ◽  
Tzanakopoulos Antonios
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
International Community ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
Nato Intervention

This contribution discusses the forcible intervention by NATO against Serbia in 1999 in response to the situation in Kosovo. It sets out the facts and background of the crisis, along with the legal positions of the main protagonists and the reactions of the international community. It then proceeds to survey the debates surrounding the legality of the intervention and to assess the soundness of the legal justifications put forward by states and authors. Finally, it discusses the precedential value of the intervention, especially in view of claims of the existence or emergence of a rule or principle of international law permitting the unilateral use of force in response to humanitarian crises. The contribution concludes that the NATO intervention has significant precedential value in that it confirms the unlawfulness of forcible unilateral humanitarian intervention.

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