Russia, the West, and Military Intervention - Hardcover

No issue has more vexed recent U.S.-Russian relations than the tension over military interventions, such as those launched or backed by Washington in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya and the one carried out by Russia in Georgia. Analysts have paid too little attention to the roots of this tension, which lie in the conflicting normative and legal standards each side has used to justify its actions. It takes a scholar as meticulous and thorough as Allison to properly chronicle the remarkably complex debate between proponents of traditional norms of state sovereignty and advocates for new norms of humanitarian interventionism. (Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs)

Russia, the West, and military intervention is well written and meticulously researched (56 of its 320 pages are devoted to endnotes). It will serve both to confirm and to enhance Roy Allisons reputation as one of the leading analysts of Russian foreign and military policy. (Mark N. Katz, International Affairs)

Russia has been embroiled in bitter disputes with major Western powers over high-profile military interventions - over Kosovo (1999), Iraq (2003), Georgia (2008), and even Libya (2011) which had a UN Security Council mandate. Moscow and the West reached much more agreement over the Gulf War (1990) and intervention in Afghanistan (2001), but these cases are exceptional.

This interdisciplinary study explores the persistent differences between Russian and Western leaders about most Western-led military campaigns and about Russia's own use of force in the CIS region. What does this tell us about emerging norms on the use of force in humanitarian crises? How and why has there been such controversy over the legal justifications for these military operations? Has greater consensus been possible over force in global counterterrorism? What do all these controversies tell us about international rule-making? More specifically, how can we understand Russian political and diplomatic responses during international crises around major interventions? This book argues that Russia has been influential in these debates on norms and law as a permanent United Nations Security Council member and as a major military power. Moscow's approach to these questions has reflected distinctive and quite entrenched attitudes to international order and sovereignty, as well as a preoccupation with its own status. The book draws deeply on Russian sources to show how these attitudes are expressed among the Russian leadership and the political elite. This raises challenging questions about the ability of Russia and Western states to cooperate in emerging crises, in Syria, Iran, or elsewhere and about Russia's role in international society.