Russia as a Norm Entrepreneur: Crimea and Humanitarian Intervention

ABSTRACT

Since 1991, Russia has attempted to maintain its hegemonic role in the region. Although it has primarily relied on military and economic means, Russia’s actions have also been accompanied by a normative agenda. Using the Crimean intervention, we outline the basic features of this agenda. Russia maintained that its actions were guided by humanitarian concerns, which was widely rejected as disingenuous. We contend that Russia used the humanitarian frame to circulate a regional alternative to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, a zombie norm it revived from the past to shape the rules of international conduct in its immediate neighborhood.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Breann Magana-Garcia, Karlin Gray, and Pete Theodoratus for their invaluable research assistance, and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and the University of Colorado Denver for the financial support they provided for this research project.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For a more detailed historical treatment of the nineteenth century humanitarian intervention norm discussed here, please see Finnemore (1996) and Jose (2018).

2. The intercoder reliability scores are usually interpreted in the following way: < 0 less than chance agreement; 0.01–0.20 slight agreement; 0.21–0.40 fair agreement; 0.41–0.60 moderate agreement; 0.61–0.80 substantial agreement; 0.81–0.99 almost perfect agreement; 1.0 perfect agreement.

3. Numerous German commentators are willing to grant Russia concessions even today after Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, citing Russia’s legitimate security concerns (Dresen et al. 2022). Yet, once again, Western observers are more willing to accept material than ideational justifications.

4. For both Fig. 1 and 2: The numbers on the y-axis signal the total number of specific codes (1.-4.). Fluctuations are due to two reasons: a) different length of periods, and b) shifting media attention.

5. The values indicate recorded instances of reactions to Russia justifications. N/a means that no code for a specific reaction was registered. The large differences between the numbers are due to varying media attention – larger and more powerful countries receive more media attention than smaller ones.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies and University of Colorado Denver.