'The Loud Dissenter and its Cautious Partner' - Russia, China, global governance and humanitarian intervention

Abstract

The global issue of humanitarian intervention has become more pronounced and complicated in recent years due to increasingly diverging views on addressing security crises between the West on one side and Russia and China on the other. Despite their support for the principles of 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P), both Russia and China are wary of Western intervention in internal conflicts after the Cold War and have become increasingly critical of Western-led armed intervention in humanitarian conflicts. Unease in Beijing and Moscow over the multilateral intervention in the 2011 Libyan conflict and their ongoing opposition to Western policies in the Syrian Civil War since 2011 would seem to point to ever more coincidence in their negative views of American and Western intervention policies. A conventional wisdom has thus emerged that there is something akin to a Sino-Russian 'bloc', with near-identical policies of discouraging armed intervention within state borders under the aegis of humanitarian intervention or the R2P doctrine, signed in 2005

Russia, China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Diverging Security Interests and the ‘Crimea Effect’

“…Concerning intervention, it has been argued that Russia has taken on the role of a 'loud dissenter', repelling perceived unfair Western norms, while China has assumed the persona of a 'cautious partner', affiliating informally with Russia but stopping well short of formal alignment with Moscow, including within the confines of the SCO (Snetkov and Lanteigne 2015). Although it can be argued that policy divergence between China and Russia regarding SCO policy and identity existed long before the post-2014 Ukraine crisis, the annexation of Crimea and conflict in eastern Ukraine, like the Georgia conflict before it, have illustrated the widening of policy trajectories of the two great powers.…”

Russia and Carl Schmitt: the hybridity of resistance in the globalised world

“…With the beginning of Putin's presidency, the emphasis on the drecovery of pluralism within the international system has settled deep into Russia's foreign policy agenda (Snetkov and Lanteigne, 2015). Putin (2007) has criticized the global liberal governance for being "a world of one master, one sovereign".…”

“…In a similar fashion, Russia distorts the fact of its involvement in the separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. However, there is strong evidence that Moscow provides the separatists with military, logistical and diplomatic support (Snetkov and Lanteigne, 2015;Lanozska, 2016). Throughout Ukraine, the Kremlin has also secured support from a proRussian lobby of political forces, which promote Russian interests through pro-Russian movements (Ukrainian Choice) and participation in the parliament (parties such as "Opposition Bloc", "Our Land", "Revival") (Shevtsova, 2015).…”

“…"Hybrid warfare" can be understood as the use of military force while claiming otherwise, which is supplemented with the weaponisation of information, ideas, business and other areas of life (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014;Shevtsova, 2015;Lanozska, 2016). Simultaneously, the Kremlin continues to emphasize the importance of abiding by international law and using diplomacy rather than force to resolve conflicts (Snetkov and Lanteigne, 2015). Such camouflaging allows the Russian state to pursue its interests and bypass the normative principles of liberal governance.…”

“…The evolution of Russia's version of state dissidence is exemplified by the clandestine Russian attempt to destabilize the Ukrainian government (Trenin, 2014). Having annexed Crimea in March 2014, Russia has given indirect support (for example, supply of armaments) to the militant insurgencies in Donetsk and Luhansk (Sakwa, 2015a;Snetkov and Lanteigne, 2015). Russia also deployed around 30,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, sparking fears of future invasion (Tsygankov, 2015).…”