Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T20:09:28.378Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Identity, legitimacy, and the use of military force: Russia’s Great Power identities and military intervention in Abkhazia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2006

Extract

An action is legitimate if the pertinent community deems it so. Most would agree that Russia’s conduct in the 1990s in Georgia was illegitimate. Military intervention in another state, unless the other state is preparing an imminent attack on one’s own territory, or is engaged in the systematic abuse of one’s own citizens, is a violation of the international norm of sovereignty, at a minimum. Some have argued that European politics has gone beyond this ‘territorial integrity norm’ to something more expansive, to a consensual renunciation of any and all territorial claims on other states. This was first codified in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2005 British International Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)