‘Responsibility to Protect’: Were Russia’s Actions in Crimea Justified?
1,710 views   /  16 Jun 2016
In March 2014, 96.77% of Crimea’s referendum voters backed Crimea’s secession from Ukraine and its subsequent unification with the Russian Federation, official statistics say. The voting, however, took place under Russia’s military presence and therefore was repeatedly slammed by Western newspapers, scholars and politicians for lack of transparency and violations of the international legal norms.
By Anastasia Fistashka
Russia and the West perceive the developments that took place in Crimea in spring 2014 in a very different way. While Russia justified its actions under the pretext of defending the Russian minority against alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, Western countries perceived Moscow’s actions as “an act of aggression”.
Well, to decide which party is right would be quite a difficult task. No one actually can prove if the security threats to the Russian population in Crimea really existed. What we can do is assume that they were at least perceived as such by some representatives of the Russian minority in Ukraine. Replying to the question of why she decided to take part in the independence referendum and vote in favor of Crimea’s entry into Russia, 42-year old Crimean resident Irina said that the main reason behind her decision was “the absence of an adequate government in Ukraine, a complete mess on the political arena and as a consequence, arising threats to the security of the Russian population on the peninsula”.
At the same time, other local residents replied to this question in a different manner. Their decision to vote in favor of Crimea’s secession rather resulted from their perception of cultural affinity with the Russian Federation: “Deep inside we have always felt like Russian citizens,” “I have always viewed myself as Russian,” “I have finally returned home” – these are the most common phrases used by Russians to explain their position.
Thus, security threats that were repeatedly mentioned by Russian politicians might in fact have been exaggerated by the Moscow government in order to achieve its strategic goals. In other words, the Russian leadership could have generated the “state of emergency” in Crimea to justify its military activities, a process that is called “securitization” in political science.
“Securitization occurs when something is presented as posing a threat to the very existence of a particular community, which requires the adoption of emergency measures beyond normal politics,” this is how Alex J. Bellamy identified the term “securitization” in his book “The Responsibility to Protect: A Defense”.
Thus, Russia might as well have taken advantage of the situation and used the political turmoil in Ukraine in its own interests, seeking to present the developments on the peninsula as being much worse than they really were. Taking into account the fact that Sevastopol is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, which gives Russia control over the Black Sea coast and quick access to the eastern Mediterranean, Balkans and the Middle East, there seem to be enough reasons for Moscow to pursue its strategic goals using all possible means.
At the same time, we can’t deny the fact that the Russian population in Ukraine could have really been threatened by Ukrainian radical groups. In this case, Russia acted in a totally justified and legitimate way from the moral point of view as every state has a logical desire to protect its co-nationals wherever they live.
The situation is, however, more complicated from the point of the international law. On the one hand, there is a legal provision that “the State carries the primary responsibility for protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and their incitement”. It means that in case of Crimea, Ukraine, and not Russia, had the main responsibility to protect the local population against any threats to their security. On the other hand, the international law also allows humanitarian interventions if the state fails to fulfill this responsibility as it happened in Ukraine which plunged into political chaos. The important and obligatory condition is, however, that such intervention must be authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which was not the case when Russia deployed its – although “polite”, but still “armed” – “little green men” in Crimea.
As Gabor Kardos wrote in his study “Role for the Kin-States?”, the states are allowed to undertake any actions in favor of their co-nationals living abroad only in the framework of international organizations or in conjunction with the state where these co-nationals reside. Thus, officially Russian actions can be indeed considered a violation of international law as Russia had no legal right to undertake unilateral actions in Crimea, regardless of the fact how morally justified they might have been.
At the same time, during the 1999 Kosovo crisis as well as in many other cases in the Middle East, this international law provision didn’t stop the US and NATO from deploying its military forces in foreign countries (and killing thousands of civilians), even despite opposition from many other members of the international community, including UNSC members – Russia and China. Thus, taking into account the considerable number of precedents when the principle of state sovereignty has been violated for the sake of so called unilateral humanitarian missions, questions arise about the efficiency of this provision in itself, challenging the obligatory or maybe “not quite obligatory” nature of the international legal norms.
Disclaimer: the views and opinions contained in this article are those of the author. They do not necessarily represent the views of Russian Accent.
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