Russian Military Intervention and International Society: What Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine tell us about International Society, institutions, and Russia’s divergence from the West.

This research aims to increase understanding of Russia’s interpretations of the primary and secondary institutions of International Society in the context of Russia’s relationship with the West. It uses military intervention case studies which highlight the different visions for global order that Russia and the West have. For Russia, this presents as a civilisationally focused multipolar order in opposition to the West’s democratically focused rules-based order; ideological differences that culminated in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the 24th February 2022. Using principles derived from the English School of international relations, this thesis contributes a mixed-method integrative analytical model to analyse the progress of Russia-West relations between 2003-2022. This is achieved through the study of the primary institutions of international law, sovereignty, territoriality, and human rights as well as secondary institutions comprising of international organisations and treaties. It is hypothesised that there is inherent polysemy in the primary institutions of Russia-West International Society and that counter to traditional beliefs, it is not shared values that bind international societies, but the regulating effect of secondary institutions. The three case studies of Russian military intervention in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine provide the foundation for the analysis of Russian narratives concerning institutions across areas that reside inside Russia’s areas of civilisational interest (the post-Soviet near abroad) as well as external to them in Syria. This provides a foundation for comparison with Western views on the same events. The research concludes that the Russia-West International Society essentially collapsed at some time between late 2021 and early 2022 as Russia and Ukraine descended into war. It evidences that this is the result of the polysemic nature of primary institutions, reflecting the ideological impasse Russia and the West found themselves in over Ukraine, after which Russia-West international relations have transformed into a combative international system.