The Russian government wears its disdain for the rules-based international order as a badge of pride, believing that the system is a mask for US hegemony. Yet as the current order comes under increasing strain from both Chinese revisionism and US unilateralism, Russia should realise that the rules-based system actually protects the interests of lesser powers like itself. Rather than encouraging a bare-knuckle contest that it cannot win, Russia should support the rules that restrict the dominance of the real heavyweights.
Many countries can be accused of infringements of the established rules of the international system, yet Russia appears to revel in its defiance. The most egregious case is Crimea, which Russia annexed in March 2014 in violation of Article 2 of the UN Charter and the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. Other examples include Russia’s complicity in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in July 2014, as well as its involvement in the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal and his daughter using a nerve agent in Salisbury, UK in 2018.
The Kremlin is always ready with denials, yet its broader narrative is to attack the very concept of a rules-based international order. Instead of seeing adherence to international rules and norms as a framework for stable relations between states, the Russian leadership sees the concept as a tool of Western influence. In the words of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “the rules-based order” is “based on rules which they themselves invent for their own purposes but change every now and then, so they suit their own political ends.”
