The Destiny of a Great Power
| Published date | 01 September 2014 |
| Date | 01 September 2014 |
| Author | Victor Kattan |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663914522933 |
| Subject Matter | Review Essay |
Review Essay
The Destiny of a Great
Power: Russian
Messianism and the
Quest for a Balance of
Power in International
Law and Relations
Victor Kattan
National University of Singapore, Singapore
BILL BOWRING,Law, Rights and Ideology in Russia: Landmarks in the Destiny of a Great Power. New York:
Routledge, 2013, pp. 238 þIndex. ISBN 978-0-415-68346-3, £75.00 (hbk).
Introduction
In an acrimonious phone call a day before the House of Commons voted against British
involvement in military intervention in Syria, Prime Minister David Cameron was
reported to have accused Ed Miliband, the Labour Party leader, of ‘letting down Amer-
ica’ and ‘siding with [Sergei] Lavrov’, the Russian foreign minister (Mason, 2013). The
Commons’ unprecedented vote against military intervention in Syria
1
was striking in
view of the fact that the United Kingdom has been involved in almost every single
US military intervention since the end of the Cold War, most recently in Libya, where
Russian interests were also affected.
2
On this occasion, however, Russia put its foot
down and used its veto in the Security Council (along with China) to prevent there being
a legal basis for armed intervention on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.
3
Russia
and China’s repeated vetoes prompted Prime Minister Cameron to seek parliamentary
support in order to circumvent the United Nations (UN) Security Council ‘to alleviate
This review essay was submitted for publication in September 2013 and was therefore unable to take into
consideration the events that later occurred in the Ukraine and Crimea.
Corresponding author:
Victor Kattan, National University of Singapore, Eu Tong Sen Building, 469G Bukit Timah Road, Singapore
259776.
Email: vkattan@nus.edu.sg
Social & Legal Studies
2014, Vol. 23(3) 457–467
ªThe Author(s) 2014
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663914522933
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