The Belligerent Peacekeeper

Robert Amsterdam speaks with Geert Jan Alexander Knoops, an expert on international law governing peacekeeping missions, who concludes the Russian claims of acting as belligerent peacekeepers, have no legal foundation in international law. Amsterdam further observes that by citing the right of self-defense under the UN Charter as justification, Russia seems to be confessing to an assumption that South Ossetia is a part of Russia’s territory already. Which brings us back the oddness of Russia arguing that Georgia had illegally invaded its own territory. Perhaps this only makes sense in the Russian state imagination, because there exists the tacit imputation that this land is theirs, not even by declaration, but by collective assumption.