International Law And The Post Soviet Space

The regions that once comprised the Soviet Union have been the scene of crises with serious implications for international law. Some of these, like the separatist conflict in Chechnya, date to the time of the dissolution of the USSR. Others, like Russia's forcible annexation of Crimea and intervention in Ukraine's Donbas, erupted years later. The seizure of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which took place long before, would trouble Soviet-western relations for the Cold War's duration and gained new relevance when the Baltic States reemerged in the 1990s. The fate of Ukraine notwithstanding, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 complicates future efforts at nuclear nonproliferation. Legal proceedings in connection with events in the post-Soviet space brought before the International Court of Justice and under investment treaties or the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea may be steps toward the resolution of recent crises--or tests of the resiliency of modern international law.

International law suffered a drastic loss of respect during the Cold War for being neither consistently observed nor enforced by the superpowers, especially when their vital interests were at stake. In this volume, authors from the United States and the former Soviet Union have worked in pairs on each of ten timely and important topics in international law, aiming toward genuinely collaborative scholarship to bridge and overcome Cold War divisions. The results make a significant and original contribution to a new generation of international legal scholarship.

The right to self-determination is renowned for its lack of clear interpretation. Broadly speaking, one can differentiate between a 'classic' and a 'romantic' tradition. In modern international law, the balance between these two opposing traditions is sought in an attempt to contain or 'domesticate' the romantic version by limiting it to 'abnormal' situations, that is cases of 'alien subjugation, domination and exploitation'. This book situates Russia's engagement with the right to self-determination in this debate. It shows that Russia follows a distinct approach to self-determination that diverges significantly from the consensus view in international state practice and scholarship, partly due to a lasting legacy of the former Soviet doctrine of international law. Against the background of the Soviet Union's role in the evolution of the right to self-determination, the bulk of the study analyses Russia's relevant state practice in the post-Soviet space through the prisms of sovereignty, secession, and annexation. Drawing on analysis of all seven major secessionist conflicts in the former Soviet space and a detailed study of Russian sources and scholarship, it traces how Russian engagement with self-determination has changed over the past three decades. Ultimately, the book argues that Russia's approach to the right of peoples to self-determination should not only be understood in terms of power politics disguised as legal rhetoric but in terms of a continuously assumed regional hegemony and exceptionalism, based on balance-of-power considerations.

The intention of this book is to fill the gap of knowledge about law and policy in the field of exploration and use of outer space, which is being carried out by the new independent States that appeared on the world map after the dissolution of the USSR. The focus is on the survey of state management of space activities, international space cooperation of the relevant countries, their national space legislations, etc. It will be informative and useful to experts in the field of space law and policy, as well as to all those who are planning or might already be involved in the implementation of space programs and projects together with post-Soviet States. A collection of the most important legal documents is provided as an annex for further study and orientation, demonstrating the policies and national regulations of space activities in the post-Soviet States as well as the most significant agreements concluded within the framework of the CIS and the Eurasian Economic Community. These texts are provided in two languages, namely in English (as an unofficial translation) and in their original version.

Instead of resurrecting old images and nourishing new narratives about a ‘New Cold War’, Post-Soviet Conflict Potentials features politically and legally oriented critical investigations into conflict potentials and dynamics in the post-Soviet region and beyond. Contributions coming from the disciplinary perspectives of international relations, international law, and comparative political science are linked to investigations dealing with international, transnational, regional and local levels of the dynamics between conflict and cooperation in the region. Despite the diversity of perspectives, the authors of this volume take a shared critical view on an alleged ‘New Cold War’ as their point of departure, observing that contemporary post-Soviet conflict potentials are produced through various discursive practices ranging from intentional choices of belligerent language to unintentional misinterpretations. The chapters in this volume seek to shed light on conflict potentials from different angles as well as on processes that increase or decrease the probability of political and violent conflicts in the post-Soviet region. Together, the authors offer individual and shared outside-the-box approaches to the study of conflict dynamics and potentials in the post-Soviet space. The book draws connections to conflict potentials on the cross-regional and global levels, providing varied perspectives on what can be learned in and from the post-Soviet region. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.

In four short years the international landscape has been completely reorganized. The major political fault line of the Cold War has been for the most part erased, and the foundations have been laid for an entirely new era in international relations. Serious focused analysis is urgently needed to help facilitate the process of ending the Cold War'. This volume, the product of a Canada-Soviet bilateral conference of jurists and other scholars, specialized in International Law and International Organizatin, and International Conflicts-Resolution, held at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver in June 1990, attempts to provide such analysis. Written by a professionally and scientifically distinguished team of Canadian and Soviet experts, it deals with such issues as the winding up of the Nuclear and General Disarment process, the current main proposals on strengtening the United Nations and on reforming and modernizing its main arenas and institutions, new approaches to International Trade and Commerce on a multilateral basis, developing new norms of International Environmental Protection Law, and the Intrnational protection of Human Rights. It is characterized above all by a common emphasis, Soviet and Canadian, on pragmatism, and on a rigorously empirical, problem-oriented approach and offers not merely a description of international Law as it might now happen to exist. The result is a suprisingly far-ranging consensus, not merely on the major World Community problems that should be deemed ripe for present study, but also on their most desirable, practical and realizable solutions.