Since its intervention in the Syrian civil war, Russia has begun to promote itself as a global security provider and peace-maker. It cites its experience of post-Soviet peacekeeping and its recent role in conflicts in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia considers all these activities forms of 'peace-making' (mirotvorchestvo), but its approach differs radically from the model of liberal peacebuilding that dominated international practice in the post-Cold War era. Russia's approach to stabilisation prioritises order over justice and pursues short-term goals of conflict management over conflict resolution and peacebuilding. In this paper I explain why Russia did not align with emerging liberal norms of peacebuilding in the aftermath of the Cold War and instead developed a very different set of norms and practices. I argue that Russian policies are not simply ad hoc responses to immediate security concerns based on realpolitik, but represent a more substantive ideological and normative challenge to liberal models of peacebuilding. In this sense, Russia's approach to peace-making and conflict management is one strand in a much wider contestation of post-Cold War liberal norms.
